МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ
МИНСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ
Рассказ: чтение и интерпретация
Учебно-методическое пособие
В двух частях
Часть 2
Минск 2003
УДК 802.0(075.8)
ББК 81.2 Ан
К 43
А в т о р ы - с о с т а в и т е л и: Е. Ю. Кирейчук, Т. Г. Васильева
Р е ц е н з е н т ы : С. А. Дубинко, кандидат филологических наук, доцент (БГУ); Т. В. Кононенко, кандидат педагогических наук, доцент (МГЛУ)
Р е к о м е н д о в а н о Редакционным советом Минского государственного лингвистического университета
|
К 43 |
Рассказ: чтение и интерпретация = Reading and Appreciation of the Short Story: Учеб.-метод. пособие / Авторы-сост. Е. Ю. Кирейчук, Т. Г. Васильева: / В 2 ч. – Мн.: МГЛУ. / ч. 2. - 163 с. |
.
Пособие предназначено для начального этапа обучения аналитическому чтению в рамках курса «Чтение и интерпретация рассказа». 5 разделов данной части 2 содержат информацию об основных пунктах анализа рассказа: определение эмоционального ключа произведения, значения литературного символа, функций и значения названия.
Данная часть 2 включает 15 неадаптированных рассказов американских и британских авторов для самостоятельного прочтения с послетекстовыми вопросами, позволяющими выделить наиболее важные аспекты анализа, а также 2 контрольные работы, снабженные ответами на вопросы.
Адресованное студентам 3 курса заочного отделения факультета английского языка МГЛУ, пособие существенно облегчит и упорядочит самостоятельную работу студентов по подготовке к экзамену по практике устной речи.
УДК 802.0(075.8)
ББК 81.2 Ан
Минский государственный лингвистический университет, 2003
Е. Ю. Кирейчук, Т. Г. Васильева, 2003
CONTENTS
To the Student…………………………………………………………………...4
Unit 1: Tone. The Lyrical Key. ……………………………………………........5
G. M. Brown. Shell Songs……………………………………………...6
Unit 2: The Dramatic Key. …………………………………………………….13
J. Stuart. Love………………………………………………………….13
Unit 3: The Grotesque Key. …………………………………………………...18
J. Thurber. The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble……..................22
Saki. The Story-Teller……………………………………...................23
Unit 4: Symbolism. …………………………………………............................30
L. Carrington. The Debutante………………………………………...32
T. Winton. Secrets…………………………………………………….36
Unit 5: Title. …………………………………………………………………...41
Gr. Greene. The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen………………………43
Reading Independently. The Scheme of Story Analysis……………………...49
Stories for Independent Reading
1. D. Leavitt. Gravity………………………………………………….50
2. B. Aldiss. Making My Father Read Revered Writings……………..55
3. J. Collier. The Chaser…………………………………....................60
4. J. Archer. Cheap at Half the Price……………………....................64
5. R. Goldberg. Art for Heart’s Sake………………………………….78
6. Saki. The Lumber-Room………………………………....................82
7. Ph. Dick. Human Is……………………………………....................89
8. O. Henry. The Skylight Room…………………………...................104
9. O. Wilde. The Model Millionaire………………………………….111
10. J. Mark. Teeth……………………………………………………...117
11. E. Hemingway. Cat in the Rain……………………………………123
12. J. Winterson. O’Brien’s First Christmas…………………………..127
13. M. Whitaker. Hannah……………………………………………...133
14. M. Armstrong. The Poets and the Housewife (a Fable)…………...137
15. A. Cassidy. Shopping for One……………………………………...140
Supplement……………………………………………………………………..........144
Reference……………………………………………………………………….........161
TO THE STUDENT
Reading will be a substantial component of students’ curriculum this term. This course will aid in dealing with the reading and interpretation of short stories by American and British writers and is aimed at the expansion of understanding of a short story beyond the literal and simple recollection of factual details. The majority of the activities in this course will concentrate on reading and analyzing the short story and its elements (the emotive key, the functions of the title, literary symbolism).
During the 2nd term students are expected:
to read 23 short stories by British and American authors;
to accomplish 2 home tests (supposed to be done independently and checked with the attached keys);
to do an entrance test and a final test.
Part 2 of the book Reading and Appreciationof the Short Story is divided into 5 units containing original and unabridged short stories, followed by sections of questions to help students to appreciate the text and organize discussions in class. The texts are preceded by a necessary minimum of information, which will allow the student to answer the After You Read questions and accomplish the Before You Read tasks. The tasks take a variety of formats and are meant for full class activities, group activities and individual work.
Part 2 also includes 15 short stories intended for students’ independent reading and appreciation. To facilitate the task, a scheme of analysis is suggested and each short story is followed by a set of questions which focus the reader’s attention on the most relevant and important issues of interpretation. The supplement to Part 2 contains 2 home tests provided with keys for self-control.
The course presupposes thorough and conscientious independent and class work on behalf of the student.
We hope that this course will encourage students to respond imaginatively to what they read, to build up their vocabulary. It will help to understand and enjoy reading English language literature and will give tools and methods for appreciating fiction students will read in the future.
UNIT 1
TONE
Tone is the manner in which an author expresses his/her attitude to the characters and events in the story; it is the intonation of voice, which expresses meaning. Within a work of fiction the tone may shift from paragraph to paragraph, or even from line to line; it is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, irony, motif, symbolism, syntax, and style.
A speaker’s tone is evident to all, but understanding written tone is an entirely different matter. The reader must appreciate word choice, imagery and details. A careful look, sentence by sentence, at the language of a work of fiction — the words chosen and the way they are put together — can often help us to understand what that work means. Writers labour to make language serve their purposes, to produce the effects they desire, that is to establish the necessary tone:
A writer’s tone may be formal or informal, friendly or distant, personal or pompous, earnest or humorous, serious or ironic.
Tone can be said to be sarcastic, light-hearted, angry; sympathetic or impassive, cheerful or melancholy, vigorous or matter-of-fact or any number of other terms.
The vast range of tones can be classified into three basic keys: lyrical, dramatic and grotesque. The term key denotes the prevailing mood and the atmosphere created in the story.
THE LYRICAL KEY
Imaginative language and elaborate syntax can often create a romantic mood. If the narrative or a section of it abounds in poetic lexis, metaphors, similes, emotive words, direct addresses, personal pronouns and present tenses, emphatic syntax and expresses direct personal feelings, it is lyrical in key. The lyrical key is present in the texts describing author’s feelings rather than outward events. In lyrical passages of prose or in lyrical poems the author’s attention is concentrated on his emotive attitude to life, on his thoughts about it, on his feelings. It is often found in descriptions of nature and appearance as well as in auctorial digressions.
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
G. M. Brown
Shell Songs
Dearest Alicia,
I must tell you about this strange thing that has happened here.
Do you remember Hundland who used to come and help in the Hall garden sometimes in summer? He is a small man with a brown silky beard and blue eyes. He is a good worker, and quiet in his speech. One thing about him, when James or I speak to him, he will not remove his hat, or say “sir” and “ma’am”.
Hundland works a croft on the far side of the island. He is married and has several children.
Three days ago, Tuesday, Hundland has a boy with him, aged nine or ten, when I saw him working in the tulip-beds. This child was wandering slowly here and there about the garden. I could see his lips moving. He nodded from time to time. His hands made slow shapes. He was a very small boy indeed, and not very pretty, with light sand-coloured hair. My first impression was: he is a bit simple in the head.
I opened the window. I called, “Good morning, Hundland!” The man merely turned his face and nodded. The child fled as if he had been shot, behind the sycamore tree.
“What child is that?” I asked.
Hundland replied, still bent over the blossoms, “He’s Tom. He’s our youngest boy. The wife’s not well today. I thought I would take him off her hands. He’s more trouble, in a way, than all the others.”
“Tom,” I called, “come from behind the tree. I have an orange and a piece of chocolate for you.”
There was no answer. There was a white five-pointed star stuck to the hither side of the trunk, Tom’s hand.
“He won’t come out!” said Hundland. “He’s the strangest boy I ever saw. He wouldn’t show himself if you were to offer him a piece of gold. I don’t know what’s to become of the creature when he’s grown. He’s frightened of boats. He’s frightened of horses. He wants to know all about them, all the same. He’s frightened of any stranger that comes about. That won’t do in a crofter-fisherman. He might grow out of it. He’ll have to.”
“Surely he ought to be at school,” I said.
“He’s frightened of the teacher, too, and the big boys; they won’t leave him alone. He’s as ignorant as the scarecrow when it comes to letters and figures. He’s upset this morning, because his mother’s in bed. The only time he’s happy is when he’s by himself. He contents himself with the daft games he makes up…”.
These were the words of my radical gardener to me, the most he’s ever spoken. (But never a touch to the cap.)
It was a most beautiful morning, Alicia, all blue and gold and green. I decided not to waste the day (James has been all week in Edinburgh on business). I took my book and parasol and cushion and walked along to the beach, which was quite empty, as the fishermen had taken advantage of the weather to set their creels here and there under the cliffs on the west side.
I sat down on a rock and opened my book of Shenstone’s poems. Everything was quite beautiful and tranquil. Nature smiled. It was so peaceful I could hear the horse in the field above champing and moving through the grass. I could sense, almost, the earth’s juices flowing.
(How is it words in a book are never so beautiful and interesting outside, in the sun? Of course they are, they must be; but books seem made for opening beside a fire indoors, with the yellow waverings of candle-light on the white pages. My friend, I would rather than any book that you had been there to share that beautiful day with me! There is a selfishness in solitary enjoyment.)
It seemed, however, that I was not destined to be solitary for too long. I heard the faintest rhythmic displacement of dry sand-grains. Who could it be, the despoiler of my solitude? I raised the rim of my summer hat, and looked.
It was a small boy, anonymous against the blue and silver glitterings of ocean.
His mouth, between the sea and the fields, was ringing like a little bell.
Dear Alicia, the boy spoke as if the shells and stones and water were living things, and could understand what he was saying. It was the strangest experience: I hidden in my rock cranny, this boy (whoever he was) wandering here and there about the shore, chanting.
I listened, half-amused and half-wonderstruck. Shenstone lay spreadeagled at my feet, the pages slowly curling in the sun.
Should I declare myself? It seemed a shame to break the natural flow of the boy’s phantasy. This most strange monologue went on and on. On an impulse, I plucked a pencil from my bag and wrote, as best I could, on the blank pages of Shenstone’s Works, the words of my shore wanderer. It seemed a shame that only the empty unremembering empyrean should be given such a unique recital.
I cannot convey how fresh and exquisite the words were in that setting. My pencil stumbled on and on, and slowly blunted.
Naturally, I missed much. The boy wandered here and there. Often I could only hear — as it were — an indistinct music. And, then, pencil on paper is tardy, and his words, however indistinct, came with the freshness and urgency of a spring.
Such as I gathered, I send you to marvel at. If they appear in broken lines, my excuse is that they seemed like a scattering of primitive unpolished stones.
Here I go.
I’m writing letters
To a bird and a shell.
I should be writing
On a slate in the school.
*
The sea will cure her.
I’ll take sea
Up to the house in this shell.
“Drink this, Mother.”
*
I don’t think he’ll ever die, the Laird, Mr. Sweyn.
The lady, she’s kind,
She’s beautiful and she’s sweet,
So she’ll die.
A pity that, a great pity
For old Mr. Sweyn!
*
Tomorrow,
Every day I’ll go.
I’ll read the books, hard.
I’ll study.
I’ll go to Edinburgh, the college there.
I’ll be a doctor. I will.
I’ll say to her in the bed,
“Get well. I’m here. Take this medicine.”
*
I can do anything with you I like,
Sand.
I’ve drawn a cottage.
There are people living in it.
They’re all singing.
Look at their round mouths.
There’s a mother
At a table, with pots and plates.
*
Are you listening, shell?
You
Are all whispers and whispers.
Listen. Tell me
Where the hidden treasure is, the box
Full of silver coins.
Then
My father will be able to pay his rent.
*
I am Mr. Sweyn.
I live up at the Hall. I do.
Seagull,
How do you know I amn’t Mr. Sweyn?
I am Mr. Sweyn the Laird.
I say,
“Miss Ingsetter, you are sacked from the school.”
Then I say,
“Mrs. Hundland is to stop coughing,
I have a room for her
High up, where blue air comes in.”
*
Nobody
Hears, only a shell and a gull.
They are arguing.
The gull says, “Her face is burning. Then it is grey.
She is very sick.”
The shell sings, “The mother,
She is never going to die.”
*
Once she was sick before.
Then she got up.
She lit the fire, she polished all our boots.
*
I’m tired. I’m in trouble. I’m bad. I’m idle.
Shell and gull,
I should be taking the sweat from my mother’s face.
There was silence at last, but for the first ebb noises and the cries of a rock-questing gull. It had gotten cold in my rock cranny.
The boy had wandered away.
My hand was numb with writing (as best I could) all those “native woodnotes wild”.
I looked out. The sands were flushed with the last of the sun.
The boy was a trembling dot against the far reaches of the shore.
I knew — if I had not known already — that it was Tom Hundland.
I had am impulse to cry after him to come back — I would do what I could for his mother and his family.
He heard me. It must have been a thin echo, my cry, at that distance, in the first shadows. He went like a bird up the nearest shore path to the road above.
My hand, dear Alicia, was numb with writing, and with the first chill of evening; and with something more, beyond, the plight of that cottage with the skull on the window-sill.
1.
Who tells us the story? In what form us it written? What term is
usually applied to define this type of writing? What accounts for the
author’s choice to present the story as a letter?
2. Dwell on the function of the setting. Describe the atmosphere it creates.
3. Present the characters: Tom, Hundland, the lady. Describe the impression they produce on each other and on the reader.
4. Describe the lady in detail. What does her house look like? What constitutes her daily routine? Does she seem to be happy in her married life? What is the significance of this character for the story?
5. Discuss the peculiarities of her letter-writing style: the structure of the sentences; the vocabulary used (low colloquial, informal, neutral, bookish, elevated, formal); the events and details she concentrates on. Paraphrase some of her expressions. Does her manner of writing resemble the way you usually write letters?
6. Discuss your first reaction to Tom’s poem. Enumerate the devices that make it poetic. Analyze the symbolic meaning of the following images used by Tom: the sea, the shell, the gull, his picture on the sand. What information does the poem convey about its author (his emotional state, the way he perceives himself and the world around him)?
7. Characterize the general mood of the whole story and the key it is written in.
UNIT 2
The dramatic Key
The dramatic key relates to the description of any series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results. If the narrative consists of dynamic dialogues and describes a series of exciting events; if the writer employs emotive lexis, figures of rhetoric, numerous interrogative and exclamatory sentences, the story can create a sense of drama, i.e. it is dramatic in tone.
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
J. Stuart
Love
Yesterday when the bright sun blazed down on the wilted corn my father and I walked around the edge of the new ground to plan a fence. The cows kept coming through the chestnut oaks on the cliff and running over the young corn. They bit off the tips of the corn and trampled down the stubble.
My father walked in the cornbalk. Bob, our Collie, walked in front of my father. We heard a ground squirrel whistle down over the bluff among the dead treetops at the clearing’s edge. “Whoop, take him, Bob,” said my father. He lifted up a young stalk of corn, with wilted dried roots, where the ground squirrel had dug it up for the sweet grain of corn left on its tender roots. This has been a dry spring and the corn has kept well in the earth where the grain has sprouted. The ground squirrels love this corn. They dig up rows of it and eat the sweet grains. The young corn stalks are killed and we have to replant the corn.
I can see my father keep sicking Bob after the ground squirrel. He jumped over the corn rows. He started to run toward the ground squirrel. I, too, started running toward the clearing’s edge where Bob was jumping and barking. The dust flew in tiny swirls behind our feet. There was a cloud of dust behind us.
“It’s a big bull snake,” said my father. “Kill him, Bob! Kill him, Bob!”
Bob was jumping and snapping at the snake so as to make it strike and throw itself off guard. Bob had killed twenty-eight copperheads this spring. He knows how to kill a snake. He doesn’t rush to do it. He takes his time and does the job well.
“Let’s don’t kill the snake,” I said. “A blacksnake is a harmless snake. It kills poison snakes. It kills the copperhead. It catches more mice from the fields than a cat.”
I could see the snake didn’t want to fight the dog. The snake wanted to get away. Bob wouldn’t let it. I wondered why it was crawling toward a heap of black loamy earth at the bench of the hill. I wondered why it had come from the chestnut oak sprouts and the matted greenbriars on the cliff. I looked as the snake lifted its pretty head in response to one of Bob’s jumps. “It’s not a bull blacksnake,” I said. “It’s a she-snake. Look at the white on her throat.”
“A snake is an enemy to me,” my father snapped. “I hate a snake. Kill it, Bob. Go in there and get that snake and quit playing with it!”
Bob obeyed my father. I hated to see him take this snake by the throat. She was so beautifully poised in the sunlight. Bob grabbed the white patch on her throat. He cracked her long body like an ox whip in the wind. He cracked it against the wind only. The blood spurted from her fine-curved throat. Something hit against my legs like pellets. Bob threw the snake down. I looked to see what had struck my legs. It was snake eggs. Bob had slung them from her body. She was going to the sand heap to lay her eggs, where the sun is the setting-hen that warms them and hatches them.
Bob grabbed her body there on the earth where the red blood was running down on the gray-piled loam. Her body was still writhing in pain. She acted like a greenweed held over a new-ground fire. Bob slung her viciously many times. He cracked her limp body against the wind. She was now limber as a shoestring in the wind. Bob threw her riddled body back on the sand. She quivered like a leaf in the lazy wind, then her riddled body lay perfectly still. The blood colored the loamy earth around the snake.
“Look at the eggs, won’t you?” said my father. We counted thirty-seven eggs. I picked an egg up and held it in my hand. Only a minute ago there was life in it. It was an immature seed. It would not hatch. Mother sun could not incubate it on the warm earth. The egg I held in my hand was almost the size of a quail’s egg. The shell on it was thin and tough and the egg appeared under the surface to be a watery egg.
“Well, Bob, I guess you see now why this snake couldn’t fight,” I said, “It is life. Stronger devour the weaker even among human beings. Dog kills snake. Snake kills birds. Birds kill the butterflies. Man conquers all. Man, too, kills for sport.”
Bob was panting. He walked ahead of us back to the house. His tongue was out of his mouth. He was tired. He was hot under his shaggy coat of hair. His tongue nearly touched the dry dirt and white flecks of foam dripped from it. We walked toward the house. Neither my father nor I spoke. I still thought about the dead snake. The sun was going down over the chestnut ridge. A lark was singing. It was late for a lark to sing. The red evening clouds floated above the pine trees on our pasture hill. My father stood beside the path. His black hair was moved by the wind. His face was red in the blue wind of day. His eyes looked toward the sinking sun.
“And my father hates a snake,” I thought.
I thought about the agony women know of giving birth. I thought about how they will fight to save their children. Then I thought of the snake. I thought it was silly for me to think such thoughts.
This morning my father and I got up with the chickens. He says one has to get up with the chickens to a day’s work. We got the posthole digger, ax, spud, measuring pole and the mattock. We started for the clearing’s edge. Bob didn’t go along.
The dew was on the corn. My father walked behind with the posthole digger across his shoulder. I walked in front. The wind was blowing. It was a good morning wind to breathe and a wind that makes one feel he can get under the edge of a hill and heave the whole hill upside down.
I walked out the corn row where we had come yesterday afternoon. I looked in front of me. I saw something. I saw it move. It was moving like a huge black rope winds around a windlass. “Steady,” I says to my father. “Here is the bull blacksnake.” He took one step up beside me and stood. His eyes grew wide apart.
“What do you know about this,” he said.
“You have seen the bull blacksnake now,” I said. “Take a good look at him! He is lying beside his dead mate. He has come to her. He, perhaps, was on her trail yesterday.”
The male snake had trailed her to her doom. He had come in the night, under the roof of stars, as the moon shed rays of light on the quivering clouds of green. He had found his lover dead. He was coiled beside her, and she was dead.
The bull blacksnake lifted his head and followed us as we walked around the dead snake. He would have fought us to his death. He would have fought Bob to his death. “Take a stick,” said my father, “and throw him over the hill so Bob won’t find him. Did you ever see anything to beat that? I’ve heard they’d do that. But this is my first time to see it.” I took a stick and threw him over the bank into the dewy sprouts on the cliffs.
1.
Analyze the title of short story. Which implications does it suggest?
Whose feelings does it refer to?
2. Can you account for the father’s hatred to snakes? Is it people’s typical attitude to the snake?
3. What is the boy’s attitude to his father decision to kill the snake? Go back to the text and support your opinion.
4. Point out the words in the text used to describe a) nature; b) snakes; c) the dog killing the snake, and analyze their emotive colouring. Which mood seems to prevail in the text?
5. In the beginning of the story the father uses the pronoun it and by the end of the story personal pronouns she and he to substitute the nouns snake, blacksnake, bull blacksnake. Can you explain why?
6. Why do you think the father did not kill the male snake? What life experience is the narrator trying to explain?
UNIT 3
The Grotesque Key
The grotesque key is typical of passages and whole works which are written to produce a funny or ludicrous effect. This key can be divided into the following subtypes: humour, irony, and satire.
Sometimes writers make fun of their characters. The tone of a story can be labelled humorous if the story is intended to excite laughter that is kindly and tolerant. Humour is warm, unintellectual, unsatirical. We describe in a humorous key somebody or something we are fond of. Dead-pаn humour occurs when the speaker pretends to be very serious. Black (sick) humour presupposes jokes that are made about subject like nuclear war, disability or disease that people otherwise find too painful to think about. At its highest level, humour is represented by witty observations on life and society, such as those by Oscar Wilde. Humour of this kind is more clever than comic. Examples are ‘There is one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about’, and ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’.
Authors can make fun of their characters with far less sympathy. The language they use is ironic that is, saying one thing and meaning another in order to be emphatic, amusing, sarcastic, etc.: ‘That’s really lovely!’ said when it’s raining heavily and you don’t have an umbrella on you. Sarcasm — use of bitter, especially ironic, remarks intended to wound somebody’s feelings. It’s harsh and often crude. Compare:
‘What a fine musician you turned out to be!’ (irony); ‘You couldn’t play one piece correctly if you had two assistants’ (sarcasm).
Satire — use of taunting irony or sarcasm that is often directed at public figures or institutions, political situations, or at some moral or social vice. For example, G. Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 attack totalitarianism, the manipulation of people’s actions and thoughts by an all-powerful state.
Amusing effect may be created through the implication of linguistic means (irony, puns, deliberate exaggerations, etc. — revise Unit 5, Part 1; and also words which do not fit in the situation) and extra-linguistic means (amusing characters and actions; unexpected turns of the events; trick endings, irony of the situation, play on the reader’s expectations, a too detailed manner of description or narration, etc.). These are just a few of the ways the language of a work of fiction shapes our reading experience. Slow down as you read and see if you can figure out what the writer is up to.
