Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

previous. He answered nothing. “Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him. “I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not. “What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?” He answered nothing. “Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the post-office? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?” He silently retired into his hermitage. I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it but prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations. Bartleby and I were alone. I remembered the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams and the still more unfortunate Colt in the solitary office of the latter; and how poor Colt, being dreadfully incensed by Adams, and imprudently permitting himself to get wildly excited, was at unawares hurried into his fatal act—an act which certainly no man could possibly deplore more than the actor himself. Often it had occurred to me in my ponderings upon the subject, that had that altercation taken place in the public street, or at a private residence, it would not have terminated as it did. It was the circumstance of being alone in a solitary office, up stairs, of a building entirely unhallowed by humanizing domestic associations—an uncarpeted office, doubtless, of a dusty, haggard sort of appearance;—this it must have been, which greatly helped to enhance the irritable desperation of the hapless Colt. But when this old Adam of resentment rose in me and tempted me concerning Bartleby, I grappled him and threw him. How? Why, simply by recalling the divine injunction: “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another.” Yes, this it was that saved me. Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy’s sake, and anger’s sake, and hatred’s sake, and selfishness’ sake, and spiritual pride’s sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity’s sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct. Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean any thing; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged. I endeavored also immediately to occupy myself, and at the same time to comfort my despondency. I tried to fancy that in the course of the morning, at such time as might prove agreeable to him. Bartleby, of his own free accord, would emerge from


and talk about books. “Our mums are best friends,” I explain, “and we’re the same age so we were best friends too. We applied to the same secondary school and stuck together, and I was…well.” I take a breath and when I exhale it shakes. “In primary school, I was the kid everyone made fun of.” “That’s rough,” Aurora says wryly. “Obviously, I can’t relate.” After a second of silence, we both burst into laughter. It’s the kind that knits your stomach muscles together but releases something deeper. I speak again, and it’s easier now. “When I made friends with Brad, I thought we were both…you know…He’s really short-sighted. He got contacts for football, but he used to wear these Coke-bottle glasses, and he had acne.” He still gets acne sometimes. He puts these star-shaped stickers on his face and everyone thinks it’s mind-blowingly cool, but if I get a single spot (which I do, twice a month, like clockwork), I get comments on TikTok telling me to wash my face. My theory is, there’s a special something that certain people just have, something that makes everyone around them breathless and witless with adoration. And he has it. He’s always had it. But I’m distracting myself when I should just get this over with. “I assumed we’d be bullied together,” I admit, “and I thought we could handle that. We didn’t need to, though, because it turns out when Brad is on your side, that stuff just doesn’t happen.” So guess what happens when he’s not on your side? Yeah. Oh, well. “Even back then, no one made fun of him because he was so beautiful—” Shit. I did not mean to say that. “—and charming,” I add quickly, smoothly (I hope). “You know how he is. You like him.” She’s blushing, appropriately shamefaced. “Well, yeah. He’s…” She waves a hand. “You know.” “Sure,” I say dryly. “I know.” “Honest!” she laughs, blushing harder. “He’s so honest! You feel how much he means everything, like…like he cares about every single word he says to you.” Yeah, I do feel that. It’s rocket fuel to the fire when he insults me. But four years ago, he squashed that quality, he squashed himself, to fit into a social box that wasn’t made for him. Brad is so much more than the popular crowd’s Nice Guy or the prettiest girl in school’s boyfriend. (Thank God that thing with Isabella Hollis didn’t last too long because watching him French-braid her hair in the cafeteria was honestly a gut-wrenching, nauseating travesty of hygiene and at one point I was on the verge of shaving her head for the good of the school biosystem and—) Anyway. The point is: he was Bradley Fucking Graeme and he was too special to play a crudely drawn role in some tacky 2000s high school movie. But he didn’t even know it. I tried to tell him. But he didn’t want to hear. Silence rings in my ears and I realize I haven’t spoken for a while. Instead, I’ve been sitting here


his ship, his crew.” Captain Wallace Ryder stood there. One arm was in a sling; his left ear was bandaged. He attempted a smile. “Come to check on me sweetheart.” Viv cursed under her breath and stormed off. “She’s right,” I said. “My intentions are self-serving here.” “Yeah, well, you’ve always been an asshole. Think it comes with the job. Let me help make you even less popular. My totally un-medical opinion tells me we have ten, maybe twelve, pilots ready to be released soon. I’ve been ordered to my quarters for rest and recuperation. How’s it looking in Flight Bay?” I looked about HealthBay and then back to my friend. “Honestly? Not so different than here.” “Yeah, we’ve taken it in the shorts. I get that, Quintos. But we’ve been right here before. We’ll come out of this—” “I don’t need a pep talk, Ryder. What’s waiting for us beyond the remnants of that destroyed world is far more than a few Ziu scout ships. Go to your quarters, follow Viv’s directives, and get some rest.” I squeezed his shoulder and headed for the exit. Across the compartment, I momentarily caught Viv’s eye. She looked away. My Jadoo ring vibrated. Without looking at it, I said, “Go for Captain.” “Captain, I believe we have it worked out.” I stopped outside in the corridor. “Go on, Coogong.” “I believe we’re ready …” “You’ll have to be more specific. Ready for what?” “To jump us out of here, Captain. To return us to our own universe.” I had a lot of questions. What were the odds of success? What about Wrath and Portent? How long would it take to get things going? But instead of wasting even a moment’s time, I said, “Where are you?” “I’m on the bridge, Captain. We’re all on the bridge.” “On my way.” Having just quansported, I literally sprinted into the bridge. “Sitrep!” I barked, now seeing not only Coogong but also Captain Loggins and Captain Church. Akari said, “We’ve been busy.” She looked to Coogong to take it from there. The Thine scientist glanced to Church and Loggins and raised his stick-figure hands, conveying I should slow down and take a breath. “The not-so-good news first. Both Wrath’s and Portent’s drive compensator circuits have been, for lack of a better way of putting it, overwritten.” I looked to Church and Loggins. Neither looked overly concerned. Okay … Coogong continued, “With that said, Adams will have to make the jump for all three vessels. Together, we will make the … maneuver.” The ship suddenly shook to the point I had to reach out for the captain’s mount armrest. “What was that?” Akari said, “That would be Boundless Wrath cozying up to our starboard side. Portent is already on our port side. Mooring clamps have been secured. For all intents and purposes, we are now one ship.” I was impressed and a tad speechless. Hardy said, “Understand, this might not work. We might tear apart from one another; we might have miscalculated things …” “Uh … Captain?” Grimes said