Exercise 1.
What are the writers’ views in the following texts?
My daddy was a loving man,
My father loved his daughter;
My daddy brought himself a van
And with it killed his daughter.
The new resort of Karacruz is a paradise for lovers of concrete, plastic and unfinished work of art. Everywhere buildings stand symbolically bereft of doors or roofs or significantly without windows. The place is unique and should be visited by all lovers of the bizarre and grotesque and by all those tourists surfeited with the luxury and comfort of the average resort.
The aging rock group the Rolling Stones is again touring the United States. Each show will include three encores and, in all probability, two naps.
Exercise 2.
Read the following extract from J. K. Jerome’s most famous novel Three Men in a Boat and analyze the means of creating humorous effect employed in it.
George said that, as we had plenty of lime, it would be a splendid opportunity to try a good, slap-up supper. He said he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew.
It seemed a fascinating idea. George gathered wood and made a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in. We began cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly but our light-heartedness was gone by the time the first potato was finished. The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left — at least none worth speaking of. George came and had a look at it — it was about the size of pea-nut. He said:
“Oh, that won’t do! You’re wasting them. You must scrape them.”
So we scraped them and that was harder work than peeling. They are such an extraordinary shape, potatoes — all bumps and warts and hollows. We worked steadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did four potatoes. Then we struck. We said we should require the rest of the evening for scraping ourselves.
I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a fellow in a mess. It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which Harris and I stood, half-smothered, could have come off four potatoes. It shows you what can be done with economy and care.
George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so we washed half a dozen or so more and put them in without peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare. So we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.
He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and we put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy.
I forgot the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a general desire to assist, I cannot say.
It was a great success, that Irish stew. I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal more. There was something so fresh and piquant about it. One’s palate gets so tired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.
And it was nourishing, too. As George said, there was good stuff in it. The peas and potatoes might have been a bit softer, but we all had good teeth, so that did not matter much; and as for the gravy, it was a poem — a little too rich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious.
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
J. Thurber
The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
Within the memory of the youngest child there was a family of rabbits who lived near a pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. (The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living, because it was the only way to live.) One night several wolves were killed in an earthquake and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that lettuce-eaters cause lightning. The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn’t behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island. But the other animals, who lived at a great distance, shamed them, saying, “You must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid, in all probability.” So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves and one day there was a terrible flood which drowned a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot-nibblers with long ears cause floods. The wolves descended on the rabbits, for their own good, and imprisoned them in a dark cave, for their own protection.
When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten and since they had been eaten the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. “They were trying to escape,” said the wolves, “and, as you know, this is no world for escapists.”
Moral: Run, don’t walk, to the nearest desert island.
1.
Can you define the genre of the story? Advocate your opinion by
pointing out the typical features of the genre which the text
displays.
2. The time of the action is indicated as “within the memory of the youngest child.” When does the action seem to take place?
3. Do you think the story is intended for little children? Which words children would not probably understand? In what sphere of communication are such words likely to be used?
4. What audience is the story intended for?
5. Who do the rabbits and the wolves represent?
6. What is the general tone of the story? Go back to the text and point out the means which create such effect.
7. Have a closer look at the moral. Will it be of any help in interpreting the author’s message?
8. Think of a real modern day or historical event which is similar to the one described in the story.
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
Saki
The Story-Teller
It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a house-fly that refused to be discouraged. Most of the aunt’s remarks seemed to begin with “Don’t,” and nearly all of the children’s remarks began with “Why?” The bachelor said nothing out loud.
“Don’t, Cyril, don’t,” exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.
“Come and look out of the window,” she added.
The child moved reluctantly to the window. “Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?” he asked.
“I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass,” said the aunt weakly.
“But there is lots of grass in that field,” protested the boy; “there’s nothing else but grass there. Aunt, there’s lots of grass in that field.”
“Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,” suggested the aunt fatuously.
“Why is it better?” came the swift, inevitable question.
“Oh, look at those cows!” exclaimed the aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.
“Why is the grass in the other field better?” persisted Cyril.
The frown on the bachelor’s face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.
The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite “On the Road to Mandalay.” She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though someone had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.
“Come over here and listen to a story,” said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.
The children moved listlessly towards the aunt’s end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller did not rank high in their estimation.
In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questions from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with everyone on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.
“Wouldn’t they have saved her if she hadn’t been good?” demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.
“Well, yes,” admitted the aunt lamely, “but I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.”
“It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.
“I didn’t listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,” said Cyril.
The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.
“You don’t seem to be a success as a story-teller,” said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.
The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.
“It’s a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate,” she said stiffly.
“I don’t agree with you,” said the bachelor.
“Perhaps you would like to tell them a story,” was the aunt’s retort.
“Tell us a story,” demanded the bigger of the small girls.
“Once upon a time,” began the bachelor, “there was a little girl called Bertha, who was extraordinarily good.”
The children’s momentarily-aroused interest began at once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter who told them.
“She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.”
“Was she pretty?” asked the bigger of the small girls. “Not as pretty as any of you,” said the bachelor, “but she was horribly good.”
There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life.
“She was so good,” continued the bachelor, “that she won several medals for goodness, which she always wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clinked against one another as she walked. No other child in the town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody knew that she must be an extra good child.”
“Horribly good,” quoted Cyril.
“Everybody talked about her goodness, and the Prince of the country got to hear about it, and he said that as she was so very good she might be allowed once a week to walk in his park, which was just outside the town. It was a beautiful park, and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a great honour for Bertha to be allowed to go there.”
“Were there any sheep in the park?” demanded Cyril.
“No,” said the bachelor, “there were no sheep.”
“Why weren’t there any sheep?” came the inevitable question arising out of that answer.
The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might almost have been described as a grin.
“There were no sheep in the park,” said the bachelor, “because the Prince’s mother had once had a dream that her son would either be killed by a sheep or else by a clock falling on him. For that reason the Prince never kept a sheep in his park or a clock in his palace.”
The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.
“Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?” asked Cyril.
“He is still alive, so we can’t tell whether the dream will come true,” said the bachelor unconcernedly; “anyway, there were no sheep in the park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the palace.”
“What colour were they?”
“Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all over.”
The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the park’s treasures sink into the children’s imaginations; then he resumed:
“Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind Prince’s flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no flowers to pick.”
“Why weren’t there any flowers?”
“Because the pigs had eaten them all,” said the bachelor promptly. “The gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn’t have pigs and flowers, so he decided to have pigs and no flowers.”
There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince’s decision; so many people would have decided the other way.
“There were lots of other delightful things in the park. There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment’s notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down and enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: “If I were not so extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed to come into this beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to be seen in it,” and her three medals clinked against one another as she walked and helped to remind her how very good she really was. Just then an enormous wolf came prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its supper.”
“What colour was it?” asked the children, amid an immediate quickening of interest.
“Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she could, and the wolf came after her with huge leaps and bounds. She managed to reach a shrubbery of myrtle bushes and she hid herself in one of the thickest of the bushes. The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with rage. Bertha was terribly frightened, and thought to herself: “If I had not been so extraordinarily good, I should have been safe in town at this moment.” However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf could not sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were so thick that he might have hunted about in them for a long time without catching sight of her, so he thought he might as well go off and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gloaming with ferocity and triumph and dragged Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness.”
“Were any of the little pigs killed?”
“No, they all escaped.”
“The story began badly,” said the smaller of the small girls, “but it had a beautiful ending.”
“It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense decision.
“It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,” said Cyril.
A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.
“A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching.”
“At any rate,” said the bachelor, collecting his belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, “I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.”
“Unhappy woman!” he observed to himself as he walked down the platform of Templecombe station; “for the next six months or so those children will assail her in public with demands for an improper story!”
1.
Have a closer look at the shape of the plot of the story. Which
plot-structure pattern does it take?
2. In what tone is the aunt’s attempt to represent an interesting story described? What do you think her story lacks to be captivating?
3. Can you think of a genre definition for the bachelor’s story? Give your reasoning.
4. How can you characterize the plot of the bachelor’s story?
5. When did the listeners first react favourably to the story? What arrested their attention?
6. What in your opinion made the story the most beautiful one for the children? What makes it amusing for the reader?
7. Which of the two story-tellers has the author’s sympathy?
8. Which themes and ideas does the short story touch upon?
UNIT 4
SYMBOLISM
Of all components of fiction, the one that often seems to produce the greatest interpretive problems is symbolism.
What is a symbol?
The word symbol derives from the Greek verb symballein ‘to throw together’, and its noun symbolon ‘mark’, ‘emblem’, ‘token’ or ‘sign’. It is an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or ‘stands for’ something else.
Scales, for example, symbolize justice; the orb and scepter, monarchy and rule; the dove, peace; the goat, lust; the lion, strength and courage; the bulldog, tenacity; the rose, beauty; the lily, purity; the Stars and Stripes, America and its States; the Cross, Christianity. Actions and gestures are also symbolic. The clenched fist symbolizes aggression. Beating of the breast signifies remorse. Arms raised denote surrender. Hands clasped and raised suggest supplication.
What is a literary symbol?
A literary s y m b o l combines an image with a concept, a literal, concrete quality with a suggestive, abstract dimension. It may be universal or individual.
In literature an example of a universal symbol is a journey into the underworld (as in the work of Virgil, Dante and James Joyce) and a return from it. Such a journey may be an interpretation of a spiritual experience, a dark night of the soul and a kind of redemptive odyssey. Examples of individual symbols are those that recur in the works of W.B. Yeats: the sun and the moon, a tower, a mask, a tree, a winding stair, and a hawk.
Dante’s Divina Commedia is structurally symbolic. In Macbeth there is a recurrence of the blood image symbolizing guilt and violence. In Hamlet weeds and disease symbolize corruption and decay. In King Lear clothes symbolize appearances and authority; and the storm scene in this play may be taken as symbolic of cosmic and domestic chaos to which ‘unaccommodated man’ is exposed. The poetry of Blake and Shelley is heavily marked with symbols.
In prose works the great white whale of Melville’s Moby Dick (the ‘grand god’) is a kind of symbolic creature — a carcass which symbol-hunters have been disseting for years. Much of the fiction of William Golding (especially Lord of the Flies, Pincher Martin and The Spire) depends upon powerful symbolism capable of more interpretations than one. To these examples should be added the novels and short stories of Kafka, and the plays of Maeterlinck, Andreyev, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Synge and O’Neill.
How do you recognize a symbol?
Careful reading and common sense are the most important requirements. Only after you feel you fully understand the literal level of the story’s meaning and yet sense a pattern of suggestive details, a dimension beyond the literal, will you wish to explore symbolic interpretation. Sometimes symbolic significance is readily accessible through speech, gesture, and action.
Symbolism in fiction depends for its effectiveness on the reader’s making the right associations, understanding the ways in which symbols may expand and deepen meaning. Symbols make good literary sense only when considered in the overall context provided by a piece of fiction. As an interpreter of symbols in fiction, you are concerned with putting things together, with seeing the story in more than one dimension.
Exercise 1.
Below you will find a number of traditional symbols. With which concepts are they generally associated?
the snake the dogswan the crown
the heart the apple grapes the fox
spring winter autumn the Sun
the Moon the diamond the red colour the white colour
the black colour the green colour
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
L. Carrington
The Debutante
When I was a debutante, I often went to the zoo. I went so often that I knew the animals better than I knew girls of my own age. Indeed it was in order to get away from people that I found myself at the zoo every day. The animal I got to know best was a young hyena. She knew me too. She was very intelligent. I taught her French, and she, in return, taught me her language. In this way we passed many pleasant hours.
My mother was arranging a ball in my honour on the first of May. During this time I was in a state of great distress for whole nights. I’ve always detested balls, especially when they are given in my honour.
On the morning of the first of May 1934, very early, I went to visit the hyena.
“What a bloody nuisance,” I said to her. “I’ve got to go to my ball tonight.”
“You’re very lucky,” she said. “I’d love to go. I don’t know how to dance, but at least I could make small talk.”
“There’ll be a great many different things to eat,” I told her. “I’ve seen truckloads of food delivered to our house.”
“And you’re complaining,” replied the hyena, disgusted. “Just think of me, I eat once a day, and you can’t imagine what a heap of bloody rubbish I’m given.”
I had an audacious idea, and I almost laughed. “All you have to do is to go instead of me!”
“We don’t resemble each other enough, otherwise I’d gladly go,” said the hyena rather sadly.
“Listen,” I said. “No one sees too well in the evening light. If you disguise yourself, nobody will notice you in the crowd. Besides, we’re practically the same size. You’re my only friend, I beg you to do this for me.”
She thought this over, and I knew that she really wanted to accept.
“Done,” she said all of a sudden.
There weren’t many keepers about, it was so early in the morning. I opened the cage quickly, and in a very few moments we were out in the street. I hailed a taxi; at home, everybody was still in bed. In my room I brought out the dress I was to wear that evening. It was a little long, and the hyena found it difficult to walk in my high-heeled shoes. I found some gloves to hide her hands, which were too hairy to look like mine. By the time the sun was shining into my room, she was able to make her way around the room several times, walking more or less upright. We were so busy that my mother almost opened the door to say good morning before the hyena had hidden under my bed.
“There’s a bad smell in your room,” my mother said, opening the window. “You must have a scented bath before tonight, with my new bath salts.”
“Certainly,” I said.
She didn’t stay long. I think the smell was too much for her.
“Don’t be late for breakfast,” she said and left the room.
The greatest difficulty was to find a way of disguising the hyena’s face. We spent hours and hours looking for a way, but she always rejected my suggestions. At last she said, “I think I’ve found the answer. Have you got a maid?”
“Yes,” I said, puzzled.
“There you are then. Ring for your maid, and when she comes in we’ll pounce upon her and tear off her face. I’ll wear her face tonight instead of mine.”
“It’s not practical,” I said. “She’ll probably die if she hasn’t got a face. Somebody will certainly find the corpse, and we’ll be put in prison.”
“I’m hungry enough to eat her,” the hyena replied.
“And the bones?”
“As well,” she said. “So, it’s on?”
“Only if you promise to kill her before tearing off her face. It’ll hurt her too much otherwise.”
“All right. It’s all the same to me.”
Not without a certain amount of nervousness I rang for Mary, my maid. I certainly wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t hate having to go to a ball so much. When Mary came in I turned to the wall so as not to see. I must admit it didn’t take long. A brief cry, and it was over. While the hyena was eating, I looked out the window. A few minutes later she said, “I can’t eat any more. Her two feet are left over still, but if you have a little bag, I’ll eat them later in the day.”
“You’ll find a bag embroidered with fleurs-de-lis in the cupboard. Empty out the handkerchiefs you’ll find inside, and take it.” She did as I suggested. Then she said, “Turn round now and look how beautiful I am.”
In front of the mirror, the hyena was admiring herself in Mary’s face. She had nibbled very neatly all around the face so that what was left was exactly what was needed.
“You’ve certainly done that very well,” I said.
Towards evening, when the hyena was all dressed up, she declared, “I really feel in tip-top form. I have a feeling that I shall be a great success this evening.”
When we had heard the music from downstairs for quite some time, I said to her, “Go on down now, and remember, don’t stand next to my mother. She’s bound to realise that it isn’t me. Apart from her I don’t know anybody. Best of luck.” I kissed her as I left her, but she did smell very strong.
Night fell. Tired by the day’s emotions, I took a book and sat down by the open window, giving myself up to peace and quiet. I remember that I was reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. About an hour later, I noticed the first signs of trouble. A bat flew in at the window, uttering little cries. I am terribly afraid of bats. I hid behind a chair, my teeth chattering. I had hardly gone down on my knees when the sound of beating wings was overcome by a great noise at my door. My mother entered, pale with rage.
“We’d just sat down at table,” she said, “when that thing sitting in your place got up and shouted, ‘So I smell a bit strong, what? Well, I don’t eat cakes!’ Whereupon it tore off its face and ate it. And with one great bound, disappeared through the window.”
1.
What features and characteristics do the words debutante
and hyena
usually suggest?
2. Characterize the debutante. How is she different from the traditional image?
3. Compare and contrast the debutante and the hyena. Do they have anything in common? In what way are they different?
4. In the story who seems to be more cruel and cynical — the debutante or the hyena? Prove your opinion by reference to the text.
5. What does the hyena symbolize? How does this image help the author to reveal her idea of human nature?
6. What other objects and details acquire symbolic meaning in the story?
Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it.
T. Winton
Secrets
Out the back of the new house, between the picket fence and a sheet of tin, Kylie found an egg. Her mother and Philip were inside. She heard them arguing and wished she still lived with her father. The yard was long and excitingly littered with fallen grapevines, a shed, lengths of timber and wire, and twitching shadows from big trees. It wasn’t a new house, but it was new to her. She had been exploring the yard. The egg was white and warm-looking in its nest of dirt and down. Reaching in, she picked it up and found that it was warm. She looked back at the house. No one was watching. Something rose in her chest: now she knew what it was to have a secret.
At dinner her mother and Philip spoke quietly to one another and drank from the bottle she was only allowed to look at. Her mother was a tall woman with short hair like a boy’s. One of her front teeth had gone brown and it made Kylie wonder. She knew that Philip was Mum’s new husband, only they weren’t married. He smelt of cigarettes and moustache hairs. Kylie thought his feet were the shape of pasties.
When everything on her plate was gone, Kylie left the table. Because the loungeroom was a jungle of boxes and crates inside one of which was the TV, she went straight to her new room. She thought about the egg as she lay in bed. She was thinking about it when she fell asleep.
Next day, Kylie got up onto the fence and crabbed all around it looking into the neighbours’ yards. The people behind had a little tin shed and a wired-up run against the fence in which hens and a puff-chested little rooster pecked and picked and scruffled. So, she thought, balanced on the splintery grey fence, that’s where the egg comes from. She climbed down and checked behind the sheet of tin and found the egg safe but cold.
Later, she climbed one of the big trees in the yard, right up, from where she could observe the hens and the rooster next door. They were fat, white birds with big red combs and bright eyes. They clucked and preened and ruffled and Kylie grew to like them. She was angry when the piebald rooster beat them down to the ground and jumped on their backs, pecking and twisting their necks. All his colours were angry colours; he looked mean.
Inside the house Mum and Philip laughed or shouted and reminded her that Dad didn’t live with them any more. It was good to have a secret from them, good to be the owner of something precious. Philip laughed at the things she said. Her mother only listened to her with a smile that said you don't know a single true thing.
Sometime in the afternoon, after shopping with her mother, Kylie found a second egg in the place between the fence and the tin. She saw, too, a flash of white beneath a mound of vine cuttings in the corner of the yard. She climbed her tree and waited. A hen, thinner and more raggedy than the others, emerged. She had a bloody comb and a furtive way of pecking the ground alertly and moving in nervous bursts. For some time, she poked and scratched about, fossicking snails and slugs out of the long grass, until Kylie saw her move across to the piece of tin and disappear.
Each day Kylie saw another egg added to the nest up the back. She saw the raggedy hen pecked and chased and kicked by the others next door, saw her slip between the pickets to escape. The secret became bigger every day. The holidays stretched on. Philip and her mother left her alone. She was happy. She sat on the fence, sharing the secret with the hen.
When they had first moved into this house on the leafy, quiet street, Philip had shown Kylie and her mother the round, galvanized tin cover of the bore well in the back of the yard. The sun winked off it in the morning. Philip said it was thirty-six feet deep and very dangerous. Kylie was forbidden to lift the lid. It was off-limits. She was fascinated by it. Some afternoons she sat out under the grapevines with her photo album, turning pages and looking across every now and then at that glinting lid. It couldn’t be seen from the back verandah; it was obscured by a banana tree and a leaning brick wall.
In all her photographs, there was not one of her father. He had been the photographer in the family; he took photos of Kylie and her mother, Kylie and her friends, but he was always out of the picture, behind the camera. Sometimes she found herself looking for him in the pictures. Sometimes it was a game for her; at others she didn’t realise she was doing it.
Two weeks passed. It was a sunny, quiet time. Ten eggs came to be secreted behind the piece of tin against the back fence. The hen began sitting on them. Kylie suspected something new would happen. She visited the scraggy, white hen every day to see her bright eyes, to smell her musty warmth. It was an important secret now. She sneaked kitchen scraps and canary food up the back each evening and lay awake in bed wondering what would happen.
It was at this time that Kylie began to lift the lid of the well. It was not heavy and it moved easily. Carefully, those mornings, shielded by the banana tree, she peered down into the cylindrical pit which smelt sweaty and dank. Right down at the bottom was something that looked like an engine with pipes leading from it. A narrow, rusty ladder went down the wall of the well. Slugs and spiderwebs clung to it.
One afternoon when Philip and her mother were locked in the big bedroom, laughing and making the bed bark on the boards, Kylie took her photo album outside to the well, opened the lid and with the book stuffed into the waistband of her shorts, went down the ladder with slow, deliberate movements. Flecks of rust came away under her hands and fell whispering a long way down. The ladder quivered. The sky was a blue disc above growing smaller and paler. She climbed down past the engine to the moist sand and sat with her back to the curving wall. She looked up. It was like being a drop of water in a straw or a piece of rice in a blowpipe — the kind boys stung her with at school. She heard the neighbours’ rooster crowing, and the sound of the wind. She looked through her album. Pictures of her mother showed her looking away into the distance. Her long, wheaten hair blew in the wind or hung still and beautiful. It had been so long. Her mother never looked at the camera. Kylie saw herself, ugly and short and dark beside her. She grew cold and climbed out of the well.
It seemed a bit of an ordinary thing to have done when she got out. Nevertheless, she went down every day to sit and think or to flick through the album.
The hen sat on her eggs for three weeks. Kylie sat on the fence and gloated, looking into the chookhouse next door at the rooster and his scrabbling hens who did not know what was happening her side of the fence. She knew now that there would be chicks. The encyclopaedia said so.
On nights when Philip and her mother had friends over, Kylie listened from the darkened hallway to their jokes that made no sense. Through the crack between door and jamb she saw them touching each other beneath the table, and she wanted to know — right then — why her father and mother did not live together with her. It was something she was not allowed to know. She went back to her room and looked at the only picture in her album where her smile told her that there was something she knew that the photographer didn’t. She couldn’t remember what it was; it was a whole year ago. The photo was a shot from way back in kindergarten. She was small, dark-haired, with her hands propping up her face. She held the picture close to her face. It made her confident. It made her think Philip and her mother were stupid. It stopped her from feeling lonely.
Philip caught her down the well on a Sunday afternoon. He had decided to weed the garden at last; she wasn’t prepared for it. One moment she was alone with the mist, the next, the well was full of Philip’s shout. He came down and dragged her out. He hit her. He told her he was buying a padlock in the morning.
That evening the chicks hatched in the space between the sheet of tin and the back fence — ten of them. At dusk, Kylie put them into a cardboard box and dropped them down the well. The hen squawked insanely around the yard, throwing itself about, knocking things over, creating such a frightening noise that Kylie chased it and hit it with a piece of wood and, while it was still stunned, dropped it, too, down the dry well. She slumped down on the lid and began to cry. The back light came on. Philip came out to get her.
Before bed, Kylie took her photograph — the knowing one — from its place in the album, and with a pair of scissors, cut off her head and poked it through a hole in the flyscreen of the window.
1.
Some objects in this story have a powerful symbolic quality. Identify
these objects and explain their symbolic meaning.
2. What characteristics would you ascribe to the protagonist of the story? Do the symbolic details suggest anything about the girl? How do they help to understand her personality and behaviour?
3. What kind of family is Kylie living in? Can you suggest in what way the parents’ divorce and living with a “new father” influenced the girl’s personality?
4. What are the relations between Kylie and her mother like? How can the mother’s attitude to the girl account for Kylie’s behaviour?
5. Can you explain Kylie’s deeds at the end of the story (killing the hen and the chicks, cutting the photo)? Do they acquire any symbolic meaning?
UNIT 5
TITLE
One might think the title is necessary only to differentiate one work of literature from another. But this is the least important function a title can perform. The role of it is much more significant in the analysis of a literary work. The title always has an inseparable link with the content, the main idea of the book or story.
The title can formulate the theme, the philosophical or social idea; tell about the place and time of action. It can contain the most important detail of the narration; introduce the characters of the story. Although the title is the first thing that attracts our attention, its real meaning and function can be revealed, as a rule, only after we’ve read the story till the end. Then it may sometimes acquire a meaning totally different from the one we’ve expected. An accurate and apt title is a wonderful means to express the author’s intention as far as his work is concerned, his position, idea, liking, etc. In other words, to understand the message of a story one must also take into consideration the title. It’s a good aid for the reader when probing into the underlying content.
These are the main functions of the title:
1. It may serve to convey the author’s message.
2. The title may focus the reader’s attention on the most relevant characters and details.
3. The title may characterize the protagonist.
4. The title always orientates the reader towards the story. It may either be a means of foreshadowing, or may disorientate the reader, when the title contrasts with the story and acquires an ironic ring.
5. Sometimes the title of a story is a symbol.
Exercise 1.
Give titles to the very short stories given below and then try to see which function(s) they perform.
I
A sick man went to doctor he hadn’t visited before. As he entered the office, he noticed a sign: “$20 first visit, $10 subsequent visits”. To save a few bucks, he greeted the doctor by saying, “Nice to see you again”. The doctor nodded his hello, then began the exam, his expression turning grave as he poked and prodded the ill man.
“Doc, what is it?” the patient asked. “What should I do?”
“Well,” the doctor said, setting his stethoscope down. “Just keep doing the same thing I told you to do last time you were here.”
II
A man died and went to hell. As he passed sulfurous pits and shrieking sinners, he saw his town’s most notorious lawyer snuggling up to a beautiful model. “This is so unfair,” the man bellowed to the devil. “I have to roast and suffer for all eternity, and that sleazy lawyer gets to spend it with her?”
“Silence!” the devil demanded, jabbing his trident at the man. “You must pay your penance, and the model must pay hers!”
III
Pulling over a car full of nuns because they were travelling so slowly, a police officer asked the driver why she couldn’t go faster. “But, officer,” the nun replied, “all the signs read ‘25.’”
“Sister,” the cop replied, “that’s the route number, not the speed limit.”
“Gee, I guess that explains why the others were screaming earlier,” the nun admitted.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well,” the nun answered, “we just got off Route 128.”
Read the short story and answer the questions that follow it.
Gr. Greene
The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen
There were eight Japanese gentlemen having a fish dinner at Bentley’s. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue, but always with a courteous smile and often with a small bow. All but one of them wore glasses. Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance, but her own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to anyone in the world except herself and her companion.
She had thin blonde hair and her face was pretty and petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way of speaking — perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies’ College, which she had not long ago left. She wore a man’s signet-ring on her engagement finger, and as I sat down at my table, with the Japanese gentlemen between us, she said, “So you see we could marry next week.”
“Yes?”
Her companion appeared a little distraught. He refilled their glasses with Chablis and said, “Of course, but Mother...” I missed some of the conversation then, because the eldest Japanese gentleman leant across the table, with a smile and a little bow, and uttered a whole paragraph like the mutter from an aviary, while everyone bent towards him and smiled and listened, and I couldn’t help attending to him myself.
The girl’s fiance resembled her physically. I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. He should have been a young officer in Nelson’s navy in the days when a certain weakness and sensitivity were no bar to promotion.
She said, “They are giving me an advance of five hundred pounds, and they’ve sold the paperback rights already.” The hard commercial declaration came as a shock to me; it was a shock too that she was one of my own profession. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. She deserved better of life.
He said, “But my uncle …”
“You know you don’t get on with him. This way we shall be quite independent.”
“You will be independent,” he said grudgingly.
“The wine-trade wouldn’t really suit you, would it? I spoke to my publisher about you and there’s a very good chance … if you began with some reading ...”
“But I don’t know a thing about books.”
“I would help you at the start.”
“My mother says that writing is a good crutch ...”
“Five hundred pounds and half the paperback rights is a pretty solid crutch,” she said.
“This Chablis is good, isn’t it?”
“I daresay.”
I began to change my opinion of him — he had not the Nelson touch. He was doomed to defeat. She came alongside and raked him fore and aft. “Do you know what Mr. Dwight said?”
“Who’s Dwight?”
“Darling, you don’t listen, do you? My publisher. He said he hadn’t read a first novel in the last ten years which showed such powers of observation.”
“That’s wonderful,” he said sadly, “wonderful.”
“Only he wants me to change the title.”
“Yes?”
“He doesn’t like The Ever-Rolling Stream. He wants to call it The Chelsea Set.”
“What did you say?”
“I agreed. I do think that with a first novel one should try to keep one’s publisher happy. Especially when, really, he’s going to pay for our marriage, isn’t he?”
“I see what you mean.” Absent-mindedly he stirred his Chablis with a fork — perhaps before the engagement he had always bought champagne. The Japanese gentlemen had finished their fish and with very little English but with elaborate courtesy they were ordering from the middle-aged waitress a fresh fruit salad. The girl looked at them, and then she looked at me, but I think she saw only the future. I wanted very much to warn her against any future based on a first novel called The Chelsea Set. I was on the side of his mother. It was a humiliating thought, but I was probably about her mother’s age.
I wanted to say to her, Are you certain your publisher is telling you the truth? Publishers are human. They may sometimes exaggerate the virtues of the young and the pretty. Will The Chelsea Set be read in five years? Are you prepared for the years of effort, “the long defeat of doing nothing well”? As the years pass writing will not become any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those “powers of observation” will become enfeebled; you will be judged, when you reach your forties, by performance and not by promise.
“My next novel is going to be about St. Tropez.”
“I didn’t know you’d ever been there.”
“I haven’t. A fresh eye’s terribly important. I thought we might settle down there for six months.”
“There wouldn’t be much left of the advance by that time.”
“The advance is only an advance. I get fifteen per cent after five thousand copies and twenty per cent after ten. And of course another advance will be due, darling, when the next book’s finished. A bigger one if The Chelsea Set sells well.”
“Suppose it doesn’t.”
“Mr. Dwight says it will. He ought to know.”
“My uncle would start me at twelve hundred.”
“But, darling, how could you come then to St. Tropez?”
“Perhaps we’d do better to marry when you come back.”
She said harshly, “I mightn’t come back if The Chelsea Set sells enough.”
“Oh.”
She looked at me and the party of Japanese gentlemen. She finished her wine. She said, “Is this a quarrel?”
“No.”
“I’ve got the title for the next book — The Azure Blue.”
“I thought azure was blue.”
She looked at him with disappointment. “You don’t really want to be married to a novelist, do you?”
“You aren’t one yet.”
“I was born one — Mr. Dwight says. My powers of observation ...”
“Yes. You told me that, but, dear, couldn’t you observe a bit nearer home? Here in London.”
“I’ve done that in The Chelsea Set. I don’t want to repeat myself.”
The bill had been lying beside them for some time now. He took out his wallet to pay, but she snatched the paper out of his reach. She said, “This is my celebration.”
“What of?”
“The Chelsea Set, of course. Darling, you’re awfully decorative, but sometimes — well, you simply don’t connect.”
“I’d rather … if you don’t mind …”
“No, darling, this is on me. And Mr. Dwight, of course.”
He submitted just as two of the Japanese gentleman gave tongue simultaneously, then stopped abruptly and bowed to each other, as though they were blocked in a doorway.
I had thought the two young people matching miniatures, but what a contrast in fact there was. The same type of prettiness could contain weakness and strength. Her Regency counterpart, I suppose, would have borne a dozen children without the aid of anaesthetics, while he would have fallen an easy victim to the first dark eyes in Naples. Would there one day be a dozen books on her shelf? They have to be born without an anaesthetic too. I found myself hoping that The Chelsea Set would prove to be a disaster and that eventually she would take up photographic modelling while he established himself solidly in the wine-trade in St James’s. I didn’t like to think of her as the Mrs. Humphrey Ward1 of her generation — not that I would live so long. Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears. I wondered to which publishing firm Dwight belonged. I could imagine the blurb he would have already written about her abrasive powers of observation. There would be a photo, if he was wise, on the back of the jacket, for reviewers, as well as publishers, are human, and she didn’t look like Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
I could hear them talking while they found their coats at the back of the restaurant. He said, “I wonder what all those Japanese are doing here?”
“Japanese?” she said. “What Japanese, darling? Sometimes you are so evasive I think you don’t want to marry me at all.”
1.
What is the situation described in the story? Who is the narrator?
2. What opinion have you formed of the girl and her companion? What inferences can you make in terms of their personalities? Support your opinion by giving specific references to the text.
3. What do you learn about the narrator: age, profession, life experience,
attitude to the girl? Advocate your opinion.
4. How do you understand the following statements made by the narrator? How far are they true?
Old age saves us from realization of a great many fears.
Reviewers, as well as publishers, are human.
5. Discuss the role of the Japanese gentlemen in the story. How would you interpret the title of the story?
Reading Independently
The Scheme of Story Analysis
Below, there are 15 short stories for independent appreciation. For an exhausting and effective analysis, revise the information given in Units 1-7 (Part I) and add the following points to the suggested scheme of story analysis:
1. Tone What tone/atmosphere is created in the story?
Does it sound funny/amusing/sad/horrifying/lyrical/etc.? How do you feel it?
Are there any emotionally coloured words? What emotions do they convey?
Does the emotive key change as the story progresses? In what way?
How are the characters described/introduced in the story? Which characters are sympathetic to the author/the reader and which are not? Why?
2. Symbolism Are there any objects/details in the story that have a symbolic quality? What are they?
What is their significance in the story?
What ideas do the symbols help to reveal?
Do they help to characterize the personages? In what way?
3. Title What meanings of the word(s) used as the title do you know? Which meaning is relevant in the story under analysis?
Which function(s) does the title perform? Is it a symbol? Does it help to disclose a character? Does it focus on an important detail/event?
What does the author try to communicate through the title? How is it linked with the story’s themes and concerns?
STORIES FOR INDEPENDENT READING
1.
D. Leavitt
Gravity
Theo had a choice between a drug that would save his sight and a drug that would keep him alive, so he chose not to go blind. He stopped the pills and started the injections — these required the implantation of an unpleasant and painful catheter just above his heart — and within a few days the clouds in his eyes started to clear up, he could see again. He remembered going into New York City to a show with his mother, when he was twelve and didn’t want to admit he needed glasses. “Can you read that?” she’d shouted, pointing to a Broadway marquee, and when he’d squinted, making out only one or two letters, she’d taken off her own glasses — harlequins with tiny rhinestones in the corners — and shoved them onto his face. The world came into focus, and he gasped, astonished at the precision around the edges of things, the legibility, the hard, sharp, colorful landscape. Sylvia had to squint through Fiddler on the Roof that day, but for Theo, his face masked by his mother’s huge glasses, everything was as bright and vivid as a comic book. Even though people stared at him, and muttered things, Sylvia didn’t care, he could see.
Because he was dying again, Theo moved back to his mother’s house in New Jersey. The injections she took in stride — she’d seen her own mother through her dying, after all. Four times a day, with the equanimity of a nurse, she cleaned out the plastic tube implanted in his chest, inserted a sterilized hypodermic and slowly dripped the bag of sight-giving liquid into his veins. They endured this procedure silently, Sylvia sitting on the side of the hospital bed she’d rented for the duration of Theo’s stay — his life, he sometimes thought — watching reruns of I Love Lucy or the news, while he tried not to think about the hard piece of pipe stuck into him, even though it was a constant reminder of how wide and unswimmable the gulf was becoming between him and the ever-receding shoreline of the well. And Sylvia was intricately cheerful. Each day she urged him to go out with her somewhere — to the library, or the little museum with the dinosaur replicas he’d been fond of as a child — and when his thinness and the cane drew stares, she’d maneuver him around the people who were staring, determined to shield him from whatever they might say or do. It had been the same that afternoon so many years ago, when she’d pushed him through a lobbyful of curious and laughing faces, determined that nothing should interfere with the spectacle of his seeing. What a pair they must have made, a boy in ugly glasses and a mother daring the world to say a word about it!
This warm, breezy afternoon in May they were shopping for revenge. “Your cousin Howard’s engagement party is next month,” Sylvia explained in the car. “A very nice girl from Livingston. I met her a few weeks ago, and really, she’s a superior person.”
“I’m glad,” Theo said. “Congratulate Howie for me.”
“Do you think you’ll be up to going to the party?”
“I’m not sure. Would it be okay for me just to give him a gift?”
“You already have. A lovely silver tray, if I say so myself. The thank-you note’s in the living room.”
“Mom,” Theo said, “why do you always have to — “
Sylvia honked her horn at a truck making an illegal left turn. “Better they should get something than no present at all, is what I say,” she said. “But now, the problem is, I have to give Howie something, to be from me, and it better be good. It better be very, very good.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you remember that cheap little nothing Bibi gave you for your graduation? It was disgusting.”
“I can’t remember what she gave me.”
“Of course you can’t. It was a tacky pen-and-pencil set. Not even a real leather box. So naturally, it stands to reason that I have to get something truly spectacular for Howard’s engagement. Something that will make Bibi blanch. Anyway, I think I’ve found just the thing, but I need your advice.”
“Advice? Well, when my old roommate Nick got married, I gave him a garlic press. It cost five dollars and reflected exactly how much I felt, at that moment, our friendship was worth.”
Sylvia laughed. “Clever. But my idea is much more brilliant, because it makes it possible for me to get back at Bibi and give Howard the nice gift he and his girl deserve.” She smiled, clearly pleased with herself. “Ah, you live and learn.”
“You live,” Theo said.
Sylvia blinked. “Well, look, here we are.” She pulled the car into a handicapped-parking place on Morris Avenue and got out to help Theo, but he was already hoisting himself up out of his seat, using the door handle for leverage, “I can manage myself,” he said with some irritation. Sylvia stepped back.
“Clearly one advantage to all this for you,” Theo said balancing on his cane, “is that it’s suddenly so much easier to get a parking place.”
“Oh Theo, please,” Sylvia said. “Look, here’s where we’re going.”
She leaned him into a gift shop filled with porcelain statuettes of Snow White and all seven of the dwarves, music boxes which, when you opened them, played The Shadow of Your Smile, complicated-smelling potpourris in purple wallpapered boxes, and stuffed snakes you were supposed to push up against drafty windows and doors.
“Mrs. Greenman,” said an expansive, gray-haired man in a cream-colored cardigan sweater, “Look who’s here, Archie, it’s Mrs. Greenman.”
Another man, this one thinner and balding, but dressed in an identical cardigan, peered out from the back of the shop. “Hello there!” he said, smiling. He looked at Theo, and his expression changed.
“Mr. Sherman, Mr. Baker. This is my son, Theo.”
“Hello,” Mr. Sherman and Mr. Baker said. They didn’t offer to shake hands.
“Are you here for that item we discussed last week?” Mr. Sherman asked.
“Yes,” Sylvia said. “I want advice from my son here.” She walked over to a large ridged crystal bowl, a very fifties sort of bowl, stalwart and square-jawed. “What do you think? Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Mom, to tell the truth, I think it’s kind of ugly.”
“Four hundred and twenty-five dollars,” Sylvia said admiringly. “You have to feel it.”
Then she picked up the big bowl and tossed it to Theo, like a football.
The gentlemen in the cardigan sweaters gasped and did not exhale. When Theo caught it, it sank his hands. His cane rattled as it hit the floor.
“That’s heavy,” Sylvia said, observing with satisfaction how the bowl had weighted Theo’s arms down. “And where crystal is concerned, heavy is impressive.”
She took the bowl back from him and carried it to the counter. Mr. Sherman was mopping his brow. Theo looked at the floor, still surprised not to see shards of glass around his feet.
Since no one else seemed to be volunteering, he bent over and picked up the cane.
“Four hundred and fifty-nine, with tax,” Mr. Sherman said, his voice still a bit shaky, and a look of relish came over Sylvia’s face as she pulled out her checkbook to pay. Behind the counter, Theo could see Mr. Baker put his hand on his forehead and cast his eyes to the ceiling.
It seemed Sylvia had been looking a long time for something like this, something heavy enough to leave an impression, yet so fragile it could make you sorry.
They headed back out to the car.
“Where can we go now?” Sylvia asked, as she got in. “There must be someplace else to go.”
“Home,” Theo said. “It’s almost time for my medicine.”
“Really? Oh. All right.” She pulled on her seat belt, inserted the car key in the ignition and sat there.
For just a moment, but perceptibly her face broke. She squeezed her eyes shut so tight the blue shadow on the lids cracked. Almost as quickly she was back to normal again, and they were driving. “It’s getting hotter,” Sylvia said. “Shall I put on the air?”
“Sure,” Theo said. He was thinking about the bowl, or more specifically, about how surprising its weight had been, pulling his hands down. For a while now he’d been worried about his mother, worried about what damage his illness might secretly be doing to her that of course she would never admit. On the surface things seemed all right. She still broiled herself a skinned chicken breast for dinner every night, still swam a mile and a half a day, still kept used teabags wrapped in foil in the refrigerator. Yet she had also, at about three o’clock one morning, woken him up to tell him she was going to the twenty-four-hour supermarket, and was there anything he wanted. Then there was the gift shop. She had literally pitched that bowl toward him, pitched it like a ball, and as that great gleam of flight and potential regret came sailing his direction, it had occurred to him that she was trusting his two feeble hands, out of the whole world, to keep it from shattering. What was she trying to test? Was it his newly regained vision? Was it the assurance that he was there, alive, that he hadn’t yet slipped past all her caring, a little lost boy in rhinestone-studded glasses? There are certain things you’ve already done before you even think how to do them — a child pulled from in front of a car, for instance, or the bowl, which Theo was holding before he could even begin to calculate its brief trajectory. It had pulled his arms down, and from that apish posture he’d looked at his mother, who smiled broadly, as if, in the war between heaviness and shattering, he’d just helped her win some small but sustaining victory.
1.
Why did the author call the story Gravity?
What does he seem to communicate through it? Try to find as many
meanings of the word as possible. See which of them are realized in
the story.
2. Define the point of view of the narration. How does point of view help to reveal the complex relationship between the two main characters?
3. Sylvia is shopping for revenge. Why did Bibi’s present insult her? Explain the significance of the presents mentioned in the story and of the bowl that she tosses to Theo.
4. Agree or disagree with the following statements:
a) Sylvia is an example of a caring mother who does everything to help Theo to adapt himself to life.
b) Sylvia declared a war to the world to make up for her misfortunes. This war, however, is invisible for anyone but Sylvia, and the only victim of it is her son.
c) Sylvia and Theo support each other. They help each other to survive in this world.
d) Sylvia and Theo are like tired actors. They are no longer able to conceal their resentment.
2.
B. Aldiss
Making My Father Read Revered Writings
In the fictions of Pierre de Lille-Sully is much that is exceedingly strange and marvellous. He must have been an animist, although he professed the Christian faith; for him even words have life and spirit of their own.
Unfortunately, I have a poor grasp of the beautiful French language. But in the year 19—, I came across a second hand book which immediately became one of my treasured possessions; it was a translation into English of de Lille-Sully’s short stories, under the title, Conversations with Upper Crust Bandits.
I was spellbound. One only knows such love for fiction when one is young. I dwelt in the stories. Many of them I read over and over. But not the last one in the book. For reasons I cannot explain fully, I was reluctant to read The Prince of Such Things. I knew little about literature, and devoured in the main what I regarded even then as trash; being unversed in finer things, I regarded the title of this last story as a bad one. It seemed to me dangerous, even a little deranged.
The Prince of Such Things... It is the responsibility of authors to give their stories a title which invites one in, or at least promises to make matters clear. Here, de Lille-Sully seemed to be neglecting his duty.
At this period, I was a retarded adolescent of fourteen, and very much under my parents’ thumb. My two sisters were high-spirited and joyous by nature. I felt myself to be the very opposite. My father’s first name was William. He had had me christened William too. As soon as I was old enough to feel the smart of it, I smarted that I had been given the same name as my father. I was diminished by it; did they think I had no separate existence?
Once alert to this injustice (as I saw it), I felt that everything in my father’s behaviour was calculated to deny me an individual existence. In the matter of clothes, for instance, he always selected what I should wear. The possibility never existed that he might consult me. And when I grew large and gawky, I was made to wear his cast-off jackets and trousers.
Evenings in our house were particularly oppressive. My sisters would not remain in the sitting-room. They went upstairs to their bedroom, giggling and whispering to themselves. I was constrained to remain below, to sit with my parents. Now I look back on those long evenings and nights with something like terror. So mentally imprisoned was I that it never occurred to me to go out, in case I should suffer a word of reprimand from my father.
The custom was that my parents sat on either side of a tall wood-burning stove. They had comfortable chairs of a forbiddingly antique design, inherited from my father’s family. I sat at a table nearby, on a hard-backed chair. At that table I read books or magazines, or drew in a callow way.
I should explain that my father would not allow television in our house. And for some reason — it may have been a superstitious reason for all I know — the radio had to be switched off at six-thirty.
Prompted by my sisters, I once dared to ask my father why we could not have television. He replied, “Because I say so.” And that was sufficient explanation in his eyes.
Always, it seemed I was in disgrace — “in his bad books”, as the saying goes. All through my childhood years, I yearned to be loved by him. It made me stupid. It made me mute. The whole evening could pass in silence until, at a gesture from my father, we would rise and go to our beds.
It was my mother’s way to sit almost immobile while the hours passed. Women are able to sit more still than men. She wore headphones, listening to music on her Walkman. The thin tintinnabulation, like a man whistling surreptitiously through his teeth, penetrated the deepest concentration I could muster.
My father sat on the other side of the stove to her. I do not recall their ever conversing. At seven-thirty each evening, my mother would rise and pour him a glass of akavit, for which he thanked her. Father made a habit of reading his newspaper to an inordinate degree. The frosty crackle of broadsheet pages as he turned them punctuated the hours. I never understood his method of reading. It was clear that, having stumped a few coins for his copy, he was determined to get his money’s worth. But the way in which my father searched back and forth among the pages suggested a man who possessed some cunning secret method of interpreting life’s events.