does. We don’t have a marketing budget. We don’t have commercials or billboards—we have word of mouth and that’s it. We have to dial the fear up to ten so the guests can run home and tell all their friends how scared they were. That’s what keeps people, with what I’m convinced is some kind of masochistic streak, coming up here night after night. As our season approaches its end, I’m left planning for the final Camp Mirror Lake experience—the biggest night of our season. We put everything into it, and this year is going to be the best send-off in Camp Mirror Lake history. I can feel it in my bones. We have brand-new squibs, a better recipe for more realistic-looking fake blood, and I’m way too excited to see Kyle use the newly renovated trapdoor in the main lodge to pop up on unsuspecting guests who always think it’s a good idea to hide in the kitchen. Only three more days until the big show, and I’m so hyped I can hardly stand it. Our checkout policy states that all guests must exit the camp as soon as the game officially ends, and that means seeing people off at nearly one in the morning. After I check everyone out, including Brandon and his now-ex-girlfriend, Leslie, I do my final walk through of the main office and the western lodge; then I retreat to Lakeview Cabin #1, the place I call home for most of the summer. Every time a game ends, its conclusion brings me one step closer to having to go home. I’d rather be out in these woods being chased by a fake serial killer than head home to Groton where my mom and her boyfriend, Rob, can pretend I don’t exist. We live in Cedra Court, a motel that had been converted into apartments sometime in the late nineties. I think that might have been the worst idea anyone has ever had. It never really feels like home, just a place to stay. In my mom’s eyes, Rob can do no wrong even though Rob, at his big age, can’t hold a job, and there’s a permanent outline of his body on the couch because he sits in the same spot every single day. He drinks too much and spends my mom’s money like she’s not working two jobs just to stay afloat, but somehow I’m still the biggest problem he has. The best thing he’s ever done for me is hand me the job listing for Camp Mirror Lake. I shake myself, trying to somehow reverse the rot those memories have caused. I take out my earpiece to clean it off. Fake blood is caked around the little cord that connects the earpiece to the battery pack that clips on to the waist of my jeans. I pineapple my hair, tuck it under a plastic cap, grab my shower kit and a flashlight, and slip on my shower shoes. The cabins don’t have private showers, so I have to make my way to the community stalls.


enough." The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the house. It was this: "Pretty thin -- as long a dream as that, without any mistakes in it!" What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing, but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as --------------------------------------------------------- -184- if he had been the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a circus. At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their adventures to hungry listeners -- but they only began; it was not a thing likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached. Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished, maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her -- she should see that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter when she made a capture; --------------------------------------------------------- -185- but he noticed that she always made her captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp pang and


so she got twice as many. The Calvins’ presents were the best. The Calvins were very old and didn’t have any children of their own, and they’d known her since she was a little baby, so they always gave her something her mom said was too nice. This year they visited the Calvins the day before Christmas Eve, the last visit of the season. That night they’d have cheese toast and tomato soup because her mom was resting for Christmas Eve, when she’d cook all day for supper and then at midnight they’d go for the candlelight service at church. After that they’d go to bed and Santa would come, then it would be Christmas morning, and presents, and then all the cousins would come and stay all day and into the night, and they’d bring covered dishes and she could eat as much as she wanted. The Calvins represented the end of the visits and the start of two days of fun. Patricia and Martin Calvin lived in a bungalow out at the far end of Pitt Street by the ruined old bridge, on a big lot with a long driveway. To Louise, going to their house always felt like driving to the country, even though they lived less than a mile away. Their mom parked in the drive and turned around over the seat to make sure their hats and gloves were on and their jackets were zipped up, then she let them out and they crunched across the frosted grass and rang the Calvins’ doorbell. Martin Calvin opened the door and let them in. It was warm inside and smelled like Christmas trees, and they had on lamps and a fire, and everything was dim and orange and glowed. Mr. Calvin pulled two boxes out from under the tree with its pulsing green, yellow, and red lights. Louise put Pupkin next to her and carefully peeled off her paper to reveal a Spirograph. She traced the big round letters on the cover of the box with one finger, then opened it to see the hot pink harness, the yellow ruler, the different-size blue tips, each with their own pocket to hold it. Her breath moved up into the back of her throat. “Thank you, Mr. Calvin,” she said. “Thank you, Mrs. Calvin.” “Marty,” her mom said, “it’s too much.” “Do you like that, honey?” Mr. Calvin asked. “It’s precious,” Louise said. She didn’t want to take it out of its box until she was home and could do it carefully and make sure she didn’t lose a piece, so instead she just kept opening the box and looking at how everything inside had a perfect place, touching them one after the other, rubbing their smooth edges with her fingertips. Mark got one of those super-detailed Hess trucks people bought at the gas station for five fill-ups and five dollars. He fell down hard on his bottom and pushed his Hess truck around on the floor. Their mom began to talk in hushed tones with Mrs. Calvin about her health.


the look of a well-loved book, spine broken, pages dog-eared and marked up. Now Turner’s lips quirked in a smile. “It sure does. But look again. Look at her.” Alex didn’t want to. She was still reeling from what she’d seen at Black Elm and now Turner was testing her. But then she saw it. “Her rings are loose.” “That’s right. And look at her face.” No way was Alex gazing into those milky eyes again. “She looks like a dead woman.” “She looks like an eighty-year-old dead woman. Marjorie Stephen just turned fifty-five.” Alex’s stomach lurched, as if she’d missed a step. That was why Turner thought the societies were involved. “She hadn’t been ill,” he continued. “This lady liked to hike East Rock and Sleeping Giant. She ran every morning. We spoke to two people with offices on this hallway who saw her earlier today. They said she looked normal, perfectly healthy. When we showed them a photo of the body, they barely recognized her.” It smacked of the uncanny. But what about the Bible? The societies weren’t the type to quote scripture. Their texts were far rarer and more arcane. “I don’t know,” said Alex. “It doesn’t quite add up.” Turner rubbed a hand over his low fade. “Good. So tell me I’m jumping at shadows.” Alex wanted to. But there was something wrong here, something more than a woman left to die alone with a Bible in her hand, something in those milky gray eyes. “I can search the Lethe library,” Alex said. “But I’m going to require some reciprocity.” “That’s not actually the way this works, Dante.” “I’m Virgil now,” Alex said, though maybe not for long. “It works the way Lethe says it does.” “There’s something different about you, Stern.” “I cut my hair.” “No, you didn’t. But something’s off about you.” “I’ll make you a list.” He led her into the hall and waved the coroner staff through to the office, where they’d zip Marjorie Stephen into a body bag and wheel her away. Alex wondered if they’d close her eyes first. “Tell me what you find in the library,” Turner said at the elevator. “Send me the tox report,” Alex replied. “That would be the likeliest link to the societies. But you’re right. It’s probably nothing except a waste of my night.” Before the doors could close, Turner shoved his hand in and they pinged back open. “I’ve got it,” he said. “You always looked like you had trouble chasing you.” Alex jabbed the door-close button. “So?” “Now you look like it caught up.” 9 Last Summer Alex touched down at LAX at 9 a.m. on Sunday. Michael Anselm and Lethe had sprung for first class, so she’d ordered two shots of gratis whiskey to knock herself out and slept through the flight. She dreamed of her last night at Ground Zero, Hellie lying cold beside her, the feel of the bat in her hand. This time, Len spoke before she took her first swing. Some doors don’t stay locked, Alex. And then he’d