Such was the scene on the evening I decided at last to read de Lille-Sully’s story, The Prince of Such Things. I set my elbows on the polished table-top, one each side of the volume. I blocked my ears with my hands, in order to defend myself from the crackle of paper and the whistle of music. I began to read.
Perhaps in everyone’s young life comes a decisive moment, from which there is no turning back. A decision, I mean, not based on rational thought processes. I hope it is not so; for if it is, then we have no defence against it, and must endure what follows as best we can. The matter is a mystery to me, as are many features of existence. All I can say is that on that particular dreary evening I came upon one of those decisive moments.
The brilliance of The Prince of Such Things flooded into my mind. The words, the turns of phrase, the sentences, the paragraphs and their cumulation, unfolded an eloquently imaginative story. It was a study of ordinary life and yet also a fairy story. More than a fairy story, a legend of striking symbolism, exciting, agitating, and ravishing in its effect.
In a way, its basic proposition was ludicrous, for who could believe that ordinary people in a Parisian suburb had such powers. Yet the persuasiveness of the piece overcame any hint of implausibility. De Lille-Sully gave expression to an idea new to me at the age of fourteen, that the manner in which one thing can stand for another quite different — a sunrise for hope, let’s say — forms the basis of all symbolic thought, and hence of language.
I was swept along by his narrative, as branches are swept along by a river in flood. Never had I guessed that such process existed. Even the preceding stories in the book had left me unprepared for this magnificent outburst of de Lille-Sully’s imagination. I reached the final sentence exhausted as if by some powerful mental orgasm. My mind was full of wonder and inspiration. The sheer bravura of the story gave me courage.
The longing to share this experience was so great that without further thought, I turned to my father. Across the expanse of carpet separating us, I said, “Father, I have just read the most marvellous story anyone has ever written.”
“Oh, yes.” He spoke without raising his eyes from the newspaper.
“Read it yourself, and you’ll see.” I picked up my book and took it across to him. How did I feel at that moment? I suppose I felt that if we could share this enlightening experience the relationship between us might become more human, more humane... That we might be more like father and son. Transformed by the story, I felt only love for him as he condescended to put down his paper and accept the volume. He held it open just as he received it, asking what I wanted him to do.
“Read this story, father. The Prince of Such Things.” I was conscious that I had not approached him to do anything for many years.
He sat upright in his chair, set his face grimly, and began to read. I stood beside him before retreating awkwardly to the table. There I made a pretence of picking up a pencil and drawing in an exercise book. All I did was scribble, while observing my parents. My mother had momentarily shown some interest in my action; or perhaps it was surprise. After a moment’s alertness, she retreated into her music, eyes focusing vaguely on a point above the stove. My father, meanwhile, concentratedly read the miraculous story. His eyes twitched from left to right and back, as if chasing the lines of print down the page. It was impossible to gather anything from his expression. No sign of enlightenment showed.
It took him, I would say, almost two hours to read de Lille-Sully’s story. I had not lingered over it for more than three-quarters of an hour. I could not tell if this meant he was a slow reader, or whether he was deliberately keeping me in suspense.
Finally, he had done. He closed the book. Without looking at me, he set the volume down on the right-hand side of his chair. He then picked up his newspaper, which he had dropped on the left-hand side of his chair, and resumed his scanning of its columns. He gave me no glance. He said not a word.
The mortification I experienced cannot be expressed. At the time I did nothing. Did not leave the room, did not retrieve the book, did not leave. I sat where I was.
Either he had regarded de Lille-Sully’s miraculous tale as beneath his contempt or — ah, but it took me many a year before the alternative came to me — he was unable to comprehend it.
As I have said, this evening wrought a decisive change in my life. Without volition, as I sat there looking away from my father, I found I had decided that I would become a writer.
1.
Can we state that the narrator of the story is personified? Does he
function as the author’s mouthpiece?
2. Compare how much the narrator lets us know about the actual facts of his life (his background, family relationships, etc.) and about the emotional experience he has got while reading fiction. Analyze the emotional charge of the lexis used for this purpose.
3. In what way do the author’s digressions help to outline the personality of the narrator and contribute to the message of the short-story?
4. What effect does the absence of dialogical speech between the characters produce?
5. Why do you think the readers are not given the account of the foil’s course of thinking, of forming an opinion, of appreciation? Is the choice of I-narration significant for grasping the main idea of the story? In what way?
3.
J. Collier
The Chaser
Alan Austen, as nervous as a kitten, went up certain dark and creaky stairs in the neighborhood of Pell Street, and peered about for a long time on the dim landing before he found the name he wanted written obscurely on one of the doors.
He pushed open this door, as he had been told to do, and found himself in a tiny room, which contained no furniture but a plain kitchen table, a rocking-chair, and an ordinary chair. On one of the dirty buff-colored walls were a couple of shelves, containing in all perhaps a dozen bottles and jars.
An old man sat in the rocking-chair, reading a newspaper. Alan, without a word, handed him the card he had been given. “Sit down, Mr. Austen,” said the old man very politely. “I am glad to make your acquaintance.”
“Is it true,” asked Alan, “that you have a certain mixture that has — er — quite extraordinary effects?”
“My dear sir,” replied the old man, “my stock in trade is not very large — I don’t deal in laxatives and teething mixtures — but such as it is, it is varied. I think nothing I sell has effects which could be precisely described as ordinary.”
“Well, the fact is — “ began Alan.
“Here, for example,” interrupted the old man, reaching for a bottle from the shelf. “Here is a liquid as colorless as water, almost tasteless, quite imperceptible in coffee, milk, wine, or any other beverage. It is also quite imperceptible to any known method of autopsy.”
“Do you mean it is a poison?” cried Alan, very much horrified.
“Call it a glove-cleaner if you like,” said the old man indifferently. “Maybe it will clean gloves. I have never tried. One might call it a life-cleaner. Lives need cleaning sometimes.”
“I want nothing of that sort,” said Alan.
“Probably it is just as well,” said the old man.
“Do you know the price of this? For one teaspoonful, which is sufficient, I ask five thousand dollars. Never less. Not a penny less.”
“I hope all your mixtures are not as expensive,” said Alan apprehensively.
“Oh dear, no,” said the old man. “It would be no good charging that sort of price for a love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said Alan.
“I look at it like this,” said the old man. “Please a customer with one article, and he will come back when he needs another. Even if it is more costly. He will save up for it, if necessary.”
“So,” said Alan, “Do you really sell love potions?”
“If I did not sell love potions,” said the old man, reaching for another bottle, “I should not have mentioned the other matter to you. It is only when one is in a position to oblige that one can afford to be so confidential.”
“And these potions,” said Alan. “They are not just — just — er — “
“Oh, no,” said the old man. “Their effects are permanent, and extend far beyond casual impulse. But they include it. Bountifully, insistently. Everlastingly.”
“Dear me!” said Alan, attempting a look of scientific detachment. “How very interesting!”
“But consider the spiritual side,” said the old man.
“I do indeed,” said Alan.
“For indifference,” said the old man, “they substitute devotion. For scorn, adoration. Give one tiny measure of this to the young lady — its flavor is imperceptible in orange juice, soup, or cocktails — and however gay and giddy she is, she will change altogether. She will want nothing but solitude, and you.”
“I can hardly believe it,” said Alan. “She is so fond of parties.”
“She will not like them anymore,” said the old man. “She will be afraid of the pretty girls you may meet.”
“She will actually be jealous?” cried Alan in a rapture, “Of me?”
“Yes, she will want to be everything to you.”
“She is already. Only she doesn’t care about it.”
“She will, when she has taken this. She will care intensely. You will be her sole interest in life.”
“Wonderful!” cried Alan.
“She will want to know all you do,” said the old man. “All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad.”
“That is love!” cried Alan.
“Yes,” said the old man. “How carefully she will look after you! She will never allow you to be tired, to sit in a draught, to neglect your food. If you an hour late, she will be terrified. She will think you are killed, or that some siren has caught you.”
“I can hardly imagine Diana like that!” cried Alan, overwhelmed with joy.
“You will not have to use your imagination,” said the old man. “And, by the way, since there are always sirens, if by any chance you should later on slip a little, you need not worry. She will forgive you, in the end. She will be terribly hurt, of course, but she will forgive you — in the end.”
“That will not happen,” said Alan fervently.
“Of course not,” said the old man. “But, if it did, you need not worry. She would never divorce you. Oh, no! And, of course, she herself will never give you the least, the very least, grounds for — uneasiness.”
“And how much,” said Alan, “is this wonderful mixture?”
“It is not as dear,” said the old man, “as the glove-cleaner, or life-cleaner, as I sometimes call it. No. That is five thousand dollars, never a penny less. One has to be older than you are, to indulge in that sort of thing. One has to save up for it.”
“But the love potion?” said Alan.
“Oh, that,” said the old man, opening the drawer m the kitchen table, and taking out a tiny, rather dirty-looking phial. “That is just a dollar.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” said Alan, watching him fill it.
“I like to oblige,” said the old man. “Then customers come back, later in life, when they are rather better off, and want more expensive things. Here you are. You will find it very effective.”
“Thank you again,” said Alan. “Good-by.”
“Au revoir,” said the old man.
1.
Look at the title of the story. What meanings of the word chaser
do you know? Which meaning is relevant for the short story? Why?
2. Identify the story’s themes.
3. Regard the main character’s set of values (love, marriage, loyalty, etc.). Compare it with the old man’s opinion of married life and requited feeling. Why do you think the old man is sure Alan will come back for the poison sooner or later?
4. What tone is created in the story? Explain. Whose position does the author seem to share?
5. Which functions does the title carry out in this case? How does it link to the story’s concerns?
4.
J. Archer
Cheap at Half the Price
Women are naturally superior to men, and Mrs. Consuela Rosenheim was no exception.
Victor Rosenheim, an American banker, was Consuela’s third husband, and the gossip columns on both sides of the Atlantic were suggesting that, like a chain smoker, the former Colombian model was already searching for her next spouse before she had extracted the last gasp from the old one. Her first two husbands — one an Arab, the other a Jew (Consuela showed no racial prejudice when it came to signing marriage contracts) — had not quite left her in a position that would guarantee her financial security once her natural beauty had faded. But two more divorce settlements would sort that out. With this in mind, Consuela estimated that she only had another five years before the final vow must be taken.
The Rosenheims flew into London from their home in New York — or, to be more accurate, from their homes in New York. Consuela had travelled to the airport by chauffeur-driven car from their mansion in the Hamptons, while her husband had been taken from his Wall Street office in a second chauffeur-driven car. They met up in the Concorde lounge at JFK. When they had landed at Heathrow another limousine transported them to the Ritz, where they were escorted to their usual suite without any suggestion of having to sign forms or book in.
The purpose of their trip was twofold. Mr. Rosenheim was hoping to take over a small merchant bank that had not benefited from the recession, while Mrs. Rosenheim intended to occupy her time looking for a suitable birthday present — for herself. Despite considerable research I have been unable to discover exactly which birthday Consuela would officially be celebrating.
After a sleepless night induced by jetlag, Victor Rosenheim was whisked away to an early-morning meeting in the City, while Consuela remained in bed toying with her breakfast. She managed one piece of thin toast and a stab at a boiled egg.
Once the breakfast tray had been removed, Consuela made a couple of phone calls to confirm luncheon dates for the two days she would be in London. She then disappeared into the bathroom.
Fifty minutes later she emerged from her suite dressed in a pink Olaganie suit with a dark blue collar, her fair hair bouncing on her shoulders. Few of the men she passed between the elevator and the revolving doors failed to turn their heads, so Consuela judged that the previous fifty minutes had not been wasted. She stepped out of the hotel and into the morning sun to begin her search for the birthday present.
Consuela began her quest in New Bond Street. As in the past, she had no intention of straying more than a few blocks north, south, east or west from that comforting landmark, while a chauffeur-driven car hovered a few yards behind her.
She spent some time in Asprey’s considering the latest slimline watches, a gold statue of a tiger with jade eyes, and a Faberge egg, before moving on to Cartier, where she dismissed a crested silver salver, a platinum watch and a Louis XIV long-case clock. From there she walked another few yards to Tiffany’s, which, despite a determined salesman who showed her almost everything the shop had to offer, she still left empty-handed.
Consuela stood on the pavement and checked her watch. It was 12.52, and she had to accept that it had been a fruitless morning. She instructed her chauffeur to drive her to Harry’s Bar, where she found Mrs. Stavros Kleanthis waiting for her at their usual table. Consuela greeted her friend with a kiss on both cheeks, and took the seat opposite her.
Mrs. Kleanthis, this wife of a not unknown shipowner — the Greeks preferring one wife and several liaisons — had for the last few minutes been concentrating her attention on the menu to be sure that the restaurant served the few dishes that her latest diet would permit. Between them, the two women had read every book that had reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list which included the words ‘youth’, ‘orgasm’, ‘slimming’, ‘fitness’ or ‘immortality’ in its title.
“How’s Victor?” asked Maria, once she and Consuela had ordered their meals.
Consuela paused to consider her response, and decided on the truth.
“Fast reaching his sell-by date,” she replied. “And Stavros?”
“Well, past his, I’m afraid,” said Maria. “But as I have neither your looks nor your figure, not to mention the fact that I have three teenage children, I don’t suppose I’ll be returning to the market to select the latest brand.”
Consuela smiled as a salade nicoise was placed in front of her.
“So, what brings you to London — other than to have lunch with an old friend?” asked Maria.
“Victor has his eye on another bank,” replied Consuela, as if she were discussing a child who collected stamps. “And I am in search of a suitable birthday present.”
“And what are you expecting Victor to come up with this time?” asked Maria. “A house in the country? A thoroughbred racehorse? Or perhaps your own Lear jet?”
“None of the above,” said Consuela, placing her fork by the half-finished salad. “I need something that can’t be bargained over as a future date, so my gift must be one that any court, in any state, will acknowledge is unquestionably mine.”
“Have you found anything appropriate yet?” asked Maria.
“Not yet,” admitted Consuela. “Asprey’s yielded nothing of interest, Cartier’s cupboard was almost bare, and the only attractive thing in Tiffany’s was the salesman, who was undoubtedly penniless. I shall have to continue my search this afternoon.”
The salad plates were deftly removed by a waiter whom Maria considered far too young and far too thin. Another waiter with the same problem poured them both a cup of fresh decaffeinated coffee. Consuela refused the proffered cream and sugar, though her companion was not so quite disciplined.
The two ladies grumbled on about the sacrifices they were having to make because of the recession until they were the only diners left in the room. At this point a fatter waiter presented them with the bill — an extraordinarily long ledger considering that neither of them had ordered a second course, or had requested more than Evian from the wine waiter.
On the pavement of South Adley Street they kissed again on both cheeks before going their separate ways, one to the east and the other to the west.
Consuela climbed into the back of her chauffeur-driven car in order to be returned to New Bond Street, a distance of no more than half a mile.
Once she was back on familiar territory, she began to work her way steadily down the other side of the street, stopping at Bentley’s, where it appeared that they hadn’t sold anything since last year, and moving rapidly on to Adler, who seemed to be suffering from much the same problem. She cursed the recession once again, and blamed it all on Bill Clinton, who Victor had assured her was the cause of most of the world’s current problems.
Consuela was beginning to despair of finding anything worthwhile in Bond Street, and reluctantly began her journey back towards the Ritz, feeling she might even have to consider an expedition to Knightsbridge the following day, when she came to a sudden halt outside the House of Graff. Consuela could not recall the shop from her last visit to London some six months before, and as she knew Bond Street better than she had ever known any of her three husbands, she concluded that it must be a new establishment.
She gazed at the stunning gems in their magnificent settings, heavily protected behind the bulletproof windows. When she reached the third window her mouth opened wide, like a newborn chick demanding to be fed. From that moment she knew that no further excursions would be necessary, for there, hanging round a slender marble neck, was a peerless diamond and ruby necklace. She felt that she had seen the magnificent piece of jewellery somewhere before, but she quickly dismissed the thought from her mind, and continued to study the exquisitely set rubies surrounded by perfectly cut diamonds, making up a necklace of unparralled beauty. Without giving a moment’s thought to how much the object might cost, Consuela walked slowly towards the thick glass door at the entrance to the shop, and pressed a discreet ivory button on the wall. The House of Graff obviously had no interest in passing trade.
The door was unlocked by the security officer who needed no more than a glance at Mrs. Rosenheim to know that he should usher her quickly through to the inner portals, where a second door was opened and Consuela came face to face with a tall, imposing man in a long black coat and pinstriped trousers.
“Good afternoon, madam,” he said, bowing slightly. Consuela noticed that he surreptitiously admired her rings as he did so. “Can I be of assistance?”
Although the room was full of treasures that might in normal circumstances have deserved hours of her attention, Consuela’s mind was focused on only one object.
“Yes. I would like to study more closely the diamond and ruby necklace on display in the third window.”
“Certainly, madam,” the manager replied, pulling back a chair for his customer. He nodded almost imperceptibly to an assistant, who silently walked over to the window, unlocked a little door and extracted the necklace. The manager slipped behind the counter and pressed a concealed button. Four floors above, a slight burr sounded in the private office of Mr. Laurence Graff, warning the proprietor that a customer had enquired after a particularly expensive item, and that he might wish to deal with them personally.
Laurence Graff glanced up at the television screen on the wall to his left, which showed him what was taking place on the ground floor.
“Ah,” he said, once he saw the lady in the pink suit seated at the Louis XIV table. “Mrs. Consuela Rosenheim, if I’m not mistaken.” Just as the Speaker of the House of Commons can identify every one of its 650 members, so Laurence Graff recognized the 650 customers who mignt be able to afford the most extravagant of his treasures. He quickly stepped from behind his desk, walked out of his office and took the waiting lift to the ground floor.
Meanwhile, the manager had laid out a black velvet cloth on the table in front of Mrs. Rosenheim, and the assistant placed the necklace delicately on top of it. Consuela stared down at the object of her desire, mesmerized.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Rosenheim,” said Laurence Graff as he stepped out of the lift and walked across the thick pile carpet towards his would-be customer. “How nice to see you again.”
He had in truth only seen her once before — at a shoulder-to-shoulder cocktail party in Manhattan. But after that, he could have spotted her at a hundred paces on a moving escalator.
“Good afternoon, Mr…” Consuela hesitated, feeling unsure of herself for the first time that day.
“Laurence Graff,” he said, offering his hand. “We met at Sotheby Parke Benett last year — a charity function in aid of the Red Cross, if I remember correctly.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Rosenheim, unable to recall him, on the occasion.
Mr. Graff bowed reverently towards the diamond and ruby necklace.
“The Kanemarra heirloom,” he purred, then paused, before taking the manager’s place at the table. Fashioned in 1936 by Silvio di Larchi,” he continued. “All the rubies were extracted from a single mine in Burma, over a period of twenty years. The diamonds were purchased from De Beers by an Egyptian merchant who, after the necklace had been made up for him, offered the unique piece to King Farouk — for services rendered. When the monarch married Princess Farida he presented it to her on their wedding day, and she in return bore him four heirs, none of whom, alas, was destined to succeed to the throne.”
Graff looked up from one object of beauty and gazed on another.
“Since then it has passed through several hands before arriving at the House of Graff,” continued the proprietor. “Its most recent owner was an actress, whose husband’s oil wells unfortunately dried up.”
The flicker of a smile crossed the face of Consuela Rosenheim as she finally recalled where she had previously seen the necklace.
“Quite magnificent,” she said, giving it one final look. “I will be back,” she added as she rose from her chair. Graff accompanied her to the door. Nine out of ten customers who make such a claim have no intention of returning, but he could always sense the tenth.
“May I ask the price?” Consuela asked indifferently as he held the door open for her.
“One million pounds, madam,” Graff replied, as casually as if she had enquired about the cost of a plastic keyring at a seaside gift shop.
Once she had reached the pavement, Consuela dismissed her chauffeur. Her mind was now working at a speed that would have impressed her husband. She slipped across the road, calling first at The White House, then Yves Saint Laurent, and finally at Chanel, emerging some two hours later with all the weapons she required for the battle that lay ahead. She did not arrive back at her suite at the Ritz until a few minutes before six.
Consuela was relieved to find that her husband had not yet returned from the bank. She used the time to take a long bath, and to contemplate how the trap should be set. Once she was dry and powdered, she dabbed a suggestion of a new scent on her neck, then slipped into some of her newly acquired clothes.
She was checking herself once again in the full-length mirror when Victor entered the room. He stopped on the spot, dropping his briefcase on the carpet. Consuela turned to face him.
“You look stunning,” he declared, with the same look of desire she had lavished on the Kanemarra heirloom a few hours before.
“Thank you, darling,” she replied. “And how did your day go?”
“A triumph. The takeover has been agreed, and at half the price it would it would have cost me only a year ago.”
Consuela smiled. An unexpected bonus.
“Those of us who are still in possession of cash need have no fear of the recession,” Victor added with satisfaction.
Over a quiet supper in the Ritz’s dining room, Victor described to his wife in great detail what had taken place at the bank that day. During the occasional break in this monologue Consuela indulged her husband by remarking “How clever of you, Victor,” “How amazing”, “How you managed it I will never understand.” When he finally ordered a large brandy, lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair, she began to run her elegantly stockinged right foot gently along the inside of his thigh. For the first time that evening, Victor stopped thinking about the takeover.
As they left the dining room and strolled towards the lift, Victor placed an arm around his wife’s slim waist. By the time the lift had reached the sixth floor he had already taken off his jacket, and his hand had slipped a few inches further down. Consuela giggled. Long before they had reached the door of their suite he had begun tugging off his tie.
When they entered the room, Consuela placed the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outside doorknob. For the next few minutes Victor was transfixed to the spot as he watched his slim wife slowly remove each garment she had purchased that afternoon. He quickly pulled off his own clothes and wished once again that he had carried out his New Year’s resolution.
Forty minutes later Victor lay exhausted on the bed. After a few moments of sighing, he began to snore. Consuela pulled the sheet over their naked bodies, but her eyes remained wide open. She was already going over the next step in her plan.
Victor awoke the following morning to discover his wife’s hand gently stroking the inside of his leg. He rolled over to face her, the memory of the previous night still vivid in his mind. They made love a second time, something they had not done for as long as he could recall.
It was not until he stepped out of the shower that Victor remembered it was his wife’s birthday, and that he had promised to spend the morning with her selecting a gift. He only hoped that her eye had already settled on something she wanted, as he needed to spend most of the day closeted in the City with his lawyers, going over the offer document line by line.
“Happy birthday, darling,” he said as he padded back into the bedroom. “By the way, did you have any luck finding a present?” he added as he scanned the front page of the Financial Times which was already speculating on the possible takeover, describing it as a coup. A smile of satisfaction appeared on Victor’s face for the second time that morning.