now is a very different creature, one who is also bent on destruction. Namely yours.’ ‘Am I to be moved by this spectacle? Because I assure you, I am not.’ I paced around him like a lioness around her prey. ‘Within hours, the whole world will know what you have done. The ink is soaking into the paper as we speak.’ ‘What paper? What are you talking about, woman?’ ‘The Times. They were very interested in your past. Especially your nickname, The Reaper.’ I saw a flicker of concern. ‘Paper will take any ink, regardless of its veracity. And you will only reveal yourself as a dim-witted fool who belongs in a sanitorium.’ ‘Ah yes, you have me there. Unjust as it is, I knew my story alone wouldn’t be enough to ruin your reputation. Tarnish it, perhaps, but not the annihilation I seek. No, Lyndon, the morning papers will be full of your crimes on the battlefield and those men you murdered under the guise of cowardice. Most of the records were destroyed, but I have gathered enough evidence of your despicable acts to make you a pariah in the eyes of everyone you know and an enemy to everyone else.’ His eyes widened momentarily. ‘Those pitiful excuses for men did not deserve to wear the uniform. They were a disgrace to their families, to their country.’ ‘I have proof that the men you shot were not deserters. Witnesses who are prepared to go on record that you murdered those men. Their families deserve justice.’ ‘I gave them justice!’ His voice boomed like a cannon from his ribcage. ‘It’s just as I suspected. You are truly mad.’ We were all just pieces on a chessboard to him. Inconsequential pieces to be moved around at his will. ‘Well, it takes one to know one. Besides, they were conscripts, not real soldiers.’ I knew he was baiting me. ‘Some of them were just boys, did you know that? So yes, perhaps they panicked in the face of all that death, but they were not deserters.’ ‘Oh, please, Opaline, do tell us more about your experience of life on the battlefield. Enlighten me with your knowledge of such matters.’ ‘I know that it is not my right to be judge and juror over someone else’s life.’ ‘Shall I tell you of the thousands that died of exposure that winter? Still more from cholera. The indescribable suffering of millions of the Empire’s best men, lying in those mud trenches for weeks, in rain, cold, wind – hungry and weary under the constant rain of the enemy’s bullets. The terrible booming and slaughter that carried on ceaselessly. The dead and wounded cleared away for new soldiers to face an enemy better armed and better prepared. Showers of black mud raining down on the wild, primitive countryside. Twenty thousand men were killed on the first day at the Somme. It was as if the last day had come, and every man had to face it with only the comrade at his side for support. In the trenches


the pond, like we expected. Just took us a while to sift through all the junk in there,” he said. “Look, I know Bishop has been hassling you. You know how it is, new to town, gotta prove herself. Jim’s told her to simmer down, though, now that we’ve got the weapon.” “Was it Marcus Barnes’s gun?” I asked. “Sure was.” “And you’re sure that … You’re sure that’s the gun that killed her.” I swallowed hard. “Well, we don’t have the bullet, so we can’t match the ballistics. But there’s no other reason for that gun to be in that pond, is there?” He cleared his throat. “I imagine it’s a relief for everyone, to have things wrapped up.” “You’re putting it down as a suicide, then.” “Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?” I hadn’t thought Liv had killed herself—but I’d been wrong about everything so far. Maybe I was wrong about this, too. My fingertips found the spiderweb cracks in Persephone’s skull, tightening in toward a center where one fragment had long since fallen away, leaving a ragged black gap. No. Liv wouldn’t have shot herself, and she hadn’t been suicidal. She’d been disappointed, but she wouldn’t have given up that easily. Not when she had something that she cared so much about and was so close to seeing through. Not when she’d promised me. Dougherty was talking about Bishop again. About how she wouldn’t have any choice now but to admit it was suicide and move on. His voice dipped in and out. “So I don’t think she’ll be bothering you again,” he said. “And if she does, you let me know and I’ll talk to Mayor Green about it. Make sure she understands.” “Thank you,” I bit out, because it was what he wanted to hear. Bishop saw it. She knew Liv hadn’t hurt herself, but would that matter? If Mayor Green told her to drop it, she’d be risking her job to do anything else. “It’s no problem, hon,” Dougherty said. “Hey, you made my career. I kind of owe you, I figure.” “Made your career,” I repeated dully. The words didn’t make sense. And then they snapped into focus. “You mean because you were the one who got Stahl.” He made a demurring sound. “I wouldn’t say I got him, just put the pieces together. My brother-in-law knew a guy working on the case, and he told me all about the guy they were looking at. I’d been carrying his photo around just in case I spotted him. Figured it was only a matter of time before he came hunting around here. As soon as those girls told me what had happened, it clicked.” Silence stretched. I heard him shift, chair creaking, like he was expecting me to chime in with a bit of praise and was slowly realizing it wouldn’t come. He had no idea what he’d done. The error he’d set in motion. And now he was doing it all over again. He’d known from the start it was suicide, like he’d known from the


this time, I lay I'll just waller in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle a little. " You bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, lordy , lordy, lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance." Tom choked off and whispered: "Look, Hucky, look! He's got his BACK to us!" Hucky looked, with joy in his heart. --------------------------------------------------------- -115- "Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?" "Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, you know. Now who can he mean?" The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears. "Sh! What's that?" he whispered. "Sounds like -- like hogs grunting. No -- it's somebody snoring, Tom." "That is it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?" "I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever coming back to this town any more." The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more. "Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?" "I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!" Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They --------------------------------------------------------- -116- tiptoed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and facing Potter, with his nose pointing heavenward. "Oh, geeminy, it's him!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath. "Say, Tom -- they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain't anybody dead there yet." "Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?" "Yes, but she ain't dead. And what's more, she's getting better, too." "All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about these kind of things, Huck." Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution,


back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen-- I was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn't last as suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from the moment I really took hold. This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing in both children--to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a piece


don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth. Well -- your tooth IS loose, but you're not going to die about that. Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen." Tom said: "Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay home from school." "Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love you --------------------------------------------------------- -70- so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart with your outrageousness." By this time the dental instruments were ready. The old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer; but another boy said, "Sour grapes!" and he wandered away a dismantled hero. Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad -- and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his --------------------------------------------------------- -71- gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to


to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight, and my hand the cunning, to transcribe it. At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page. These perceptions had come too late. At the Instant, I was only conscious that what would have been a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan about this state of affairs. I had ceased to be a Thesaurus faculties: (n) mother wit. untowardly, nosily, unbefittingly, importance, tangibility, reality, flitting: (adj) fleeting, fugitive, unfortunately. element, essential nature, momentary, transient, ephemeral; (v) marvelous: (adj) wonderful, fantastic, groundwork, vital part, materialness. migration. incredible, fabulous, extraordinary, ANTONYM: (n) immateriality. humourous: (adj) humorous. tremendous, grand, astonishing, opaque: (adj) dense, muddy, obscure, inefficacious: (adj) ineffective, futile, terrific, great; (adj, v) prodigious. cloudy, hazy, murky, thick, inefficient, bootless, useless, ANTONYMS: (adj) ordinary, unintelligible, milky, misty, vague. inoperative, inutile, null, feckless, mundane, abysmal, bad, dreadful, ANTONYM: (adj) transparent. nugatory, fruitless. unworthy, dire, humdrum, transcribe: (n, v) copy, reproduce; (v) intrusively: (adv) meddlesomely, unimpressive, unremarkable, boring. record, transliterate, note, put down, obtrusively, impertinently, pryingly, materiality: (n) corporeality, write down, write, paraphrase; (n) meddlingly, curiously, busily, substantiality, concreteness, duplicate, imitate. Nathaniel Hawthorne 37 writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be no doubt and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say that a Custom-House officer of long continuance can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which--though, I trust, an honest one--is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind.% An effect--which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position--is, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength, departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possesses an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer--fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle


pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place. I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Every- thing was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. You know what I mean -- I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was -- a skiff, away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it WAS pap, sure enough -- and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a- spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry land- ing. I heard what they said, too -- every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned -- and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something


yes, Mâri says, she knows Roddy. Occasionally he comes and sits in. He always orders the same things, very particular. He doesn’t drink much. Always used to come in by himself. No, never with Mrs. Catchpole—Mâri does not love Mrs. Catchpole—but there was a girl, a pale, pretty girl, she looked tiny next to him but she was about the same height as Mâri. Atilla says she was a singer. How does he know she was a singer? She told him so. And when was he talking to the pretty singer, exactly? When he brought the sorpotel and the paprika feijoada. Well, he should keep his eyes on his cooking, then, and not disturb the female guests. I was going to ask whether the singer wore earrings, but I figure I’m not getting an answer to that now. Atilla goes back to the kitchen, and when a kid comes through the main door with a skateboard Mâri immediately brings him over and sits him down. “This is Andor. He made the delivery last night. Tell him, Andor.” The kid says he made the delivery last night. “But the guy never came to the door. No tip.” “Andor!” “Sorry, Mom.” “You’re not supposed to leave food. If they don’t come to the door we bring it back. Keep it warm.” “But he called out to leave it.” That’s interesting. “You sure about that?” “Pretty sure. I knocked, he didn’t answer. I knocked again and he said to leave the food.” “Him or someone else?” “I…guess it could have been either.” “Andor!” “No, he’s right, Mrs.—” What did she say the name was? “Adami. Through a door, one sentence like that, he can’t know whose voice. Not to be sure. That’s important. Thank you, Andor.” “S’okay.” He gets up to go. I lay a couple of bills on the table. “Since you didn’t get a tip.” Leave my finger on the top one. “You think there was someone else in there? Or was he by himself?” “Someone else. I figured it was his girlfriend. I thought there was, uh,” a glance at his mother, “kinda heavy breathing. Like if someone had been, uh, getting a lot of exercise.” She scowls, and he takes flight. “Do your chores!” “Yes, Mom.” The kitchen door closes. “Good kid.” She smiles then, like sunrise. I go outside and think about Roddy Tebbit ordering food before killing himself, and Roddy Tebbit sitting in his chair overlooking the city, and Roddy Tebbit dead on the carpet, and I think about someone breathing heavy enough to be heard outside by a kid who had other things on his mind. * * * — Musgrave’s office is on the first floor, with the mortuary right alongside. The entire south wall is made of white smoked glass so the autopsy room can use natural light. The other wall is the cadaver bank, row upon row of square doors with corpses stored behind them one on top of the other like a library of grief. I put my head round the door and say:


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

all eternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge, he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment and sensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on the twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality. So entire and unquestionable was this sense of the divine meaning in all nature granted to his soul that he could scarcely understand why it was in any way necessary that he should continue to live. Yet that was part of the divine purpose and he dared not question its use, he above all others who had sinned so deeply and so foully against the divine purpose. Meek and abased by this consciousness of the one eternal omnipresent perfect reality his soul took up again her burden of pieties, masses and prayers and sacraments and mortifications, and only then for the first time since he had brooded on the great mystery of love did he feel within him a warm movement like that of some newly born life or virtue of the soul itself. The attitude of rapture in sacred art, the raised and parted hands, the parted lips and eyes as of one about to swoon, became for him an image of the soul in prayer, humiliated and faint before her Creator. But he had been forewarned of the dangers of spiritual exaltation and did not allow himself to desist from even the least or lowliest devotion, striving also by constant mortification to undo the sinful past rather than to achieve a saintliness fraught with peril. Each of his senses was brought under a rigorous discipline. In order to mortify the sense of sight he made it his rule to walk in the street with downcast eyes, glancing neither to right nor left and never behind him. His eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women. From time to time also he balked them by a sudden effort of the will, as by lifting them suddenly in the middle of an unfinished sentence and closing the book. To mortify his hearing he exerted no control over his voice which was then breaking, neither sang nor whistled, and made no attempt to flee from noises which caused him painful nervous irritation such as the sharpening of knives on the knife board, the gathering of cinders on the fire-shovel and the twigging of the carpet. To mortify his smell was more difficult as he found in himself no instinctive repugnance to bad odours whether they were the odours of the outdoor world, such as those of dung or tar, or the odours of his own person among which he had made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the end that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a


left the front door unlocked for her mother and carried a candle into her room, where she was surprised to find a piece of paper lying on her floor. Her mysterious pen pal had written again, even though she had yet to respond to their myth-filled letter. She was beginning to wonder if they were from another time. Perhaps they had lived in this very room, long before her. Perhaps they were destined to live here, years from now. Perhaps their letters were somehow slipping through a fissure of time, but it was this place that was causing it. Iris retrieved the paper and sat on the edge of her bed, reading: Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you’ve so carefully encased yourself in? They see what they want to see in you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings. They see all the times you’ve made mistakes, all the times you’ve failed, all the times you’ve hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes. How do you change something like that? How do you make your life your own and not feel guilt over it? While she was reading it a second time, soaking in their words and pondering how to respond to something that felt so intimate it could have been whispered from her own mouth, another letter came over the threshold. Iris stood to fetch it, and that was the first time she truly tried to envision who this person was. She tried, but they were nothing more than stars and smoke and words pressed on a page. She knew absolutely nothing about them. But after reading something like this, as if they had bled themselves on the paper … she longed to know more. She opened the second letter, which was a hasty: I sincerely apologize for bothering you with such thoughts. I hope I didn’t wake you. No need to reply to me. I think it helps to type things out. Iris knelt and reached for her typewriter beneath the bed. She fed a fresh sheet of paper into the roller and then sat there, staring at its possibilities. Slowly, she began to type, her fingers meeting the keys. Her thoughts began to strike across the page: I think we all wear armor. I think those who don’t are fools, risking the pain of being wounded by the sharp edges of the world, over and over again. But if I’ve learned anything from those fools, it’s that to be vulnerable is a strength most of us fear. It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can’t risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there’s also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that