“Yes, my darling,” Consuela replied. “I did come across one little bauble that I rather liked. I just hope it isn’t too expensive.”
“And how much is this ‘little bauble’?” Victor asked. Consuela turned to face him. She was wearing only two garments, both of them black, and both of them remarkably skimpy.
Victor started to wonder if he still had the time, but then he remembered the lawyers, who had been up all night and would be waiting patiently for him at the bank.
“I didn’t ask the price,” Consuela replied. “You’re so much cleverer than I am at that sort of thing,” she added, as she slipped into a navy silk blouse.
Victor glanced at his watch. “How far away is it?” he asked.
“Just across the road, in Bond Street, my darling,” Consuela replied. “I shouldn’t have to delay you for too long.” She knew exactly what was going through her husband’s mind.
“Good. Then let’s go and look at this little bauble without delay,” he said as he did up the buttons on his shirt.
While Victor finished dressing, Consuela, with the help of the Financial Times, skillfully guided the conversation back to his triumph of the previous day. She listened once more to the details of the takeover as they left the hotel and strolled up Bond Street together arm in arm.
“Probably saved myself several million,” he told her yet again. Consuela smiled as she led him to the door of the House of Graff.
“Several million?” she gasped. “How clever you are, Victor.”
The security guard quickly opened the door, and this time Consuela found that Mr. Graff was already standing by the table waiting for her. He bowed low, then turned to Victor. “May I offer my congratulations on your brilliant coup, Mr. Rosenheim.” Victor smiled. “How may I help you?”
“My husband would like to see the Kanemarra heirloom,” said Consuela, before Victor had a chance to reply.
“Of course, madam,” said the proprietor. He stepped behind the table and spread out the black velvet cloth. Once again the assistant removed the magnificent necklace from its stand in the third window, and carefully laid it out on the center of the velvet cloth to show the jewels to their best advantage. Mr.Graff was about to embark on the pieces history, when Victor simply said, “How much is it?”
Mr. Graff raised his head. “This is no ordinary piece of jewellery. I feel…”
“How much?” repeated Victor.
“Its provenance alone warrants…”
“How much?”
“The sheer beauty, not to mention the craftsmanship involved…”
“How much?” asked Victor, his voice now rising.
“… the word unique would not be inappropriate.”
“You may be right, but I still need to know how much it’s going to cost me,” said Victor, who was beginning to sound exasperated.
“One million pounds, sir,” Graff said in an even tone, aware that he could not risk another superlative.
“I’ll settle at half a million, no more,” came back the immediate reply.
“I am sorry to say, sir,” said Graff, “that with this particular piece, there’s no room for bargaining.”
“There’s always room for bargaining, whatever one is selling,” said Victor. “I repeat my offer. Half a million.”
“I fear that in this case, sir…”
“I feel confident that you’ll see things my way, given time,” said Victor. “But I don’t have that much time to spare this morning, so I’ll write out a cheque for half a million, and leave you to decide whether you wish to cash it or not.”
“I fear you are wasting your time, sir,” said Graff. “I cannot let the Kanemarra heirloom go for less than one million.”
Victor took out a chequebook from his inside pocket, unscrewed the top of his fountain pen, and wrote out the words ‘Five Hundred Thousand Pounds Only’ below the name of the bank that bore his name. His wife took a discreet pace backwards.
Graff was about to repeat his previous comment, when he glanced up, and observed Mrs. Risenheim silently pleading with him to accept the cheque.
A look of curiosity came over his face as Consuela continued her urgent mime.
Victor tore out the cheque and left it on the table. “I’ll give you twenty four hours to decide,” he said. “We return to New York tomorrow morning — with or without the Kanemarra heirloom. It’s your decision.”
Graff left the cheque on the table as he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim to the front door and bowed them out onto Bond Street.
“You were brilliant, my darling,” said Consuela as the chauffeur opened the car door for his master.
“The bank,” Rosenheim instructed as he fell into the back seat. “you’ll have your little bauble, Consuela. He’ll cash the cheque before the twenty four hours are up, of that I’m sure.” The chauffeur closed the back door, and the window purred down as Victor added with a smile, “Happy birthday, darling.”
Consuela returned his smile, and blew him a kiss as the car pulled out into the traffic and edged its way towards Piccadilly. The morning had not turned out quite as she had planned, because she felt unable to agree with her husband’s judgement — but then, she still had twenty-four hours to play with.
Consuela returned to the suite at the Ritz, undressed, took a shower, opened another bottle of perfume, and slowly began to change into the second outfit she had purchased the previous day. Before she left the room she turned to the commodities section of the Financial Times, and checked the price of green coffee.
She emerged from the Arlington Street entrance of the Ritz wearing a double-breasted navy blue Yves Saint Laurent suit and a wide-brimmed red and white hat. Ignoring her chauffeur, she hailed a taxi, instructing the driver to take her to a small, discreet hotel in Knightsbridge. Fifteen minutes later she entered the foyer with her head bowed, and after giving the name of her host to the manager, was accompanied to a suite on the fourth floor. Her luncheon companion stood as she entered the room, walked forward, kissed her on both cheeks and wished her a happy birthday.
After an intimate lunch, and an even more intimate hour spent in the adjoining room, Consuela’s companion listened to her request and, having first checked his watch, agreed to accompany her to Mayfair. He didn’t mention to her that he would have to be back in his office by four o’clock to take an important call from South America. Since the downfall of the Brazilian president, coffee prices had gone through the roof.
As the car traveled down Brompton Road, Consuela’s companion telephoned to check the latest spot price of green coffee in New York (only her skill in bed managed to stop him from calling earlier). He was pleased to learn that it was up another two cents, but not as pleased as she was. Eleven minutes later, the car deposited them outside the House of Graff.
When they entered the shop together arm in arm, Mr. Graff didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Carvalho,” he said. “I do hope that your estates yielded an abundant crop this year.”
Mr. Carvalho smiled and replied, “I cannot complain.”
“And how may I assist you?” enquired the proprietor.
“We would like to see the diamond necklace in the third window,” said Consuela, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Of course, madam,” said Graff, as if he were addressing a complete stranger.
Once again the black velvet cloth was laid out on the table, and once again the assistant placed the Kanemarra heirloom in its center.
This time Mr. Graff was allowed to relate its history, before Carvalho politely enquired after the price.
“One million pounds,” said Graff.
After a moment’s hesitation, Carvalho said, “I’m willing to pay half a million.”
“This is no ordinary piece of jewellery,” replied the proprietor. “I feel…”
“Possibly not, but half a million is my best offer,” said Carvalho.
“The sheer beauty, not to mention the craftsmanship involved…”
“Nevertheless, I am not willing to go above half a million.”
“… the word unique would not be inappropriate.”
“Half a million, and no more,” insisted Carvalho.
“I am sorry to say, sir,” said Graff, “that with this particular piece there no room for bargaining.”
“There’s always room for bargaining, whatever one is selling,” the coffee grower insisted.
“I fear that is not true in this case, sir. You see…”
“I suspect you will come to your senses in time,” said Carvalho. “But, regrettably I do not have any time to spare this afternoon. I will write out a cheque for half a million pounds, and leave you to decide whether you wish to cash it.”
Carvalho took a chequebook from his inside pocket, unscrewed the top of his fountain pen, and wrote out the words ‘Five Hundred Thousand Only’. Consuela looked silently on.
Carvalho tore out the cheque, and left it on the counter.
“I’ll give you twenty-four hours to decide. I leave for Chicago on the early evening flight tomorrow. If the cheque has not been presented by the time I reach my office …”
Graff bowed his head slightly, and left the cheque on the table. He accompanied them to the door, and bowed again when they stepped out onto the pavement.
“You were brilliant, my darling,” said Consuela as the chauffeur opened the car door for his employer.
“The Exchange,” said Carvalho. Turning back to face his mistress, he added, “You’ll have your necklace before the day is out, of that I’m certain, my darling.”
Consuela smiled and waved as the car disappeared in the direction of Piccadilly, and on this occasion she felt able to agree with her lover’s judgement. Once the car had turned the corner, she slipped back into the house of Graff.
The proprietor smiled, and handed over the smartly wrapped gift. He bowed low and simply said, “Happy birthday, Mrs. Rosenheim.”
1.
Point out the instances of the author’s direct characterization of
the heroine. Do you agree with the author?
2. Is self-characterization present in the short story? Do you think the main character has a common-sense view of herself?
3. Is the manner the main character treats and speaks of other people suggestive of her own disposition? In what way?
4. Do the heroine’s words contradict her actions? Find examples in the text and decide if they contribute to the creation of the image.
5. Would you regard the main character as a positive or a negative one? What is in your opinion the author’s attitude to the heroine? Do you approve of her life-philosophy?
5.
R. Goldberg
Art for Heart’s Sake
“Here, take your pineapple juice,” gently persuaded Koppel, the male nurse.
“Nope!” grunted Collis P. Ellsworth.
“But it’s good for you, sir.”
“Nope!”
“It’s doctor’s orders.”
“Nope!”
Koppel heard the front door bell and was glad to leave the room. He found Doctor Caswell in the hall downstairs. “I can’t do a thing with him,” he told the doctor. “He won’t take his pineapple juice. He doesn’t want me to read to him. He hates the radio. He doesn’t like anything!”
Doctor Caswell received the information with his usual professional calm. He had done some constructive thinking since his last visit. This was no ordinary case. The old gentleman was in pretty good shape for a man of seventy-six. But he had to be kept from buying things. He had suffered his last heart attack after his disastrous purchase of that jerkwater railroad out in Iowa. All his purchases of recent years had to be liquidated at a great sacrifice both to his health and his pocketbook.
The doctor drew up a chair and sat down close to the old man. “I’ve got a proposition for you,” he said quietly.
Old Ellsworth looked suspiciously over his spectacles.
“How’d you like to take up art?” The doctor had his stethoscope ready in case the abruptness of the suggestion proved too much for the patient’s heart.
But the old gentleman’s answer was a vigorous “Rot!”
“I don’t mean seriously,” said the doctor, relieved that disaster had been averted. “Just fool around with chalk and crayons. It’ll be fun.”
“Bosh!”
“All right.” The doctor stood up. “I just suggested it, that’s all.”
“But, Caswell, how do I start playing with the chalk — that is, if I’m foolish enough to start?”
“I’ve thought of that, too. I can get a student from one or the art schools to come here once a week and show you.”
Doctor Caswell went to his friend, Judson Livingston, head of the Atlantic Art Institute, and explained the situation. Livingston had just the young man — Frank Swain, eighteen years old and a promising student. He needed the money. Ran an elevator at night to pay tuition. How much would he get? Five dollars a visit. Fine.
Next afternoon young Swain was shown into the big living room. Collis P. Ellsworth looked at him appraisingly.
“Sir, I’m not an artist yet,” answered the young man.
“Umph?”
Swain arranged some paper and crayons on the table. “Let’s try and draw that vase over there on the mantelpiece,” he suggested. “Try it, Mister Ellsworth, please.”
“Umph!” The old man took a piece of crayon in a shaky hand and made a scrawl. He made another scrawl and connected the two with a couple of crude lines. “There it is, young man,” he snapped with a grunt of satisfaction. “Such foolishness. Poppycock!”
Frank Swain was patient. He needed the five dollars. “If you want to draw you will have to look at what you’re drawing, sir.”
Old Ellsworth squinted and looked. “By gum, it’s kinda pretty, I never noticed it before.”
When the art student came the following week there was a drawing on the table that had a slight resemblance to the vase.
The wrinkles deepened at the corners of the old gentleman’s eyes as he asked elfishly, “Well, what do you think of it?”
“Not bad, sir,” answered Swain. “But it s a bit lopsided.”
“By gum,” Old Ellsworth chuckled. “I see. The halves don’t match.” He added a few lines with a palsied hand and colored the open spaces blue like a child playing with a picture book. Then he looked towards the door. “Listen, young man,” he whispered, “I want to ask you something before old pineapple juice comes back.”
“Yes, sir,” responded Swain respectively.
“I was thinking could you spare the time to come twice a week or perhaps three times?”
“Sure, Mister Ellsworth.”
“Good. Let’s make it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Four o’clock.”
As the weeks went by Swain’s visits grew more frequent. He brought the old man a box of water-colors and some tubes of oils.
When Doctor Caswell called Ellsworth would talk about the graceful lines of the andirons. He would dwell on the rich variety of color in a bowl of fruit. He proudly displayed the variegated smears of paint on his heavy silk dressing gown. He would not allow his valet to send it to the cleaner’s. He wanted to show the doctor how hard he’d been working.
The treatment was working perfectly. No more trips downtown to become involved in purchases of enterprises of doubtful solvency.
The doctor thought it safe to allow Ellsworth to visit the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art and other exhibits with Swain. An entirely new world opened in its charming mysteries. The old man displayed an insatiable curiosity about the galleries and the painters who exhibited in them. How were the galleries run? Who selected the canvases for the exhibitions? An idea was forming in his brain.
When the late spring sun began to cloak the fields and gardens with color, Ellsworth executed a god-awful smudge which he called “Trees Dressed in White”. Then he made a startling announcement. He was going to exhibit it in the Summer show at the Lathrop Gallery!
For the Summer show at the Lathrop Gallery was the biggest art exhibit of the year in quality, if not in size. The lifetime dream of every mature artist in the United States was a Lathrop prize. Upon this distinguished group Ellsworth was going to foist his “Trees Dressed in White”, which resembled a gob of salad dressing thrown violently up against the side of a house!
“If the papers get hold of this, Mister Ellsworth will become a laughing-stock. We’ve got to stop him,” groaned Koppel.
“No,” admonished the doctor. “We can’t interfere with him now and take a chance of spoiling all the good work that we’ve accomplished.”
To the utter astonishment of all three — and especially Swain — “Trees Dressed in White” was accepted for the Lathrop show.
Fortunately, the painting was hung in an inconspicuous place where it could not excite any noticeable comment. Young Swain sneaked into the Gallery one afternoon and blushed to the top of his ears when he saw “Trees Dressed in White”, a loud, raucous splash on the wall. As two giggling students stopped before the strange anomaly Swain fled in terror. He could not bear to hear what they had to say.
During the course of the exhibition the old man kept on taking his lessons, seldom mentioning his entry in the exhibit. He was unusually cheerful.
Two days before the close of the exhibition a special messenger brought a long official-looking envelope to Mister Ellsworth while Swain, Koppel and the doctor were in the room. “Read it to me,” requested the old man. “My eyes are tired from painting.”
“It gives the Lathrop Gallery pleasure to announce that the First Landscape Prize of $1,000 has been awarded to Collis P. Ellsworth for his painting, ‘Trees Dressed in White’.”
Swain and Koppel uttered a series of inarticulate gurgles. Doctor Caswell, exercising his professional self-control with a supreme effort, said: “Congratulations, Mister Ellsworth. Fine, fine ... See, see ... Of course, I didn’t expect such great news. But, but — well, now, you’ll have to admit that art is much more satisfying than business.”
“Art’s nothing,” snapped the old man. “I bought the Lathrop Gallery last month.”
1.
Did you ever come across the expression “Art for art’s sake”?
What does it mean? What effect does the deliberate change of the
expression produce?
2. Define the prevailing key of the story. Point out the details which helped you to do it.
3. What sort of person does Mr. Ellsworth seem to be? Is he sympathetic to you? Explain.
4. While reading, could you guess as to the development of the events? Did the ending of the story come out as a complete surprise for you?
5. What is the author’s purpose in writing this story? Comment on the ideas it touches upon.
6.
Saki
The Lumber-Room
The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and better and wiser people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he is not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and described with much detail the coloration and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas’ basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.
“You said there couldn’t possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk,” he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground.
So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting younger brother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousins’ aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, they would have been taken that very day.
A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas when the moment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in.
“How she did howl,” said Nicholas cheerfully, as the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirits that should have characterized it.
“She’ll soon get over that,” said the aunt; “it will be a glorious afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands. How they will enjoy themselves.”
“Bobby won’t enjoy himself much, and he won’t race much either,” said Nicholas with a grim chuckle; “his boots are hurting him. They’re too tight.”
“Why didn’t he tell me they were hurting?” asked the aunt with some asperity.
“He told you twice, but you weren’t listening. You often don’t listen when we tell you important things.”
“You are not to go into the gooseberry garden,” said the aunt, changing the subject.
“Why not?” demanded Nicholas.
“Because you are in disgrace,” said the aunt loftily.
Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same moment. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into the gooseberry garden, “only,” as she remarked to herself, “because I have told him he is not to.”
Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be entered, and once a small person like Nicholas could slip in there he could effectually disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit bushes. The aunt had many other things to do that afternoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could keep a watchful eye on the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration.
Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the aunt’s watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the afternoon.
Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions, Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf on which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important as it looked, it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorized intrusion, which opened a way only for aunts and such-like privileged persons. Nicholas had not had much experience of the art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days past he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure.
Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening on to the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction through the wood? There might be more than four of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them; all one knew about his skill in shooting was that he could hit a large stag at a ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes revolving the possibilities of the scene; he was inclined to think that there were more than four wolves and that the man and his dogs were in a tight corner.
But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention; there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison! And there was a carved sandal-wood box packed tight with aromatic cotton-wool, and between the layers of cotton-wool were little brass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins, delightful to see and to handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers; Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it was full of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! In the garden, and in the lanes when he went for a walk, Nicholas came across a few birds, of which the largest were an occasional magpie or wood-pigeon; here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning a life-history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrill vociferation of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of the lilac bushes; she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes.
“Nicholas, Nicholas!” she screamed, “you are to come out of this at once. It’s no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time.”
It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room.
Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas’ name gave way to a shriek, and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place in a corner, and shook some dust from a neighbouring pile of newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room, locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it. His aunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the front garden.
“Who’s calling?” he asked.
“Me,” came the answer from the other side of the wall; “didn’t you hear me? I’ve been looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I’ve slipped into the rain-water tank. Luckily there’s no water in it, but the sides are slippery and I can’t get out. Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree — “
“I was told I wasn’t to go into the gooseberry garden,” said Nicholas promptly.
“I told you not to, and now I tell you that you may,” came the voice from the rain-water tank, rather impatiently.
“Your voice doesn’t sound like Aunt’s,” objected Nicholas; “you may be the Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the Evil One tempts me and that I always yield. This time I’m not going to yield.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the prisoner in the tank; “go and fetch the ladder.”
“Will there be strawberry jam for tea?” asked Nicholas innocently.
“Certainly there will be,” said the aunt, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it.
“Now I know that you are the Evil One and not Aunt,” shouted Nicholas gleefully; “when we asked Aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn’t any. I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it’s there, but she doesn’t, because she said there was’t any. Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!”
There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt as though one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas knew, with childish discernment, that such luxuries were not to be over-indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the aunt from the rain-water tank.
Tea that evening was partaken of in a fearsome silence. The tide had been at its highest when the children had arrived at Jagborough Cove, so there had been no sands to play on — a circumstance that the aunt had overlooked in the haste of organizing her punitive expedition. The tightness of Bobby’s boots had had disastrous effect on his temper the whole of the afternoon, and altogether the children could not have been said to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.
1.
Define the place of the action. How do the children find themselves
there? Is it their permanent place of living? Dwell on the atmosphere
of the place and the traditions which exist in this family.
2. Focus on the main characters, Nicholas and the aunt. What qualities can be attributed to them? Support your opinion by giving clues from the text.
3. With what character do the writer and the reader sympathize? By what means is the author’s attitude to each of the characters conveyed?
4. Saki’s humorous style often uses complicated, formal, even pompous expressions. Do any words or phrases suggest to you the idea of mockery?
5. What is the general tone of the story? Does the emotional key change as the story progresses? Divide the text into parts according to the prevailing tone and examine the language of these parts. Account for the words chosen and the structure of the sentences.
6. Define the conflict at the basis of the plot. Interpret the title of the story. What messages does the author get across?
7.
Ph. Dick
Human Is
Jill Herrick’s blue eyes filled with tears. She gazed at her husband in unspeakable horror. “You’re — you’re hideous!” she wailed.
Lester Herrick continued working, arranging heaps of notes and graphs in precise piles.
“Hideous,” he stated, “is a value judgment. It contains no factual information.” He sent a report tape on Cenrauran parasitic life whizzing through the desk scanner. “Merely an opinion. An expression of emotion, nothing more.”
Jill stumbled back to the kitchen. Listlessly, she waved her hand to trip the stove into activity. Conveyor belts in the wall hummed to life, hurrying the food from the underground storage lockers for the evening meal.
She turned to face her husband one last time. “Not even a little while?” she begged. “Not even — “
“Not even for a month. When he comes you can tell him. If you haven’t the courage, I’ll do it. I can’t have a child running around here. I have too much work to do. This report on Betelgeuse XI is due in ten days.” Lester dropped a spool on Fomalhautan fossil implements into the scanner. “What’s the matter with your brother? Why can’t he take care of his own child?”
Jill dabbed at swollen eyes. “Don’t you understand? I want Gus here! I begged Frank to let him come. And now you — “
“I’ll be glad when he’s old enough to be turned over to the Government.” Lester’s thin face twisted in annoyance. “Damn it, Jill, isn’t dinner ready yet? It’s been ten minutes! What’s wrong with that stove?”
“It’s almost ready.” The stove showed a red signal light. The robant waiter had come out of the wall and was waiting expectantly to take the food.
Jill sat down and blew her small nose violently. In the living-room, Lester worked on unperturbed. His work. His research. Day after day. Lester was getting ahead; there was no doubt of that. His lean body was bent like a coiled spring over the tape scanner, cold gray eyes taking in the information feverishly, analyzing, appraising, his conceptual faculties operating like well-greased machinery.
Jill’s lips trembled in misery and resentment. Gus — little Gus. How could she tell him? Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. Never to see the chubby little fellow again. He could never come back — because his childish laughter and play bothered Lester. Interfered with his research.
The stove clicked to green. The food slid out, into the arms of the robant. Soft chimes sounded to announce dinner.
“I hear it,” Lester grated. He snapped off the scanner and got to his feet. “I suppose he’ll come while we’re eating.”
“I can vid Frank and ask — “
“No. Might as well get it over with.” Lester nodded impatiently to the robant. “All right. Put it down.” His thin lips set in an angry line. “Damn it, don’t dawdle! I want to get back to my work!”
Jill bit back the tears.
Little Gus came trailing into the house as they were finishing dinner. Jill gave a cry of joy. “Gussie!” She ran to sweep him up in her arms. “I’m so glad to see you!”
“Watch out for my tiger” Gus muttered. He dropped his little gray kitten onto the rug and it rushed off, under the couch. “He’s hiding.”
Lester’s eyes flickered as he studied the little boy and the tip of gray tail extending from under the couch.
“Why do you call it a tiger? It’s nothing but an alley cat.”
Gus looked hurt. He scowled. “He’s a tiger. He’s got stripes.”
“Tigers are yellow and a great deal bigger. You might as well learn to classify things by their correct names.”