I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.     If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humored to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gayly and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries; but the frown, the roughness of the traveler, set me at my ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced: "I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse."     He looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before.     I should think you ought to be at home yourself," said he, "if you have a home in this neighborhood; where do you come from?"     "From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it is moonlight; I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish it; indeed, I am going there to post a letter."     "You live just below do you mean at that house with the battlements?" pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods, that, by contrast with the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.     "Yes, sir."     "Whose house is it?"     "Mr. Rochester's."     "Do you know Mr. Rochester?"     "No; I have never seen him."     "He is not resident, then?"     "No."     "Can you tell me where he is?"     "I cannot."     "You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are " He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a lady's maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was: I helped him.     "I am the governess."     "Ah, the governess!" he repeated; "deuce take me, if I had not forgotten! The governess!" and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In two minutes he rose from the stile; his face expressed pain when he tried to move.     "I cannot commission you to fetch help," he said; "but you may help me a little yourself, if you will be so kind."     "Yes, sir."     "You have not an umbrella that


troubled Echo – an expression of how alien she really was, as if being human meant that your blood ran red. The only person she’d confided in was Tetu, hoping he’d be nerdish and academic about it. To her surprise he’d reacted emotionally, and she realized in that moment that he’d been contemplating their compatibility as sexual partners or, to put it less scientifically, that he might be in love. He’d tried to cover his feelings by joking that ‘blue blood’ used to be a phrase denoting royalty, that she was a member of Antarctica’s royal family, an Ice Princess, and he was a humble peasant on this land, a man who should bow before her. Even his attempt at humour was revealing, the joke touching upon the belief that he didn’t feel that he was worthy of her, that the biological barriers between them couldn’t be bridged by affection alone. Swimming along the seabed towards the flickers of alien light ahead, Echo thought about asking these difficult questions when she arrived at McMurdo City. She would meet her creators, stand before them, ask a long series of questions and listen as her place in this world became clear. It was for this reason that she admired Tetu so much. He had no wise creators he could quiz for answers, he had no family, he had nothing except the wisdom he’d worked for and the ambition to be more than a survivor. Though she rarely paid him a compliment, she decided it was time to tell him, when she handed him this alien fragment, not that she loved him – she wasn’t confident of using that word – but that she was proud to be his friend. The freezing water was sapping her heat more rapidly than the air, water being a far more powerful cooling agent, and her body responded by unlocking the heat stored in her genetically altered adipose tissue, a form of fat found in newborn babies who were particularly vulnerable to the cold since they were unable to shiver. These cells broke down on command, generating heat through highly specialized non-shivering thermogenesis. Most ordinary-born adults had very little adipose tissue, but Echo’s entire body was lined with an enhanced version created in the McMurdo labs. In Antarctica, fat was life, and her fat cells were the most advanced ever created. She spotted a second octopus and then a third, curious as to what was attracting these solitary and highly intelligent creatures. They seemed to be drawn to the alien light and, reaching the fragment, she found a cluster of them, their tentacles wrapped around it. She stood, watching them for a time, before gently plunging her arm into their writhing mass. As she grabbed hold of it the octopuses travelled up her arms, across her body and onto her face, one sitting on her bald head like a hat. She carried on regardless, allowing them to coil around her, finally feeling the peculiar texture of the alien technology and pulling it free. She studied its luminescent pulses. Tetu


properly out, and the children's wet clothes dried in its hot rays. They steamed in the sun, and even Tim's coat sent up a mist too. He didn't seem to like the wreck at all, but growled deeply at it. "You are funny, Tim," said George, patting him. "It won't hurt you! What do you think it is?" "He probably thinks it's a whale," said Anne with a laugh. "Oh, George- this is the most exciting day of my life! Oh, can't we possibly take the boat and see if we can get to the wreck?" "No, we can't," said George. "I only wish we could. But it's quite impossible, Anne. For one thing I don't think the wreck has quite settled down on the rocks yet, and maybe it won't till the tide has gone down. I can see it lifting a little still when an extra big wave comes. It would be dangerous to go into it yet. And for another thing I don't want my boat smashed to bits on the rocks, and us thrown into that wild water! That's what would happen. We must wait till tomorrow. It's a good idea to come early. I expect lots of grown-ups will think it's their business to explore it." The children watched the old wreck for a little time longer and then went all round the island again. It was certainly not very large, but it really was exciting, with its rocky little coast, its quiet inlet where their boat was, the ruined castle, the circling jackdaws, and the scampering rabbits everywhere. "I do love it," said Anne. "I really do. It's just small enough to feel like an island. Most islands are too big to feel like islands. I mean, Britain is an island, but nobody living on it could possibly know it unless they were told. Now this island really feels like one because wherever you are you can see to the other side of it. I love it." George felt very happy. She had often been on her island before, but always alone except for Tim. She had always vowed that she never, never would take anyone there, because it would spoil her island for her. But it hadn't been spoilt. It had made it much nicer. For the first time George began to understand that sharing pleasures doubles their joy. "We'll wait till the waves go down a bit then we'll go back home," she said. "I rather think there's some more rain coming, and we'll only get soaked through. We shan't be back till tea-time as it is, because we'll have a long pull against the out-going tide." All the children felt a little tired after the excitements of the morning. They said very little as they rowed home. Everyone took turns at rowing except Anne, who was not strong enough with the oars to row against the tide. They looked back at the island as they left it. They couldn't see the wreck because that was on the opposite side, facing the open sea.


was led like a dancing bear. Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the N. of The other men were variously burthened, some carrying N.N.E. Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E. Ten feet. picks and shovels—for that had been the very first necessary A tall tree was thus the principal mark. Now, right before they brought ashore from the HISPANIOLA— others laden us the anchorage was bounded by a plateau from two to three with pork, bread, and brandy for the midday meal. All the hundred feet high, adjoining on the north the sloping south- stores, I observed, came from our stock, and I could see the ern shoulder of the Spy-glass and rising again towards the truth of Silver’s words the night before. Had he not struck a south into the rough, cliffy eminence called the Mizzen-mast bargain with the doctor, he and his mutineers, deserted by Hill. The top of the plateau was dotted thickly with pine- the ship, must have been driven to subsist on clear water and trees of varying height. Every here and there, one of a differ- the proceeds of their hunting. Water would have been little ent species rose forty or fifty feet clear above its neighbours, to their taste; a sailor is not usually a good shot; and besides and which of these was the particular “tall tree” of Captain all that, when they were so short of eatables, it was not likely Flint could only be decided on the spot, and by the readings they would be very flush of powder. of the compass. Contents Well, thus equipped, we all set out—even the fellow with Yet, although that was the case, every man on board the the broken head, who should certainly have kept in shadow— boats had picked a favourite of his own ere we were half-way Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 262 263 over, Long John alone shrugging his shoulders and bidding We had thus proceeded for about half a mile and were them wait till they were there. approaching the brow of the plateau when the man upon the We pulled easily, by Silver’s directions, not to weary the farthest left began to cry aloud, as if in terror. Shout after hands prematurely, and after quite a long passage, landed at shout came from him, and the others began to run in his the mouth of the second river—that which runs down a woody direction. cleft of the Spy-glass. Thence, bending to our left, we began “He can’t ‘a found the treasure,” said old Morgan, hurry- to ascend the slope towards the plateau. ing past us from the right, “for that’s clean a-top.” At the first outset, heavy, miry ground and a matted, Indeed, as we found when we also reached the spot, it was marish vegetation greatly delayed our progress; but by little something very different. At the foot of a pretty big pine and little the hill began to steepen and become stony under and involved in a green creeper, which had even partly lifted foot, and