“Lester, please —,” Jill pleaded.
“Be quiet,” her husband said crossly. “Gus is old enough to shed childish illusions and develop a realistic orientation. What’s wrong with the psych testers? Don’t they straighten this sort of nonsense out?”
Gus ran and snatched up his tiger. “You leave him alone!”
Lester contemplated the kitten. A strange, cold smile played about his lips. “Come down to the lab some time, Gus. We’ll show you lots of cats. We use them in our research. Cats, guinea pigs, rabbits — “
“Lester!” Jill gasped. “How can you!”
Lester laughed thinly. Abruptly he broke off and returned to his desk. “Now clear out of here. I have to finish these reports. And don’t forget to tell Gus.”
Gus got excited. “Tell me what?” His cheeks flushed. His eyes sparkled. “What is it? Something for me? A secret?”
Jill’s heart was like lead. She put her hand heavily on the child’s shoulder. “Come on, Gus. We’ll go sit out in the garden and I’ll tell you. Bring — bring your tiger.”
A click. The emergency vidsender lit up. Instantly Lester was on his feet. “Be quiet!” He ran to the sender, breathing rapidly. “Nobody speak!”
Jill and Gus paused at the door. A confidential message was sliding from the slot into the dish. Lester grabbed it up and broke the seal. He studied it intently.
“What is it” Jill asked. “Anything bad?”
“Bad?” Lester’s face shone with a deep inner glow. “No, not bad at all.” He glanced at his watch. “Just time. Let’s see. I’ll need — “
“What is it?”
“I’m going on a trip. I’ll be gone two or three weeks. Rexor IV is into the charted area.”
“Rexor IV? You’re going there?” Jill clasped her hands eagerly. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to see an old system, old ruins and cities! Lester, can I come along? Can I go with you? We never took a vacation, and you always promised…”
Lester Herrick stared at his wife in amazement. “You?” he said. “You go along?” He laughed unpleasantly. “Now hurry and get my things together. I’ve been waiting for this a long time.” He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “You can keep the boy here until I’m back. But no longer. Rexor IV! I can hardly wait!”
“You have to make allowances,” Frank said. “After all, he’s a scientist.”
“I don’t care,” Jill said. “I’m leaving him. As soon as he gets back from Rexor IV. I’ve made up my mind.”
Her brother was silent, deep in thought. He stretched his feet out, onto the lawn of the little garden. “Well, if you leave him you’ll be free to marry again. You’re still classed as sexually adequate, aren’t you?”
Jill nodded firmly. “You bet I am. I wouldn’t have any trouble. Maybe I can find somebody who likes children.”
“You think a lot of children,” Frank perceived. “Gus loves to visit you. But he doesn’t like Lester. Les needles him.”
“I know. This past week has been heaven, with him gone.” Jill patted her soft blonde hair, blushing prettily. “I’ve had fun. Makes me feel alive again.”
“When’ll he be back?”
“Any day.” Jill clenched her small fists. “We’ve been married five years and every year it’s worse. He’s so — so inhuman. Utterly cold and ruthless. Him and his work. Day and night.”
“Les is ambitious. He wants to get to the top in his field.” Frank lit a cigarette lazily. “A pusher. Well, maybe he’ll do it. What’s he in?”
“Toxicology. He works out new poisons for Military. He invented the copper sulphate skin-lime they used against Callisto.”
“It’s a small field. Now take me,” Frank leaned contentedly against the wall of the house. “There are thousands of Clearance lawyers. I could work for years and never create a ripple. I’m content just to be. I do my job. I enjoy it.”
“I wish Lester felt that way.”
“Maybe he’ll change.”
“He’ll never change.” Jill said bitterly. “I know that, now. That’s why I’ve made up my mind to leave him. He’ll always be the same.”
Lester Herrick came back from Rexor IV a different man. Beaming happily, he deposited his anti-grav suitcase in the arms of the waiting robant. “Thank you.”
Jill gasped speechlessly. “Les! What — “
Lester removed his hat, bowing a little. “Good day, my dear. You’re looking lovely. Your eyes are clear and blue. Sparkling like some virgin lake, fed by mountain streams.” He sniffed. “Do I smell a delicious repast warming on the hearth?”
“Oh, Lester.” Jill blinked uncertainly, faint hope swelling in her bosom. “Lester, what’s happened to you? You’re so — so different.”
“Am I, my dear?” Lester moved about the house, touching things and sighing. “What a dear little house. So sweet and friendly. You don’t know how wonderful it is to be here. Believe me.”
“I’m afraid to believe it.” Jill said.
“Believe what?”
“That you mean all this. That you’re not the way you were. The way you’ve always been.”
“What way is that?”
“Mean. Mean and cruel.”
“I?” Lester frowned, rubbing his lip. “Hmm. Interesting.” He brightened. “Well, that’s all in the past. What’s for dinner? I’m faint with hunger.”
Jill eyed him uncertainly as she moved into the kitchen. “Anything you want, Lester. You know our stove covers the maximum select-list.”
“Of course.” Lester coughed rapidly. “Well, shall we try sirloin steak, medium, smothered in onions? With mushroom sauce. And white rolls. With hot coffee. Perhaps ice cream and apple pie for dessert.”
“You never seemed to care much about food.” Jill said thoughtfully.
“Oh?”
“You always said you hoped eventually they’d make intravenous intake universally applicable.” She studied her husband intently. “Lester, what’s happened?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Lester carelessly took his pipe out and lit it rapidly, somewhat awkwardly. Bits of tobacco drifted to the rug. He bent nervously down and tried to pick them up again. “Please go about your tasks and don’t mind me. Perhaps I can help you prepare — that is, can I do anything to help?”
“No,” Jill said. “I can do it. You go ahead with your work, if you want.”
“Work?”
“Your research. In toxins.”
“Toxins!” Lester showed confusion. “Well, for heaven’s sake! Toxins. Devil take it!”
“What, dear?”
“I mean, I really feel too tired, just now. I’ll work later.” Lester moved vaguely around the room. “I think I’ll sit and enjoy being home again. Off that awful Rexor IV.”
“Was it awful?”
“Horrible.” A spasm of disgust crossed Lester’s face. “Dry and dead. Ancient. Squeezed to a pulp by wind and sun. A dreadful place, my dear.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I always wanted to visit it.”
“Heaven forbid!” Lester cried feelingly. “You stay right here, my dear. With me. The — the two of us.” His eyes wandered around the room. “Two, yes. Terra is a wonderful planet. Moist and full of life.” He beamed happily. “Just right.”
“I don’t understand it,” Jill said.
“Repeat all the things you remember.” Frank said. His robot pencil poised itself alertly. “The changes you’ve noticed in him. I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“No reason. Go on. You say you sensed it right away? That he was different?”
“I noticed it at once. The expression on his face. Not that hard, practical look. A sort of mellow look. Relaxed. Tolerant. A sort of calmness.”
“I see,” Frank said. “What else?”
Jill peered nervously through the back door into the house. “He can’t hear us, can he?”
“No. He’s inside playing with Gus. In the living-room. They’re Venusian otter-men today. Your husband built an otter slide down at his lab. I saw him unwrapping it.”
“His talk.”
“His what?”
“The way he talks. His choice of words. Words he never used before. Whole new phrases. Metaphors. I never heard him use a metaphor in all our five years together. He said metaphors were inexact. Misleading. And — “
“And what?” The pencil scratched busily.
“And they’re strange words. Old words. Words you don’t hear any more.”
“Archaic phraseology?” Frank asked tensely.
“Yes.” Jill paced back and forth across the small lawn, her hands in the pockets of her plastic shorts. “Formal words. Like something — “
“Something out of a book?”
“Exactly! You’ve noticed it?”
“I noticed it.” Frank’s face was grim. “Go on.”
Jill stopped pacing. “What’s on your mind? Do you have a theory?”
“I want to know more facts.”
She reflected. “He plays. With Gus. He plays and jokes. And he — he eats.”
“Didn’t he eat before?”
“Not like he does now. Now he loves food. He goes into the kitchen and tries endless combinations. He and the stove get together and cook up all sorts of weird things.”
“I thought he’d put on weight.”
“He’s gained ten pounds. He eats, smiles and laughs. He’s constantly polite.” Jill glanced away coyly. “He’s even — romantic! He always said that was irrational. And he’s not interested in his work. His research in toxins.”
“I see,” Frank chewed his lip. “Anything more?”
“One thing puzzles me very much. I’ve noticed it again and again.”
“What is it?”
“He seems to have strange lapses of — “
A burst of laughter. Lester Herrick, eyes bright with merriment, came rushing out of the house, little Gus close behind.
“We have an announcement!” Lester cried.
“An announzelmen,” Gus echoed.
Frank folded his notes up and slid them into his coat pocket. The pencil hurried after them. He got slowly to his feet. “What is it?”
“You make it,” Lester said, taking little Gus’s hand and leading him forward.
Gus’s plump face screwed up in concentration. “I’m going to come live with you,” he stated. Anxiously he watched Jill’s expression. “Lester says I can. Can I? Can I, Aunt Jill?”
Her heart flooded with incredible joy. She glanced from Gus to Lester. “Do you — do you really mean it?” Her voice was almost inaudible.
Lester put his arm around her, holding her close to him. “Of course, we mean it,” he said gently. His eyes were warm and understanding. “We wouldn’t tease you, my dear.”
“No teasing!” Gus shouted excitedly. “No more teasing!” He and Lester and Jill drew close together. “Never again!”
Frank stood a little way off, his face grim. Jill noticed him and broke away abruptly. “What is it?” she faltered. “Is anything — “
“When you’re quite finished,” Frank said to Lester Herrick, “I’d like you to come with me.”
A chill clutched Jill’s heart. “What is it? Can I come, too?”
Frank shook his head. He moved toward Lester ominously. “Come on, Herrick. Let’s go. You and I are going to take a little trip.”
The three Federal Clearance Agents took up positions a few feet from Lester Herrick, vibro-tubes gripped alertly.
Clearance Director Douglas studied Herrick for a long time. “You’re sure?” he said finally.
“Absolutely,” Frank stated.
“When did he get back from Rexor IV?”
“A week ago.”
“And the change was noticeable at once?”
“His wife noticed it as soon as she saw him. There’s no doubt it occurred on Rexor.” Frank paused significantly. “And you know what that means.”
“I know.” Douglas walked slowly around the seated man, examining him from every angle.
Lester Herrick sat quietly, his coat neatly folded across his knee. He rested his hands on his ivory-topped cane, his face calm and expressionless. He wore a soft gray suit, a subdued necktie, French cuffs, and shiny black shoes. He said nothing.
“Their methods are simple and exact.” Douglas said. “The original psychic contents are removed and stored — in some sort of suspension. The interjection of the substitute contents is instantaneous. Lester Herrick was probably poking around the Rexor city ruins, ignoring the safety precautions — shield or manual screen — and they got him.”
The seated man stirred. “I’d like very much to communicate with Jill,” he murmured. “She surely is becoming anxious.”
Frank turned away, face choked with revulsion. “God. It’s still pretending.”
Director Douglas restrained himself with the greatest effort. “It’s certainly an amazing thing. No physical changes. You could look at it and never know.” He moved toward the seated man, his face hard. “Listen to me, whatever you call yourself. Can you understand what I say?”
“Of course,” Lester Herrick answered.
“Did you really think you’d get away with it? We caught the others — the ones before you. All ten of them. Even before they got here.” Douglas grinned coldly. “Vibro-rayed them one after another.”
The color left Lester Herrick’s face. Sweat came out on his forehead. He wiped it away with a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Oh?” he murmured.
“You’re not fooling us. All Terra is alerted for you Rexorians. I’m surprised you got off Rexor at all. Herrick must have been extremely careless. We stopped the others aboard ship. Fried them out in deep space.”
“Herrick had a private ship,” the seated man murmured. “He bypassed the check station going in. No record of his arrival existed. He was never checked.”
“Fry it!” Douglas grated. The three Clearance agents lifted their tubes, moving forward.
“No,” Frank shook his head. “We can’t. It’s a bad situation.”
“What do you mean? Why can’t we? We fried the others — “
“They were caught in deep space. This is Terra. Terran law, nor military law, applies.” Frank waved toward the seated man. “And it’s in a human body, it comes under regular civil laws. We’ve got to prove it’s not Lester Herrick — that it’s a Rexorian infiltrator. It’s going to be tough. But it can be done.”
“How?”
“His wife. Herrick’s wife. Her testimony. Jill Herrick can assert the difference between Lester Herrick and this thing. She knows — and I think we can make it stand up in court.”
It was late afternoon. Frank drove his surface cruiser slowly along. Neither he nor Jill spoke.
“So that’s it,” Jill said at last. Her face was gray. Her eyes dry and bright, without emotion. “I knew it was too good to be true.” She tried to smile. “It seemed so wonderful.”
“I know,” Frank said. “It’s a terrible damn thing. If only — “
“Why?” Jill said. “Why did he — did it do this? Why did it take Lester’s body?”
“Rexor IV is old. Dead. A dying planet. Life is dying out.”
“I remember, now. He — it said something like that. Something about Rexor. That it was glad to get away.”
“The Rexorians are an old race. The few that remain are feeble. They’ve been trying to migrate for centuries. But their bodies are too weak. Some tried to migrate to Venus — and died instantly. They worked out this system about a century ago.”
“But it knows so much. About us. It speaks our language.”
“Not quite. The changes you mentioned. The odd diction. You see, the Rexorians have only a vague knowledge of human beings. A sort of ideal abstraction, taken from Terran objects that have found their way to Rexor. Books mostly. Secondary data like that. The Rexorian idea of Terra is based on centuries-old Terran literature. Romantic novels from our past. Language, customs, manners from old Terran books.
“That accounts for the strange archaic quality to it. It had studied Terra, all right. But in an indirect and misleading way.” Frank grinned, wryly. “The Rexorians are two hundred years behind the times — which is a break for us. That’s how we’re able to detect them.”
“Is this sort of thing — common? Does it happen often? It seems unbelievable.” Jill rubbed her forehead wearily. “Dreamlike. It’s hard to realize that it’s actually happened. I’m just beginning to understand what it means.”
“The galaxy is full of alien life forms. Parasitic and destructive entities. Terran ethics don’t extend to them. We have to guard constantly against this sort of thing. Lester went in unsuspectingly — and this thing ousted him and took over his body.”
Frank glanced at his sister. Jill’s face was expressionless. A stern little face, wide-eyed, but composed. She sat up straight, staring fixedly ahead, her small hands folded quietly in her lap.
“We can arrange it so you won’t actually have to appear in court,” Frank went on. “You can vid a statement and it’ll be presented as evidence. I’m certain your statement will do. The Federal courts will help us all they can, but they have to have some evidence to go on.”
Jill was silent.
“What do you say?” Frank asked.
“What happens after the court makes its decision?”
“Then we vibro-ray it. Destroy the Rexorian mind. A Terran patrol ship on Rexor IV sends out a party to locate the — er — original contents.”
Jill gasped. She turned toward her brother in amazement. “You mean — “
“Oh, yes. Lester is alive. In suspension, somewhere on Rexor. In one of the old city ruins. We’ll have to force them to give him up. They won’t want to, but they’ll do it. They’ve done it before. Then he’ll be back: with you. Safe and sound. Just like before. And this horrible nightmare you’ve been living will be a thing of the past.”
“I see.”
“Here we are.” The cruiser pulled to a halt before the imposing Federal Clearance Building. Frank got quickly out, holding the door for his sister. Jill stepped down slowly. “Okay?” Frank said.
“Okay.”
When they entered the building, Clearance agents led them through the check screens, down the long corridors. Jill’s high heels echoed in the ominous silence.
“Quite a place,” Frank observed.
“It’s unfriendly.”
“Consider it a glorified police station.” Frank halted. Before them was a guarded door. “Here we are.”
“Wait,” Jill pulled back, her face twisting in panic. “I — “
“We’ll wait until you’re ready.” Frank signaled to the Clearance agent to leave. “I understand. It’s a bad business.”
Jill stood for a moment, her head down. She took a deep breath, her small fists clenched. Her chin came up, level and steady. “All right.”
“You ready?”
“Yes.”
Frank opened the door. “Here we are.”
Director Douglas and the three Clearance agents turned expectantly as Jill and Frank entered. “Good,” Douglas murmured, with relief. “I was beginning to get worried.”
The sitting man got slowly to his feet, picking up his coat. He gripped his ivory-headed cane tightly, his hands tense. He said nothing. He watched silently as the woman entered the room, Frank behind her. “This is Mrs. Herrick,” Frank said. “Jill, this is Clearance Director Douglas.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Jill said faintly.
“Then you know our work.”
“Yes. I know your work.”
“This is an unfortunate business. It’s happened before. I don’t know what Frank has told you.”
“He explained the situation.”
“Good.” Douglas was relieved. “I’m glad of that. It’s not easy to explain. You understand, then, what we want. The previous cases were caught in deep space. We vibro-tubed them and got the original contents back. But this time we must work through legal channels.” Douglas picked up a vidtape recorder. “We will need your statement, Mrs. Herrick. Since no physical change has occurred we’ll have no direct evidence to make our case. We’ll have only your testimony of character alteration to present to the court.”
He held the vidtape recorder out. Jill took it slowly.
“Your statement will undoubtedly be accepted by the court. The court will give us the release we want and then we can go ahead. If everything goes correctly we hope to be able to set things exactly as they were before.”
Jill was gazing silently at the man standing in the corner with his coat and ivory-headed cane. “Before?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“Before the change.”
Jill turned toward Director Douglas. Calmly, she laid the vidtape recorder down on the table. “What change are you talking about?”
Douglas paled. He licked his lips. All eyes in the room were on Jill. “The change in him.” He pointed at the man.
“Jill!” Frank barked. “What’s the matter with you?” He came quickly toward her. “What the hell are you doing? You know damn well what change we mean!”
“That’s odd,” Jill said thoughtfully. “I haven’t noticed any change.”
Frank and Director Douglas looked at each other. “I don’t get it,” Frank muttered, dazed.
“Mrs. Herrick — “ Douglas began. Jill walked over to the man standing quietly in the corner. “Can we go now, dear?” she asked. She took his arm. “Or is there some reason why my husband has to stay here?”
The man and woman walked silently along the dark street.
“Come on,” Jill said. “Let’s go home.”
The man glanced at her. “It’s a nice afternoon,” he said. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs. “Spring is coming, I think. Isn’t it?”
Jill nodded.
“I wasn’t sure. It’s a nice smell. Plants and soil and growing things.”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to walk? Is it far?”
“Not too far.”
The man gazed at her intently, a serious expression on his face. “I am very indebted to you, my dear,” he said.
Jill nodded.
“I wish to thank you. I must admit I did not expect such a — “
Jill turned abruptly. “What is your name? Your real name.”
The man’s gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, a kind, gentle smile. “I’m afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed.”
Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. “What are you thinking?” the man asked.
“I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester,” Jill said. “If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. “Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy.”
1.
Where and when do the events of the story take place? Using the clues
from the text, say what Terran society is like.
2. Sum up your impressions of the characters: Jill, Lester, the Rexorian Lester. How does the author disclose them? Which sources of characterization can you rely upon in this case?
3. Regard the plot-structure of the story. What is the climactic moment? Does it come out as a complete surprise for you?
4. At what point in the story do you think Jill privately decides to accept the Rexorian Lester? Why does she make that decision? Do you sympathize with it? Why, or why not?
5. The title Human is [as human does] echoes the proverb, “handsome is as handsome does”. Why do you think the author gave the story this title? What does it mean to be human according to the story? Do you agree with the author’s definition? What characteristics could be said to be uniquely human?
8.
O. Henry
The Skylight Room
First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlors. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker’s manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker’s parlors.
Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second-floor-back at $8. Convinced by her second - floor manner that it was worth the $ 12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother’s orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper.
If you survived Mrs. Parker’s scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder’s large hall-room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder’s room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent.
Then — oh, then — if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word “Clara”, she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the colored maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7 by 8 feet of floor-space in the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or store-room.
In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well — and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.
“Two dollars, suh,” Clara would say in her contemptuous tone.
One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: “Goodness me! Why didn’t you keep up with us?”
Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlors. “In this closet,” she said, “one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal — “
“But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist,” said Miss Leeson, with a shiver.
Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and let the way to the second-floor-back.
“Eight dollars?” said Miss Leeson. “Dear me! I’m just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower.”
Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his floor.
“Excuse me, Mr. Skidder,” said Mrs. Parker, with her demon’s smile at his pale looks. “I didn’t know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins.”
“They’re too lovely for anything,” said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly the way the angels do.
After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserted a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features. “Anna Held’ll jump at it,” said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish.
Presently the tocsin call of “Clara!” sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson’s purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted the stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words, “Two dollars!”
“I’ll take it!” sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed.
Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, “It’s No Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway.”
There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said “Well, really!” to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would quickly group around her.
Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her “the funniest and jolliest ever,” but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.
As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh:
“Why, there’s Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too.”
All looked up — some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jackson-guided.
“It’s that star,” explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. “Not the big one that twinkles — the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson.”
“Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “I didn’t know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson.”
“Oh, yes,” said the small star-gazer, “I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they’re going to wear next fall in Mars.”
“Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker. “The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passage is — “
“Oh,” said the very young Mr. Evans, “I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it.”
“Same here,” said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. “I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers had.”
“Well, really!” said Miss Longnecker.
“I wonder whether it’s a shooting star,” remarked Miss Dorn. “I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday.”
“He doesn’t show up very well from down here,” said Miss Leeson. “You ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coalmine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with.”
There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on.
There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker’s stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner.
As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder’s door as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in his (unaccepted) comedy. Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and opened the door of the skylight room.
She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of a room she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled.
For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually, named. Miss Longnecker must be right: it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.
As she lay on her back, she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply.
“Good-bye, Billy,” she murmured faintly. “You’re millions of miles away and you won’t even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn’t anything else but darkness to look at, didn’t you?... Millions of miles… Good-bye, Billy Jackson.”
Clara, the colored maid, found the door locked at ten the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists and burnt feathers, proving of no avail, some one ran to phone for an ambulance.
In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps.
“Ambulance call to 49,” he said briefly. “What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, yes, doctor,” sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble in the house was the greater. “I can’t think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It’s a young woman, a Miss Elsie — yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house — “
“What room?” cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger.
“The skylight room. It — “.
Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her dignity demanded.
On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterwards there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her.
“Let that be,” she would answer. “If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied.”
The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead.
They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was: “Drive like h — 1, Wilson,” to the driver.
That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning’s paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together.
It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East Street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:
“Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover.”
1.
Consider the plot-structure of the short-story. Does it take the
traditional model? Which techniques have been employed to make it
more complex?
2. Comment on the tone created by the author in the story.
3. Concentrate on the main character, Miss Leeson. What makes her sympathetic to other characters of the story and to the reader?
4. What form does the ending of the story take?
5. In what way does the newspaper article help to explain the doctor’s concern and great care for the patient, Miss Elsie Leeson? Why do you think we are allowed to know the doctor’s name?
6. Comment on the title, its functions and connection with the story.
9.
O. Wilde
The Model Millionaire
Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie Erskine never realized. Poor Hughie! Intellectually, we must admit, he was not of much importance. He never said a brilliant or even an ill-natured thing in his life. But then he was wonderfully good-looking, with his crisp brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his grey eyes. He was as popular with men as he was with women, and he had every accomplishment except that of making money. His father had bequeathed him his cavalry sword and a History of the Peninsular War in fifteen volumes. Hughie hung the first over his looking-glass, put the second on a shelf between Ruff's Guide and Bailey's Magazine, and lived on two hundred a year that an old aunt allowed him. He had tried everything. He had gone on the Stock Exchange for six months; but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and bears? He had been a tea-merchant for a little longer, but had soon tired of pekoe and souchong. Then he had tried selling dry sherry. That did not answer; the sherry was a little too dry. Ultimately he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and no profession.
To make matters worse, he was in love. The girl he loved was Laura Merton, the daughter of a retired Colonel who had lost his temper and his digestion in India, and had never found either of them again. Laura adored him, and he was ready to kiss her shoe-strings. They were the handsomest couple in London, and had not a penny-piece between them. The Colonel was very fond of Hughie, but would not hear of any engagement.
“Come to me, my boy, when you have got ten thousand pounds of your own, and we will see about it,” he used to say; and Hughie looked very glum in those days, and had to go to Laura for consolation.
One morning, as he was on his way to Holland Park, where the Mertons lived, he dropped in to see a great friend of his, Alan Trevor. Trevor was a painter. Indeed, few people escape that nowadays. But he was also an artist, and artists are rather rare. Personally he was a strange rough fellow, with a freckled face and a red, ragged beard. However, when he took up the brush he was a real master, and his pictures were eagerly sought after. He had been very much attracted by Hughie at first, it must be acknowledged, entirely on account of his personal charm. “The only people a painter should know,” he used to say, “are people who are beautiful, people who are an artistic pleasure to look at and an intellectual repose to talk to. Men who are dandies and women who are darlings rule the world, at least they should do so.” However, after he got to know Hughie better, he liked him quite as much for his bright, buoyant spirits and his generous, reckless nature, and had given him the permanent entrance to his studio.
When Hughie came in he found Trevor putting the finishing touches to a wonderful life-size picture of a beggar-man. The beggar himself was standing on a raised platform in a corner of the studio. He was a wizened old man, with a face like wrinkled parchment, and a most piteous expression. Over his shoulder was flung a coarse brown cloak, all tears and tatters; his thick boots were patched and cobbled, and with one hand he leant on a rough stick, while with the other he held out his battered hat for alms.
“What an amazing model!” whispered Hughie, as he shook hands with his friend.
“An amazing model?” shouted Trevor at the top of his voice; “I should think so! Such beggars as he are not to be met with every day. A living Velasquez! My stars! what an etching Rembrandt would have made of him!”
“Poor old chap!” said Hughie, “how miserable he looks! But I suppose, to you painters, his face is his fortune?”
“Certainly,” replied Trevor, “you don’t want a beggar to look happy, do you?”
“How much does a model get for sitting?” asked Hughie, as he found himself a comfortable seat on a divan.
“A shilling an hour.”
“And how much do you get for your picture, Alan?”
“Oh, for this I get two thousand!”
“Pounds?”
“Guineas. Painters, poets, and physicians always get guineas.”
“Well, I think the model should have a percentage,” cried Hughie, laughing; “they work quite as hard as you do.”
“Nonsense, nonsense! Why, look at the trouble of laying on the paint alone, and standing all day long at one’s easel! It’s all very well, Hughie, for you to talk, but I assure you that there arc moments when Art almost attains to the dignity of manual labour. But you mustn’t chatter; I’m very busy. Smoke a cigarette, and keep quiet,”
After some time the servant came in, and told Trevor that the framemaker wanted to speak to him.
“Don’t run away, Hughie,” he said, as he went out, “I will be back in a moment.”
The old beggar-man took advantage of Trevor’s absence to rest for a moment on a wooden bench that was behind him. He looked so forlorn and wretched that Hughie could not help pitying him, and felt in his pockets to see what money he had. All he could find was a sovereign and some coppers. “Poor old fellow,” he thought to himself, “he wants it more than I do, but it means no hansoms for a fortnight”; and he walked across the studio and slipped the sovereign into the beggar’s hand.
The old man started, and a faint smile flitted across his withered lips. “Thank you, sir,” he said, “thank you.”
Then Trevor arrived, and Hughie took his leave, blushing a little at what he had done. He spent the day with Laura, got a charming scolding for his extravagance, and had to walk home.
That night he strolled into the Palette Club about eleven o’clock, and found Trevor sitting by himself in the smoking-room drinking hock and seltzer.
“Well, Alan, did you get the picture finished all right?” he said, as he lit his cigarette.
“Finished and framed, my boy!” answered Trevor; “and, bye the bye, you have made a conquest. That old model you saw is quite devoted to you. I had to tell him all about you — who you are, where you live. What your income is, what prospects you have — “
“My dear Alan,” cried Hughie, “I shall probably find him waiting for me when I go home. But, of course, you are only joking. Poor old wretch! I wish I could do something for him. I think it is dreadful that any one should be so miserable. I have got heaps of old clothes at home — do you think he would care for any of them? Why, his rags were falling to bits.”
“But he looks splendid in them,” said Trevor. “I wouldn’t paint him in a frock coat for anything. What you call rags I call romance. What seems poverty to you is picturesqueness to me. However, I’ll tell him of your offer.”
“Alan,” said Hughie seriously, “you painters are a heartless lot.”
“An artist’s heart is his head” replied Trevor; “and besides, our business is to realize the world as we see it, not to reform it as we know it. And now tell me how Laura is. The old model was quite interested in her.”
“You don’t mean to say you talked to him about her?” said Hughie.
“Certainly I did. He knows all about the relentless colonel, the lovely Laura, and the £10,000.”
“You told that old beggar all my private affairs?” cried Hughie, looking very red and angry.
“My dear boy,” said Trevor, smiling, “that old beggar, as you call him, is one of the richest men in Europe. He could buy all London to-morrow without overdrawing his account. He has a house in every capital, dines off gold plate, and can prevent Russia going to war when he chooses.”
“What on earth do you mean?” exclaimed Hughie.
“What I say,” said Trevor. The old man you saw to-day in the studio was Baron Hausberg. He is a great friend of mine, buys all my pictures and that sort of thing, and gave me a commission a month ago to paint him as a beggar. A fantasy of a millionaire! And I must say he made a magnificent figure in his rags, or perhaps I should say in my rags; they are an old suit I got in Spain.”
“Baron Hausberg!” cried Hughie. “Good heavens! I gave him a sovereign!” and he sank into an arm-chair the picture of dismay.
“Gave him a sovereign!” shouted Trevor, and he burst into a roar of laughter. “My dear boy, you’ll never see it again.”
“I think you might have told me, Alan,” said Hughie sulkily, “and not have let me make such a fool of myself.”
“Well, to begin with, Hughie,” said Trevor, “it never entered my mind that you went about distributing alms in that reckless way. I can understand your kissing a pretty model, but your giving a sovereign to an ugly one — by Jove, no! Besides, the fact is that I really was not at home to-day to any one; and when you came in I didn’t know whether Hausberg would like his name mentioned. You know he wasn’t in full dress.”
“What a duffer he must think me!” said Hughie.
“Not at all. He was in the highest spirits after you left; kept chuckling to himself and rubbing his old wrinkled hands together. I couldn’t make out why he was so interested to know all about you; but I see it all now. He’ll invest your sovereign for you, Hughie, pay you the interest every six months, and have a capital story to tell after dinner.”
“I am an unlucky devil,” growled Hughie. “The best thing I can do is to go to bed; and, my dear Alan, you mustn’t tell any one. I shouldn’t dare show my face in the Row.”
“Nonsense! It reflects the highest credit on your philanthropic spirit, Hughie. And don’t run away. Have another cigarette, and you can talk about Laura as much as you like.”
However, Hughie wouldn’t stop, but walked home, feeling very unhappy, and leaving Alan Trevor in fits of laughter.
The next morning, as he was at breakfast, the servant brought him up a card on which was written, Monsieur Gustave Naudin, de la part de M. le Baron Hausberg1. “I suppose he has come for an apology,” said Hughie to himself; and he told the servant to show the visitor up.
An old gentleman with gold spectacles and grey hair came into the room, and said, in a slight French accent, “Have I the honour of addressing Monsieur Erskine?”
Hughie bowed.
“I have come from Baron Hausberg,” he continued. “The Baron — “
“I beg, sir, that you will offer him my sincerest apologies,” stammered Hughie.
“The Baron,” said the old gentleman with a smile, “has commissioned me to bring you this letter,” and he extended a sealed envelope.
On the outside was written, “A wedding present to Hugh Erskine and Laura Merton, from an old beggar,” and inside was a cheque for £10,000.
When they were married Alan Trevor was the best man, and the Baron made a speech at the wedding breakfast.
“Millionaire models,” remarked Alan, “are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still!”
1.
Consider the tone in the short story. Can you point out some
instances in the text that contribute to the creation of such tone?
2. What is the author’s attitude to the main character? Explain. Compare the ways Hugh Erskine and his richer friend Alan Trevor are introduced in the story.
3. What made Baron Hausberg ensure Hugh Erskine’s happiness? What do you think Baron liked about the young man?
4. Interpret the word-play in the last sentence. What ideas does it suggest?
5. What is the author’s purpose in creating the story?
10.
J. Mark
Teeth
Eric still lives in the town where we grew up. He says he wants to stay close to his roots. That’s a good one. You can say that again. Roots.
Some people are rich because they are famous. Some people are famous just for being rich. Eric Donnelly is one of the second sort, but I knew him before he was either, when we were at Victoria Road Primary together. I don’t really know Eric any more, but I can read about him in the papers any time, same as you can. He was in one of the colour supplements last Sunday, with a photograph of his house all over a double-page spread. You need a double-page spread to take in Eric these days. He was being interviewed about the things he really considers important in life, which include, in the following order, world peace, conservation, foreign travel (to promote world peace, of course, not for fun), his samoyeds (a kind of very fluffy wolf) and his wife. He didn’t mention money but anyone who has ever known Eric — for three years like I did or even for five minutes — knows that on Eric’s list it comes at the top, way in front of world peace. In the photo he was standing with the wife and three of the samoyeds in front of the house, trying to look ordinary. To prove how ordinary he is he was explaining how he used to be very poor and clawed his way up using only his own initiative. Well, that’s true as far as it goes: his own initiative and his own claws — and other people’s teeth. He didn’t mention the teeth.
“Well,” says Eric modestly, in the Sunday supplement, “it’s a standing joke, how I got started. Cast-iron baths.” That too is true as far as it goes. When Eric was fifteen he got a job with one of those firms that specialize in house clearances. One day they cleared a warehouse which happened to contain two hundred and fifty Victorian cast-iron baths with claw feet. It occurred to Eric that there were a lot of people daft enough to actually want a Victorian bath with claw feet; people, that is, who hadn’t had to grow up with them, so he bought the lot at a knock-down price, did them up and flogged them. That bit’s well known, but in the Sunday supplement he decided to come clean. He came clean about how he’d saved enough money to buy the baths in the first place by collecting scrap metal, cast-offs, old furniture and returnable bottles. “A kind of rag-and-bone man,” said Eric, with the confidence of a tycoon who can afford to admit that he used to be a rag-and-bone man because he isn’t one any more. He still didn’t mention the teeth.
I first met Eric Donnelly in the Odeon one Saturday morning during the kids’ show. I’d seen him around at school before — he was in the year above mine — but here he was sitting next to me. I was trying to work out one of my front teeth which had been loose for ages and was now hanging by a thread. I could open and shut it, like a door, but it kept getting stuck and I’d panic in case it wouldn’t go right side round again. In the middle of the millionth episode of Thunder Riders it finally came unstuck and shot out. I just managed to field it and after having a quick look I shoved it in my pocket. Eric leaned over and said in my earhole, “What are you going to do with that, then?”
“Put it under me pillow,” I said. “Me mum’ll give me sixpence for it.”
“Oh, the tooth fairy”1, said Eric. I hadn’t quite liked to mention the tooth fairy. I was only eight but I knew already what happened to lads who went round talking about fairies.
“Give it to us, then,” Eric said. I’ll pay you sixpence.”
“Do you collect them?” I asked him.
“Sort of,” said Eric. “Go on — sixpence. What about it?”
“But me mum knows it’s loose,” I said.
“Sevenpence, then.”
“She’ll want to know where it went.”
“Tell her you swallowed it,” Eric said. “She won’t care.”
He was right, and I didn’t care either, although I cared a lot about the extra penny. You might not believe this, but a penny — an old penny — was worth something then, that is, you noticed the difference between having it and not having it. I've seen my own kids lose a pound and not think about it as much as I thought about that extra penny. Eric was already holding it out on his palm in the flickering darkness — one penny and two threepenny bits. I took them and gave him the tooth in a hurry — I didn’t want to miss any more of Thunder Riders.
“Your tooth’s gone, then,” my mum said, when I came home and she saw the gap.
“I swallowed it,” I said, looking sad. “Never mind,” she said, and I could see she was relieved that the tooth fairy hadn’t got to fork out another sixpence. I’d lost two teeth the week before. They started coming out late but once they got going there was no holding them and my big brother Ted was still shedding the odd grinder. She gave me a penny, as a sort of consolation prize, so I was tuppence up on that tooth. I didn’t tell her about flogging it to Eric Donnelly for sevenpence. She’d have thought it was a bit odd. I thought it was a bit odd myself.
It was half-term that weekend so I didn’t see Eric till we were back at school on Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday. Half-terms were short, then, like everything else: trousers, money… He was round the back of the bog with Brian Ferris.
“Listen,” Eric was saying, “threepence, then.”
“Nah,” said Brian, “I want to keep it.”
“But you said your mum did’t believe in the tooth fairy,” Eric persisted. “You been losing teeth for two years for nothing! If you let me have it you’ll get threepence — fourpence.”
“I want it,” said Brian. “I want to keep it in a box and watch it go rotten.”
“Fivepence,” said Eric.
“It’s mine. I want it.” Brian walked away and Eric retired defeated, but at dinner time I caught him at it again with Mary Arnold, over by the railings.
“How much does your tooth fairy give you?” he asked.
“A shilling,” said Mary, smugly.
“No deal, then,” Eric said, shrugging.
“But I’ll let you have it for thixpenth,” said Mary, and smiled coyly.
I started to keep an eye on Eric after that, him and his collection. It wasn’t what he was collecting that was strange — Tony Mulholland collected bottle tops — it was the fact that he was prepared to pay. I noticed several things. First, the size of the tooth had nothing to do with the amount that Eric would cough up. A socking great molar might go for a penny, while a little worn-down bottom incisor would change hands at sixpence or sevenpence. Also, that he would never go above elevenpence. That was his ceiling. No one ever got a shilling out of Eric Donnelly, even for a great big thing with roots. Charlie McEvoy had one pulled by the dentist and brought it to school for Eric but Eric only gave him sevenpence for it.
“Here, Charlie,” I said, at break. “What’s he do with them?”
“Search me,” said Charlie, “he’s had three of mine.”
“D’you have a tooth fairy at home?” I was beginning to smell a rat.
“Yes,” said Charlie. “Let’s go and beat up Ferris.” He was a hard man, was McEvoy; started early.
“No — hang about. How much?”
“Sixpence.” I was quite surprised. I wouldn’t have put it past old McEvoy to keep a blunt instrument under the pillow, bean the tooth fairy and swipe the night’s takings. He was a big fellow, even at eight. I wasn’t quite so big, but Eric, although he was a year older, was smaller than me. That day I followed him home.
It was not easy to follow Eric home. They tended to marry early in that family so Eric not only had a full set of grandparents but also two great-grandmothers and enough aunties to upset the national average. As his mum seemed to have a baby about every six months Eric was always going to stay with one of them or another. He was heading for one of his great-grandmas that evening, along Jubilee Crescent. I nailed him down by the phone box.
“Listen, Donnelly,” I said. “What are you doing with all them teeth?”
Give him credit, he didn’t turn a hair. A lot of kids would have got scared, but not Eric. He just said, “You got one for me, then?”
“Well, no,” I said, “but I might have by Saturday.”
“Sevenpence?” said Eric, remembering the previous transaction, I suppose. He had a head for figures.
“Maybe,” I said, “but I want to know what you do with them.”
“What if I won’t tell you?” Eric said.
“I’ll knock all yours out,” I suggested, so he told me. As I thought, it was all down to the grannies and aunties. They were sorry for poor little Eric — Dad out of work, all those brothers and sisters and no pocket money. If he lost a tooth while he was staying with one of them he put it under the pillow and the tooth fairy paid up. There being two great-grannies, two grannies and seven aunties, it was hard for anyone to keep tabs on the number of teeth Eric lost and it hadn’t taken him long to work out that if he didn’t overdo things he could keep his eleven tooth fairies in business for years. Kids who didn’t have a tooth fairy of their own were happy to flog him a fang for a penny. If he had to pay more than sixpence the tooth went to Great-Granny Ennis, who had more potatoes than the rest of them put together.
By the time that he was eleven I calculate that Eric Donnelly had lost one hundred teeth, which is approximately twice as many as most of us manage to lose in a lifetime. With the money he saved he bought a second-hand barrow and toured the streets touting for scrap, returnable bottles and so on, which was what earned him enough to buy the two hundred and fifty Victorian baths with claw feet which is the beginning of the public part of Eric’s success story, where we came in. I suppose there is some justice in the fact that at thirty-eight Eric no longer has a single tooth he can call his own.
No — I am not Eric’s dentist. I am his dustman, and I sometimes catch a glimpse of the old cushion grips as I empty the bin. Occasionally I turn up just as Eric is leaving for a board meeting. He flashes his dentures at me in a nervous grin and I give him a cheery wave like honest dustmen are meant to do.
“Morning, Donnelly,” I shout merrily. “Bought any good teeth lately?” He hates that.
1.
Comment on the functions of the title of the short story.
2. Define the forms of presentation and explain through whose perception the events of the story are filtered.
3. What tone is established throughout the story? Support your opinion by giving references to the text.
4. What is the narrator’s attitude to Eric Donnelly? Explain. Do you view the central character as a sympathetic person?
5. What is the author’s message to the reader?
11.
E. Hemingway
Cat in the Rain
There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced the public garden and the war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colours of the hotels facing the gardens and the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dropped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain. The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the cafe a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.
The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.
“I’m going down and get that kitty,” the American wife said.
“I’ll do it,” her husband offered from the bed.
“No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table.”
The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.
“Don’t get wet,” he said.
The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.
“Il piove”1 the wife said. She liked the hotel-keeper.
“Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather.”
He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.
Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape was crossing the empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.
“You must not get wet,” she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her.
“Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?”2
“There was a cat,” said the American girl.
“A cat?”
“Si, il gatto.”
“A cat?” the maid laughed. “A cat in the rain?”
“Yes,” she said, “under the table.” Then, “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.”
When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.
“Come, Signora,” she said. “We must get back inside. You will be wet.”
“I suppose so,” said the American girl.
They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone3 bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed, reading.
“Did you get the cat?” he asked, putting the book down.
“It was gone.”
“Wonder where it went to,” he said, resting his eyes from reading.
She sat down on the bed.
“I wanted it so much,” she said. “I don’t know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.”
George was reading again.
She went over and sat in front of the mirror of the dressing table looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of her head and her neck.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?” she asked, looking at her profile again.
George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy’s.
“I like it the way it is.”
“I get so tired of it,” she said. “I get so tired of looking like a boy.”
George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.
“You look pretty darn nice,” he said.
She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.
“I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,” she said. “I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”
“Yeah,” George said from the bed.
“And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.”
“Oh, shut up and get something to read,” George said. He was reading again.
His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees.
“Anyway, I want a cat,” she said, “I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”
George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square.
Someone knocked at the door.
“Avanti”1, George said. He looked up from his book.
In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoise-shell cat pressed tight against her and swung down against her body.
“Excuse me,” she said, “the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora.”
1.
Describe the characters of the husband and the wife as fully as you
can. Why do you think the author uses the word husband
in the first half of the story and then the name George
in the second half? Why is not the American girl given any actual
name?
2. What are the functions respectively of the hotel-keeper and the maid in the development of the story?
3. What is the significance of rain in the story?
4. What do you feel the cat symbolizes in the context of the whole story? Do you believe that the cat at the end of the story is the same that the girl saw earlier through the hotel window? Give your reasoning.
5. Why do you think Hemingway ended the story in the way he did? What do you feel this ending suggests?
12.
J. Winterson
O’Brien’s First Christmas
Anyone who looked up could see it. TWENTY-SEVEN SHOPPING DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS, in red letters, followed by a stream of dancing Santas, then a whirlwind of angels, trumpets rampant.
The department store was very large. If you were to lay its merchandise from end to end, starting with a silk stocking and ending with a plastic baby Jesus, you would encompass the world. The opulence of the store defeated all shoppers. Even in the hectic twenty-seven days before Christmas, no mass exodus of goods could have made the slightest impression on the well-stocked shelves.
O’Brien worked in the pet shop. She had watched women stacking their baskets with hand and body lotion in attractive rein-deer wrap. Customers, who looked normal, had fallen in delight upon pyramids of fondant creams packed in “Bethlehem by night” boxes. It made no difference; whatever they demolished returned. This phenomenon, as far as O’Brien could calculate, meant that two-thirds of the known world would be eating sticky stuff or spreading it over themselves from December 25th onwards.
O’Brien didn’t like Christmas. Every year she prayed for an ordinary miracle to take her away from the swelling round of ageing aunts who gave her knitted socks and asked about her young man. She didn’t have a young man. She lived alone and worked in the pet shop for company. At thirty-five per cent staff discount, it made sense for her to have a pet of her own, but her landlady, a Christian Scientist, didn’t like what she called “stray molecules”.
“Hair,” she said, “carries germs, and what is hairier than an animal?” So O’Brien faced another Christmas alone.
In the department store, shoppers enjoyed the kind of solidarity we read about in the war years. There was none of the vulgar pushing and shoving so usually associated with peak-time buying. People made way for one another in the queues and chatted about the weather and the impending snowfall.
“Snow for Christmas,” said one, “that’s how it should be.”
It was right and nice; enough money, enough presents, clean log fires courtesy of the Gas Board, and snow for the children.
O’Brien leafed through the Lonely Hearts. There were always extra pages of them at Christmas, just as there was extra everything else. How could it be that column after column of sane, loving, slim men and women without obvious perversions were spending Christmas alone? Were the people in the department store a beguiling minority?