But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion. Things pick up for me once they’ve announced two tributes from the same district can live and I shout out Peeta’s name and then clap my hands over my mouth. If I’ve seemed indiffe- rent to him earlier, I make up for it now, by finding him, nurs- ing him back to health, going to the feast for the medicine, and 356 being very free with my kisses. Objectively, I can see the mutts and Cato’s death are as gruesome as ever, but again, I feel it happens to people I have never met. And then comes the moment with the berries. I can hear the audience hushing one another, not wanting to miss any- thing. A wave of gratitude to the filmmakers sweeps over me when they end not with the announcement of our victory, but with me pounding on the glass door of the hovercraft, scream- ing Peeta’s name as they try to revive him. In terms of survival, it’s my best moment all night. The anthem’s playing yet again and we rise as President Snow himself takes the stage followed by a little girl carrying a cushion that holds the crown. There’s just one crown, though, and you can hear the crowd’s confusion — whose head will he place it on? — until President Snow gives it a twist and it separates into two halves. He places the first around Peeta’s brow with a smile. He’s still smiling when he settles the second on my head, but his eyes, just inches from mine, are as unforgiving as a snake’s. That’s when I know that even though both of us would have eaten the berries, I am to blame for having the idea. I’m the in- stigator. I’m the one to be punished. Much bowing and cheering follows. My arm is about to fall off from waving when Caesar Flickerman finally bids the au- dience good night, reminding them to tune in tomorrow for the final interviews. As if they have a choice. Peeta and I are whisked to the president’s mansion for the Victory Banquet, where we have very little time to eat as Capi- 357 tol officials and particularly generous sponsors elbow one another out of the way as they try to get their picture with us. Face after beaming face flashes by, becoming increasingly in- toxicated as the evening wears on. Occasionally, I catch a glimpse of Haymitch, which is reassuring, or President Snow, which is terrifying, but I keep laughing and thanking people and smiling as my picture is taken. The one thing I never do is let go of Peeta’s hand. The sun is just peeking over the horizon when we straggle back to the twelfth floor of the Training Center. I think now I’ll finally get a word alone with Peeta, but Haymitch sends him off with Portia to get something fitted for the interview and personally escorts me to my door. “Why


a silver para- chute. My first gift from a sponsor! Haymitch must have had it sent in during the anthem. The pot easily fits in the palm of my 186 hand. What can it be? Not food surely. I unscrew the lid and I know by the scent that it’s medicine. Cautiously, I probe the surface of the ointment. The throbbing in my fingertip vanish- es. “Oh, Haymitch,” I whisper. “Thank you.” He has not aban- doned me. Not left me to fend entirely for myself. The cost of this medicine must be astronomical. Probably not one but many sponsors have contributed to buy this one tiny pot. To me, it is priceless. I dip two fingers in the jar and gently spread the balm over my calf. The effect is almost magical, erasing the pain on con- tact, leaving a pleasant cooling sensation behind. This is no herbal concoction that my mother grinds up out of woodland plants, it’s high-tech medicine brewed up in the Capitol’s labs. When my calf is treated, I rub a thin layer into my hands. After wrapping the pot in the parachute, I nestle it safely away in my pack. Now that the pain has eased, it’s all I can do to repo- sition myself in my bag before I plunge into sleep. A bird perched just a few feet from me alerts me that a new day is dawning. In the gray morning light, I examine my hands. The medicine has transformed all the angry red patches to a soft baby-skin pink. My leg still feels inflamed, but that burn was far deeper. I apply another coat of medicine and quietly pack up my gear. Whatever happens, I’m going to have to move and move fast. I also make myself eat a cracker and a strip of beef and drink a few cups of water. Almost nothing stayed in my stomach yesterday, and I’m already starting to feel the effects of hunger. 187 Below me, I can see the Career pack and Peeta asleep on the ground. By her position, leaning up against the trunk of the tree, I’d guess Glimmer was supposed to be on guard, but fatigue overcame her. My eyes squint as they try to penetrate the tree next to me, but I can’t make out Rue. Since she tipped me off, it only seems fair to warn her. Besides, if I’m going to die today, it’s Rue I want to win. Even if it means a little extra food for my family, the idea of Peeta being crowned victor is unbearable. I call Rue’s name in a hushed whisper and the eyes appear, wide and alert, at once. She points up to the nest again. I hold up my knife and make a sawing motion. She nods and disap- pears. There’s a rustling in a nearby tree. Then the same noise again a bit farther off. I realize she’s leaping from tree to tree. It’s all I can do not to laugh out loud. Is this what she showed the Gamemakers?


long before Madame Bowden arrived. ‘What happened to your husband, if you don’t mind me asking?’ ‘Plane crash. We were only married a year when his plane went down over Gibraltar.’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Yes, it was a difficult time. That’s when I met Archie.’ ‘Archie?’ ‘My second husband. He was a doctor from Cork.’ ‘I thought you said he was Russian?’ ‘Oh no, that was husband number three.’ ‘But what happened to Archie?’ I realised that this was really none of my business, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe when you got to her age, minor details like this didn’t matter any more. ‘Archie contracted malaria when he was working in Africa, poor fellow.’ I wondered what had happened to the Russian mathematician – death by numbers? ‘What’s with all of these questions? I hope you’re not planning on bumping me off and getting your hands on my house?’ ‘Honestly, Madame Bowden, if anyone should be worried about getting bumped off, I think it should be me.’ She stared at me for a moment and I was full sure she was going to fire me for insolence, when she let out an enormous laugh. I really needed to hang out with people my own age. I spent that entire day giving the house a deep clean. It was something I always enjoyed doing, not because I was a fan of housework, but because the methodical action of cleaning was the only way I’d ever found to make my thoughts stop. Thoughts like: I had married a bully, I had wasted my life, and now I could add a new one to the list – I had humiliated myself in front of Henry. Why did I care about his opinion so much anyway? Besides, it wasn’t my fault he’d neglected to tell me about his fiancée. But the truth was, I already knew. I could read in his eyes that his heart was tied elsewhere, so why did I act like it was such a big surprise? And why did it even matter? What kind of an idiot would start having feelings for someone when they’d just got out of an abusive marriage? That should have been the end of it. I simply couldn’t permit myself to feel anything. I was exhausted by the time I got downstairs to the basement that night. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom and changed for bed with unseeing eyes. It was only as I pulled the covers down and flopped into bed that I saw it. Where the lines in the wall had been, there now emerged a shelf. With one single book on it. Standing upright. I looked around the room, for what, I don’t know. I almost felt like saying out loud, ‘Can anyone else see this?’ I was afraid to get out of bed and so I just stayed there, frozen for a minute. Nothing else happened, not a sound came. I had no idea how it got there, other than that Madame Bowden must have placed it


jeopardy) to be able to remind themselves that Beaufort WAS; but, after all, if a Dallas of South Carolina took his view of the case, and glibly talked of his soon being "on his feet again," the argument lost its edge, and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence of the indissolubility of marriage. Society must manage to get on without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it--except indeed for such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who, if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van der Luyden . . . "The best thing the Beauforts can do," said Mrs. Archer, summing it up as if she were pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment, "is to go and live at Regina's little place in North Carolina. Beaufort has always kept a racing stable, and he had better breed trotting horses. I should say he had all the qualities of a successful horsedealer." Every one agreed with her, but no one condescended to enquire what the Beauforts really meant to do. The next day Mrs. Manson Mingott was much better: she recovered her voice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the Beauforts to her again, and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in the world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health. "If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are they to expect?" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely modified her dietary, the stroke was transformed into an attack of indigestion. But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not wholly recover her former attitude toward life. The growing remoteness of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their troubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort disaster out of her mind. But for the first time she became absorbed in her own symptoms, and began to take a sentimental interest in certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been contemptuously indifferent. Mr. Welland, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice. Of her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored; and all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful character and marked intellectual ability (if he had only "chosen") had been met with a derisive chuckle. But his eminence as a valetudinarian now made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Mingott issued an imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his temperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise that one could not be too careful about temperatures. Twenty-four hours after Madame Olenska's summons a telegram announced that she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following day. At the Wellands', where the Newland Archers chanced to be lunching, the question as to who


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

dreary rainstorms and the occasional frost. And more rainstorms, of course. Do they have other weather in Ireland?” He glowered at me from behind his mug—I had made him the chocolate after all. “We cannot all be made of stone and pencil shavings,” he replied. After supper, he fell asleep in the chair, and I helped him to his bed. To my great amusement, one of his conquests showed up shortly thereafter, apparently for a prearranged rendez-vous, a pretty, dark-haired thing, yet another of Thora’s granddaughters. I was sorely tempted to show her the state of her paramour after a hike of only a few hours, and not a particularly difficult one, for Ljoslanders appear to prize hardiness above all things, amusing myself imagining the dent it would put in Bambleby’s appeal. SKIP NOTES * There are, in fact, several stories from France and the British Isles which describe this sort of enchantment. In two of the Irish tales, which may have the same root story, a mortal maiden figures out that her suitor is an exile of the courtly fae after he inadvertently touches her crucifix and burns himself (the Folk in Irish stories are often burning themselves on crucifixes, for some reason). She announces it aloud, which breaks the enchantment and allows him henceforth to reveal his faerie nature to whomever he chooses. 16th November I expected Wendell to sleep late today, and he did not surprise me; by the time he stirred himself I had already breakfasted and returned from my visit with Poe, whose tree home required shovelling again. It snowed again in the night, a true snow this time. I myself had awoken to the sound of a very strange knock at the door, heavy and rhythmic, and I had a moment of terror, my mind going to tales of ancient winter kings come to demand unfavourable bargains, only to discover that it was Finn, kindly shovelling our steps. The snow was waist-deep in places, with drifts rolling higher like waves, deep enough to drown in and painfully bright beneath the cloudless sky. After breakfast, Aud arrived on snowshoes with a lump of beeswax and a basket of candles. From the latter rose a powerful smell, a mixture of lemons and rot. “For the windows,” she said. “Light them each night. It will keep the tall ones from your door.” “I see,” I said, and proceeded to extract from her the recipe for our paper. The candles were made from fish oil, lemon juice, fermented seaweed, rose petals harvested on the full moon, and the crushed bones of ravens (quantities to be provided in the appendix). It sounded rather fanciful to me—there are human workings, metal for instance, that the Folk near universally disdain, but they rarely take the form of poetic recipes (not that this has prevented many charlatans from making a tidy profit from same). But Aud assured me that the tall ones’ music would not pass into the cottage with the candles burning. I showed the candles to Wendell, when he finally bestirred himself,


Marmee and the girls, and day after day said hopefully to herself, " I know I'll get my music some time, if I'm good." There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind. If anybody had asked Amy what the greatest trial of her life was, she would have answered at once, "My nose." When she was a baby,Jo had accidently dropped her into the coal hod, and Amy insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. It was not big nor red, like poor `Petrea's', it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an aristocratic point. No one minded it but herself, and it was doing its best to grow, but Amy felt deeply the want of a Grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console herself. "Little Raphael," as her sisters called her, had a decided talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art. Her teachers complained that instead of doing her sums she covered her slate with animals, the blank pages of her atlas were used to copy maps on, and caricatures of the most ludicrous description came fluttering out of all her books at unlucky moments. She got through her lessons as well as she could, and managed to escape reprimands by being a model of deportment. She was a great favorite with her mates, being good-tempered and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort. Her little airs and graces were much admired, so were her accomplishments, for besides her drawing, she could play twelve tunes, crochet, and read French without mispronouncing more than two-thirds of the words. She had a plaintive way of saying, "When Papa was rich we did so-and-so," which was very touching, and her long words were considered `perfectly elegant' by the girls. Amy was in a fair way to be spoiled, for everyone petted her, and her small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. One thing, however, rather quenched the vanities. She had to wear her cousin's clothes. Now Florence's mama hadn't a particle of taste, and Amy suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet, unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit. Everything was good, well made, and little worn, but Amy's artistic eyes were much afflicted, especially this winter, when her school dress was a dull purple with yellow dots and no trimming. "My only comfort," she said to Meg, with tears in her eyes, "is that Mother doesn't take tucks in my dresses whenever I'm naughty, as Maria Parks's mother does. My dear, it's really dreadful, for sometimes she is so bad her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school. When I think