She had once answered a Lonely Hearts advertisement and had dinner with a small young man who mended organ pipes. He had suggested they get married by special licence. O’Brien had declined on the grounds that a whirlwind romance would tire her out after so little practice. It seemed rather like going to advanced aerobics when you couldn’t manage five minutes on an exercise bicycle. She had asked him why he was in such a hurry.
“I have a heart condition,” he said.
So it was like aerobics after all.
After that, she had joined a camera club where a number of men had been keen to help her in the darkroom, but all of them had square hairy hands that reminded her of joke-shop gorilla paws.
“Don’t set your sights too high,” her aunts warned.
But she did. She set them in the constellations, in the roaring lion and the flanks of the bull. In December, when the stars were bright, she saw herself in another life, and happy.
“You’ve got to have a dream,” she told the Newfoundland pup, destined to become a Christmas present, “I don’t know what I want, I’m just drifting.”
She’d heard that men knew what they wanted, so she asked Clive, the floor manager. “I’d like to run my own branch of McDonald’s,” he said. “A really big one where they do breakfasts.”
O’Brien tried but she couldn’t get excited.
When she returned to her lodgings that evening her landlady was solemnly nailing a holly wreath to the front door. “This is not for myself, you understand, it is for my tenants. Next, I will put up some paper-chains in the hall.”
O’Brien’s landlady always spoke very slowly because she had once been a Hungarian countess. A countess does not rush her words.
O’Brien, still in her red duffel coat, found herself holding on to one end of a paper-chain while her landlady creaked up the aluminium steps, six tacks between her teeth.
“Soon be Christmas,” said O’Brien, “and I’m making a New Year’s resolution to change my life, otherwise what’s the point?”
“Life has no point,” said her landlady. “You would do better to get married or start an evening class. For the last seven years I have busied myself with brass rubbings.”
The hall was cold, the paper-chain was too short, and O’Brien didn’t want advice. She made her excuses and mounted the stairs. Her landlady, perhaps stung by a pang of sympathy, offered her a can of sardines for supper. “They are not in tomato sauce but olive oil.”
O’Brien, though, had other plans.
Inside her room she started to make a list of the things people thought of as their future. Marriage, children, a career, travel, a home, enough money, lots of money. Christmas time brought these things sharply into focus. If you had them, any of them, you could feel especially pleased with life over the twelve days of feasting and family. If you didn’t have them, you felt your lack more keenly. You felt like an outsider. Odd that a festival intended to celebrate the most austere of births should become the season of conspicuous consumption. O’Brien didn’t know much about theology but she knew there had been a muck-up somewhere.
As she looked at the list, she began to realize that an off-the-peg future, however nicely designed, wouldn’t be the life she sensed when she looked at the stars. Immediately she felt guilty. Who was she to imagine she could find something better than most people’s best?
“What’s wrong with settling down and getting married?” she said out loud.
“Nothing,” said her landlady, appearing round the door without knocking. “It’s normal. We should all try to be normal,” and she put the sardines down in O’Brien’s kitchenette and left.
“Nothing wrong,” said O’Brien, “but what’s right for me?”
She lay awake through the night, listening to the radio beaming out songs for Christmas. She wanted to stay under the blankets for ever, being warm and watching the bar of the electric fire. She remembered a story she’d read as a child about a princess invited to a ball. Her father offered her more than two hundred gowns to choose from, but none of them quite fitted and they were difficult to alter. At last she went in her silk shirt with her hair down. Still she was more beautiful than anyone.
“Be yourself,” said O’Brien, not sure what she meant.
At the still point of the night, O’Brien awoke feeling she was no longer alone in the room. She was right. At the bottom of her bed sat a young woman wearing an organza tutu. O’Brien didn’t bother to panic, she was used to her neighbour’s friends blundering into the wrong room.
“Vicky’s next door,” she said. “Do you want the light on?”
“I’m the Christmas Fairy,” said the woman. “Do you want to make a wish?”
“Come on,” said O’Brien, realizing her visitor must be drunk, “I’ll show you the way.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said the woman. “This is the address I was given. Do you want love or adventure or what? We don’t do money.”
O’Brien thought for a moment. Perhaps this was a new kind of singing telegram. She decided to play along, hoping to discover the sender.
“What can you offer?”
The stranger pulled out a photograph album. “In here are all the eligible men in London. It’s indexed, so if you want one with a moustache you look under “M”, where you’ll also find moles.”
“Shouldn’t you be singing all this?” asked O’Brien, thinking that it was time to change the subject.
“Why,” said the fairy. “Does conversation bother you?”
“No, but you’re a singing telegram, aren’t you?”
“I am not, I am a fairy. Now what’s your wish?”
“OK,” said O’Brien, wanting to go back to sleep, “I wish I was blonde.”
Then she must have gone back to sleep straight away because the next thing she heard was the alarm ringing in her ears.
She dozed, she was late, no time for anything, just into her red duffel coat and out into a street full of shoppers, mindful of their too few days to go.
At work, on her way up to the pet department, Janice from lingerie said, “You hair’s fantastic, I didn’t recognize you at first.”
O’Brien was confused. She hadn’t had time to brush it. Was it standing on end? She went into the ladies and peered in the mirror. She was blonde.
“It really suits you,” said Kathleen from fabrics and furnishings, “but you should do more with your make-up now.”
“Do more with my make-up?” thought O’Brien, who didn’t do anything.
She decided to go back home, but in the lift on the way down, she met the actor from RADA1 who had come to play Santa.
“Listen,” he said, “there’s two dozen inflatable gnomes in the basement. I’ve got to blow them up. If you’ll help me, I’ll buy you lunch.”
For the first time in her life, O’Brien abandoned herself to chaos and decided it didn’t matter. What surprises could remain for a woman who’d been visited in the middle of the night by a non-singing telegram and subsequently turned blonde? Blowing up gnomes was child’s play.
“I like your hair,” said the RADA Santa.
“Thanks,” said O’Brien. “I’ve only just had it done.”
At the vegetarian cafe, where every lentil bake came with its own sprig of holly, the RADA Santa asked O’Brien if she’d like to come for Christmas dinner. “There won’t be any roast corpse, though.”
“That’s OK,” said O’Brien. “I’m not a vegetarian but I don’t eat meat.”
“Then you’re a vegetarian.”
“Well, I haven’t joined anything. Aren’t you supposed to?”
“No,” said Santa. “You just get on with it, just be yourself.”
In the mirror on the wall, O’Brien smiled at her reflection and decided she was getting to like being herself. She didn’t go back to work that afternoon; instead she went shopping like everybody else. She bought new clothes, lots of food and a set of fairy lights. When the man at the veg stall offered her a cut-price Christmas tree, she shouldered it home. Her landlady saw her arriving.
“You are early today,” she said, very slowly. “I see you are going to get pine needles on my carpet.”
“Thanks for the sardines,” said O’Brien. “Have a bag of satsumas.”
“Your hair is not what it was last night. Did something happen to you?”
“Yes,” said O’Brien, “but it’s a secret.”
“I hope it was not a man.”
“No, it was a woman.”
O’Brien put potatoes in the oven and strung her window with fairy lights. Outside the sky was strung with stars.
At eight o’clock, when the RADA Santa arrived, wet and cold and still in uniform, O’Brien lit the candles beneath the tree. She said, “If you could make a wish, what would it be?”
“I’d wish to be here with you.”
“Even if I wasn’t blonde?”
“Even if you were bald.”
“Merry Christmas,” said O’Brien.
1A local theatre society.
1.
Define the genre of the short story. Give your reasoning.
2. Consider the time of the action. With what ideas and values is Christmas generally associated? How is the main character going to celebrate the holiday? What is her attitude to other people’s idea of celebrating Christmas?
3. Concentrate on the personality of the main character (her name, age, occupation, etc.). What are we allowed to know about her set of values, her likes and dislikes? How can you explain her choice of the wish? What would you choose in her place?
4. What effect did the realization of O’Brien’s wish produce on her? In what ways did the girl change?
5. Interpret the title of the short story. State its functions and try to explain why it was “the first” Christmas for the central character.
6. What do you think is necessary for changing your life if you are not happy about it?
13.
M. Whitaker
Hannah
The girl Hannah was seventeen, and she had made almost all that array of cakes and pastries on the kitchen dresser. She stood looking at them, her healthy pink face glowing with pride. She wore a blue dress and a white apron, and her hair waved down her back to her waist in a golden-brown shower.
The party should be a lovely one. All the girls from her Sunday-school class were coming, and four of the best-behaved boys as well. Then there was to be the young man, Thomas Henry Smithson, the one that all the girls secretly laughed at. Really, he was too conscientious, too lumberingly polite for anything. His hat seeemed always small, his trousers tight, his boots big. But her mother liked him. He helped to make things go, sang a few songs in a voice he called baritone, and never lost his temper.
Hannah felt that she could put up with anything so long as Ralph Wellings turned up. He was nineteen. A strange boy for the little, fat, jolly parson to have as his son! Hannah had heard that he was wild, but he never seemed wild to her. Sometimes they had met in the twilight, and he had walked along by her side through Pennyfoot woods to Hoyle’s farm and carried the dozen eggs that she had gone to fetch back with him in a sugar-bag.
Of course, you were supposed to be still a child at seventeen, but Hannah didn’t fell exactly like a child. She could talk to Ralph Wellings about the things she knew — the proper way to make candied toffee, the books she had recently found in the attic, old books in which all the esses were effs, the nicest hymn tunes. He never laughed at her, and she found that refreshing.
She loved him very much, admiring his forehead, for some reason, most of all. It was high and white. His blue-black hair, parted at the side, waved as beautifully as did hers. “If we get married and have some children, they’re sure to have curly hair,” she thought. She liked, too, his flecked hazel eyes and his long fingers with triangular nails. He called her “nice child”, and always seemed glad to see her.
She took her entraced gaze from the cakes and went into the dairy. The house had once been a farm, and the cool, stone-shelved room was still called the dairy. One side of it was laden with food. There was a whole, crumb-browned ham on a dish by the side of a meat-plate on which stood a perfectly cooked sirloin of beef. Another dish held four or five pounds of plump, cooked sausages. The trifles were ready, so were the stewed fruits for those who liked plainer sweets, and there was more cream, Hannah felt, than could possibly be used.
She ran out of the room, smiling with delight, to look for her mother.
“Are you getting ready, mother?” she called.
“Yes.”
Her mother stood, bare-armed, in front of the oval mirror, a worried look in her eyes, her mouth filled with steel hairpins. She had her skirt on, but her black satin bodice was flung over the curved bedrail.
“Aren’t you washed, child?” She seemed to speak harshly because of the hairpins. “The company’ll be here before we know where we are. We sh’ll have a rush, you’ll see.”
“Never mind, mother, everything looks lovely. Iwish the party was beginning just now.”
She ran out of the room and changed her dress in a perfect fury of speed. Her face was clean enough, her hands white. What was the use of washing over and over again? Now she was in the summer pink dress that made her look older than ever before. The skirt was flounced, and she jumped round ballooning it, running a comb through her hair at the same time.
“He’ll like me, he’ll like me, he will,” she chanted. And she ran across to her mother’s room and flung herself panting on the great bed.
“Hannah, Hannah, be a lady!” cried her mother, rebukingly.
Hannah seemed to have been asleep for a lomg time. She woke slowly, feeeling the grey light on her eyelids. Her hands, gnarled and shrunken, lay outside the blue-and-white coverlet. A shadowed white plait straggled over one shoulder, thinning to a thread-tied end as it reached her breast.
She moved a little, opened her eyes, and moistened her lips. The morning was sunny and still. It felt warm, warm. She dozed a little and went on thinking of the party her mother had given when she was seventeen. On that day Ralph Wellings had kissed her for the first time. Unknowingly she smiled. The pink dress with its flounces, she remembered that, too. How lovely it had been.
She looked up when the door opened and frowned a little, seeing an ugly, middle-aged woman with a paper-backed book in her hand.
“Well, grandma,” the woman said in a kind and cheerful voice, “I’ve been up a few times, but you were asleep. George is just going to the Post Office in the doctor’s car, so will you sign the pension form? He’s in a bit of a hurry. I’ll help you.”
She put a soft wrap about the old woman’s shoulders and supported her while she wrote. “H-a-n-n-a-h” she mouthed, then her attention was attracted by something else for a moment. She stared at the completed form and gave a fretful cry. “Oh, grandma, you’ve gone and done it again! We sh’ll have no end of bother. You’ve signed Hannah Wellings, and your name’s Smithson — Smithson — Smithson.”
1.
Regard the setting of the story carefully. How many years later does
the action of the second part take place?
2. Try to imagine the events that happened in Hannah’s life after the party. What was her life like in the years which are not shown in the story?
3. Why did not the main character marry the man she was in love with? What/who might have influenced the choice?
4. What do you feel all the dishes Hannah prepared for the party symbolize? Are there any more symbolically significant objects/details/events in the story?
5. What is the emotive key of the text? Which words and expressions help to establish it? Does the emotive colouring of the lexis change as the story progresses?
6. How can you explain that Hannah signed Wellings instead of Smithson?
14.
M. Armstrong
The Poets and the Housewife (a Fable)
Once upon a time, on a summer’s day, two poets, having shut up shop, went out into the country to collect copy, for their stock of this commodity was exhausted.
And they were careful to dress themselves carelessly: one put on a black collar and black-and-white checked trousers, and the other a cravat of raging scarlet, “for” they thought (though they did not say so) “we must dress the part”. And their hats were wide and reckless and the hair beneath their hats was like the thatch upon a broad-eaved barn.
And as they journeyed, poking about with their walking sticks after the precious substance of their quest, there gathered over their heads the devil of a storm.
And at the proper moment the storm burst and the rain came down and the poets left off seeking for copy and huddled under a hawthorn tree. And they appeared as two proud exotic birds, lighted down from the Lord knows where.
And there was a lodge near the hawthorn tree, and the lodge-keeper’s wife looked out and, seeing the two, she exclaimed: “Lord, look what the wet brings out!” And the rain increased fearfully.
And after a while she looked out again and the poets were changed, for their bloom was impaired, the rain had clotted their hair, and the scarlet cravat of the one had become crimson from saturation. And rain dripped from all their extremities.
And the lodgekeeper’s wife was grieved for them and called out: “Young men, will you not come in? Why play the heron who stands lugubrious with his feet in cold water when it is open to you to become as sparrows twittering with gladness beneath the eaves?”
But they bowed politely and replied: “Thanks awfully, ma’am, but we are poets and we like it.”
And the lodgekeeper’s wife was riled and sneered at them, remarking: “They have certainly had a drop too much.” But they, smiling deprecatingly upon her, responded: “Madam, you are pleased to be dry.” “And you,” quoth she, “are pleased to be wet.” And she slammed-to the window, casting up her eyes and inquiring rhetorically, “Did you ever?” and “What next?”
And the rain came down like hell, leaping a foot high and sousing all things.
And after another while, the lodgekeeper’s wife looked out again, and the two had gathered closer about the trunk of the hawthorn-tree, and they were as two old crows, for their shoulders were up and their beaks were down and they were unbelievably dishevelled.
And she shouted to them again, for she was a charitable woman, saying: “O miserable gentlemen, in the name of civilization and commonsense, come inside.”
But they dared not turn their faces to her, lest the water should run down their necks: so, revolving themselves all of a piece, they replied: “Renewed thanks, ma’am, but we are very well, for we are acquiring copy.” And they cowered under the deluge with great earnestness of purpose.
But the lodgekeeper’s wife did not understand the word copy, so that she was amazed beyond measure and the power of comment was taken from her.
And the storm, having stormed itself out, abated: and the place was bathed in delicious smells of breathing leaves, and the warm sweetness of hawthorn perfumed the air.
And the lodgekeeper’s wife looked out from the window a fourth and last time, and the poets were in the act of departure. And the tragedy of their appearance was beyond all comparing. For the scarlet of the cravat of one had run down into the bosom of his shirt, so that he was, as it were, a robin-redbreast. And both were soaked to the uttermost.
And when those poets were returned home, the one found that he had lost a shirt and the other that he had gained a cold. Therefore the one went out and bought a new shirt at seven and six and dear at that, and the other got himself a shilling bottle of Ammoniated Quinine1 which was tolerably cheap considering.
And the one wrote an ode called Midsummer Storm for which he obtained five guineas, so that (deducting fourpence for stamps and seven and six for the shirt) his net profit was four pounds seventeen and twopence.
But the other could only manage a one-guinea sonnet called Rain Among Leaves, so that (deducting fourpence for stamps and a shilling for the quinine) his net profit was nineteen and eightpence.
Thus the two acquired great store of copy (more, indeed, than they bargained for) and the sum of five pounds sixteen shillings and tenpence thrown in.
But the wife of the lodgekeeper knew nothing of all this, so that she still believes, like many another ill-informed person, that poets are nothing more than unpractical dreamers.
1.
Dwell on the title of the short story. What functions does it
perform?
2. Regard the subtitle — A Fable. What is a fable? Which features of this genre can you point out in the story? In what way is it different from a traditional fable?
3. Analyze the choice of words in the text. How can you characterize such words as quoth, cravat, to abate? Point out some more examples of words which help to imitate the style of the fable.
4. Have a closer look at the syntactic structure of the sentences. Many of them begin with And… or But…. What effect does this constant repetition produce?
5. In what way are the characters opposed? Can the two poets and the lodgekeeper’s wife be regarded as foils? How does the opposition help to disclose the main idea of the story? Give your reasoning.
15.
A. Cassidy
Shopping for One
“So what did you say?” Jean heard the blonde woman in front of her talking to her friend.
“Well,” the darker woman began, “I said I’m not having that woman there. I don’t see why I should. I mean I’m not being old-fashioned but I don’t see why I should have to put up with her at family occasions. After all…” Jean noticed the other woman giving an accompaniment of nods and headshaking at the appropriate parts. They fell into silence and the queue moved forward a couple of steps.
Jean felt her patience beginning to itch. Looking into her wire basket she counted ten items. That meant she couldn’t go through the quick till but simply had to wait behind elephantine shopping loads; giant bottles of coke crammed in beside twenty-pound bags of potatoes and “special offer” drums of bleach. Somewhere at the bottom, Jean thought, there was always a plastic carton of eggs or a see-through tray of tomatoes which fell casualty to the rest. There was nothing else for it — she’d just have to wait.
“After all,” the dark woman resumed her conversation, “how would it look if she was there when I turned up?” Her friend shook her head slowly from side to side and ended with a quick nod.
Should she have got such a small size salad cream? Jean wasn’t sure. She was sick of throwing away half-used bottles of stuff.
“He came back to you after all,” the blonde woman suddenly said. Jean looked up quickly and immediately felt her cheeks flush. She bent over and began to rearrange the items in her shopping basket.
“On his hands and knees,” the dark woman spoke in a triumphant voice. “Begged me take him back.”
She gritted her teeth together. Should she go and change it for a larger size? Jean looked behind and saw that she was hemmed in by three large trollies. She’d lose her place in the queue. There was something so pitiful about buying small sizes of everything. It was as though everyone knew.
“You can always tell a person by their shopping,” was one of her mother’s favourite maxims. She looked into her shopping basket: individual fruit pies, small salad cream, yoghurt, tomatoes, cat food and a chicken quarter.
“It was only for sex you know. He admitted as much to me when he came back,” the dark woman informed her friend. Her friend began to load her shopping on to the conveyor belt. The cashier was busy with a man who had been poised and waiting to write out a cheque for a few moments. His wife was loading what looked like a gross of fish fingers into a cardboard box marked “Whiskas”. It was called a division of labour.
Jean looked again at her basket and began to feel the familiar feeling of regret that visited her from time to time. Hemmed in between family-size cartons of cornflakes and giant packets of washing-powder, her individual yoghurt seemed to say it all. She looked up towards a plastic bookstand which stood beside the till. A slim glossy hardback caught her eye. The words Cooking for One screamed out from the front cover. Think of all the oriental foods you can get into, her friend had said. He was so traditional after all. Nodding in agreement with her thoughts Jean found herself eye to eye with the blonde woman, who, obviously not prepared to tolerate nodding at anyone else, gave her a blank, hard look and handed her what looked like a black plastic ruler with the words “Next customer please” printed on it in bold letters. She turned back to her friend. Jean put the ruler down on the conveyor belt.
She thought about their shopping trips, before, when they were together, which for some reason seemed to assume massive proportions considering there were only two of them. All that rushing round, he pushing the trolley dejectedly, she firing questions at him. Salmon? Toilet rolls? Coffee? Peas? She remembered he only liked processed kind. It was all such a performance. Standing there holding her wire basket, embarrassed by its very emptiness, was something out of a soap opera.
“Of course, we’ve had our ups and downs,” the dark woman continued, lazily passing a few items down to her friend who was now on to what looked like her fourth carrier bag.
Jean began to load her food on to the conveyor belt. She picked up the cookery book and felt the frustrations of indecision. It was only ninety pence but it seemed to define everything, to pinpoint her aloneness, to prescribe an empty future. She put it back in its place.
“That’s why I couldn’t have her there you see,” the dark woman was summing up. She lowered her voice to a loud whisper which immediately alerted a larger audience. “And anyway, when he settles back in, I’m sure we’ll sort out the other business then.” The friends exchanged knowing expressions and the blonde woman got her purse out of a neat leather bag. She peeled off three ten pound notes and handed them to the cashier.
Jean opened her carrier bag ready for her shopping. She turned to watch the two women as they walked off, the blonde pushing the trolley and the other seemingly carrying on with her story.
The cashier was looking expectantly at her and Jean realized that she had totalled up. It was four pounds and eighty-seven pence. She had the right money, it just meant sorting her change out. She had the inclination that the people behind her were becoming impatient. She noticed their stack of items all lined and waiting, it seemed, for starters orders. Brown bread and peppers, olive oil and lentils and, in the centre, a stray packet of beefburgers.
She gave over her money and picked up her carrier bag. She felt a sense of relief to be away from the mass of people. She felt out of place, a non conformer, half a consumer unit.
Walking out of the door she wondered what she might have for tea. Possibly chicken, she thought, with salad. Walking towards her car she thought that she should have bought the cookery book after all. She suddenly felt much better in the fresh air. She’d buy it next week. And in future she’d buy a large salad cream. After all, what if people came round unexpectedly?
1.
Why do you think the author chose the title Shopping
for One
for the story? How is it connected with the story’s themes and
concerns?
2. Dwell on the main character, Jean. What is the problem she is facing at present? What is her frame of mind? Explain.
3. Concentrate on the talk that Jean overhears. Can you guess what problems the two women were discussing? What is the author’s purpose in introducing this detail? Is Jean concerned with what other people might think of her? Do you think the negative attitude of others may aggravate Jean’s misery?
4. What significance in the story do the goods that people buy acquire? Which of the items mentioned symbolize family life? What does Jean’s half-empty basket symbolize? Consider the purchases Jean makes and explain why she feels half a consumer unit.
5. Do you regard the ending of the story as optimistic or pessimistic? Why?
SUPPLEMENT
TEST 1
Consider the information in Units 1—5 and accomplish the tasks given below. Check them with the keys.