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

Doctor Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and listening. "Who's letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the asses at now?" He went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared down on the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops with black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night. "Looks like a crowd down the hill," he said, "by the Cricketers," and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far away where the ships' lights shone, and the pier glowed, a little illuminated pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon in its first quarter hung over the western hill, and the stars were clear and almost tropically bright. After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost itself at last over the time dimension, Doctor Kemp roused himself with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned to his writing-desk. It must have been about an hour after this that the front-door bell rang. He had been writing slackly and with intervals of abstraction, since the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant answer the door, and waited for her feet on the staircase, but she did not come. "Wonder what that was," said Doctor Kemp. He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to the housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. "Was that a letter?" he asked. "Only a runaway ring, sir," she answered. "I'm restless to-night," he said to himself. He went back to his study, and this time attacked his work resolutely. In a little while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his lamp-shade threw on his table. It was two o'clock before Doctor Kemp had finished his work for the night. He rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed. He had already removed his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He took a candle and went down to the dining-room in search of a siphon and whisky. Doctor Kemp's scientific pursuits had made him a very observant man, and as he recrossed the hall, he noticed a dark spot on the linoleum near the mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred to him to ask himself what the spot on the linoleum might be. Apparently some subconscious element was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went back to the hall, put down the siphon and whisky, and bending down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise he found it had the stickiness and colour of drying blood. He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about him and trying to account for


while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that Father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy coming home. Mrs. March broke the silence that followed Jo's words, by saying in her cheery voice, "Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrims Progress when you were little things? Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City." "What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and passing through the valley where the hob-goblins were," said Jo. "I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled downstairs," said Meg. "I don't remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the cellar and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. If I wasn't too old for such things, I'd rather like to play it over again," said Amy, who began to talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve. "We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Out burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get before Father comes home." "Really, Mother? Where are our bundles?" asked Amy, who was a very literal young lady. "Each of you told what your burden was just now, except Beth. I rather think she hasn't got any," said her mother. "Yes, I have. Mine is dishes and dusters, and envying girls with nice pianos, and being afraid of people." Beth's bundle was such a funny one that everybody wanted to laugh, but nobody did, for it would have hurt her feelings very much. "Let us do it," said Meg thoughtfully. "It is only another name for trying to be good, and the story may help us, for though we do want to be good, it's hard work and we forget, and don't do our best." "We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book. We ought to have our roll of directions, like Christian. What shall we do about that?" asked Jo, delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull task of doing her duty. "Look under your pillows Christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook," replied Mrs. March. They talked over the new plan while old Hannah cleared the table, then out


vagabond; (v) distinguished, brilliant, well-known. prescriptive, pristine, primaeval, dawdle ANTONYMS: (adj) unknown, primeval, traditional, old, eternal, idly: (adj, adv) foolishly; (adv) vainly, obscure, ordinary, undistinguished, customary vaguely, listlessly, forgetfully, lowly immensity: (n) greatness, distractedly; (adj) thoughtlessly. ill-will: (n) enmity enormousness, immenseness, ANTONYM: (adv) energetically imaginary: (adj) fictitious, unreal, infinity, bulk, largeness, infiniteness, idolise: (v) venerate, worship, revere, false, mythical, illusory, ideal, infinitude, vastness, grandeur, glorify, fear, adore hypothetical, visionary, fictional, grandness. ANTONYM: (n) idolized: (adj) adored, beloved, notional, chimerical. ANTONYMS: lightness loved, precious, worshipped (adj) real, palpable, actual, concrete, imminent: (adj) forthcoming, coming, ignominious: (adj) dishonorable, prosaic, normal, true close, future, near, pending, shameful, disreputable, infamous, imagining: (n) conception, approaching, at hand, menacing, base, discreditable, dishonourable, daydream, fantasy, opinion; (v) threatening, prospective. inglorious, black, despicable, imagine; (adj) imaginant ANTONYMS: (adj) remote, past degrading. ANTONYMS: (adj) imbecility: (n) folly, foolishness, immortal: (adj) eternal, enduring, honorable, glorious idiocy, fatuity, weakness, stupidity, undying, endless, monumental; (adj, ignominiously: (adv) disgracefully, feeblemindedness, lunacy; (adj, n) v) deathless, imperishable, shamefully, discreditably, debility, feebleness; (adj) infirmity celebrated; (n) deity, God, divinity. dishonorably, scandalously, imbibing: (n) drinking, absorption, ANTONYMS: (adj) obscure, earthly, dishonourably, opprobriously, intake, swillings, drink, potation, forgettable, perishable, temporary infamously, basely, vilely, foully drunkenness, gulping, boozing, immortality: (n) sempiternity, ignominy: (n) disgrace, dishonor, crapulence; (adj) absorbent perpetuity, athanasia, glory, aye, shame, reproach, contempt, imbue: (v) infuse, saturate, permeate, fame, everness, immortal, disrepute, degradation, discredit, tinge, steep, dye, fill, impregnate, permanency, deathlessness, scandal; (adj, n) odium; (adj) pervade, instill, inoculate undying. ANTONYM: (n) mortality opprobrium. ANTONYMS: (n) imbued: (adj) addicted, alive, immortally: (adv) undyingly, success, glorification, pride instinct, full everlastingly, deathlessly, ill-defined: (adj) unclear, ambiguous, imitated: (adj) mimical perpetually, eternally, perennially, vague, indistinct, obscure, fuzzy, imitative: (adj) mock, counterfeit, lastingly, abidingly, timelessly, loose, general, faint, hazy derivative, fake, false, fictitious, enduringly, permanently ill-fated: (adj) hapless, unfortunate, bogus, bastard, onomatopoeic, base, immunity: (n) freedom, franchise, unhappy, poor, accursed, cursed, sham. ANTONYMS: (adj) genuine, dispensation, privilege, exception, fatal, infelicitous, unchancy, real, nonimitative relief, invulnerability, exoneration, disastrous, inauspicious immaterial: (adj) insignificant, excuse, safety, liberty. ANTONYMS: ill-fitted: (adj) ill-suited, inapt inconsequential, irrelevant, (n) susceptibility, liability, inclusion ill-omened: (adj) ill-fated, ominous, disembodied, incorporeal, trivial, impalpable: (adj) imperceptible, inauspicious, infelicitous, doomed bodiless, spiritual, unimportant, shadowy, invisible, efflorescent, illuminated: (adj) lit, lighted, extraneous, psychic. ANTONYMS: gritty, insubstantial, incorporeal, luminous, enlightened, clear, light, (adj) significant, material, corporeal, inscrutable, ethereal, shining, irradiated, lighter, Lighty, physical, tangible, important inapprehensible, elusive. irradiate immature: (adj) green, childish, ANTONYMS: (adj) tangible, definite illuminating: (adj) illuminate, tender, unripe, raw, crude, youthful, impart: (v) give, convey, disclose, Nathaniel Hawthorne 293 communicate, announce, grant, strongly undignified, lowly reveal, hand, bestow, divulge, imperfect: (adj) faulty, deficient, impossibility: (n) impossibleness, confer. ANTONYMS: (v) withhold, defective, unfinished, incomplete, option, nonexistence, absurdity, withdraw poor, flawed, partial, inadequate, inability, impracticability, imparting: (n) giving, conveyance, broken, fallible. ANTONYMS: (adj) alternative, choice, contradiction, conveyance of title, conveyancing, perfect, whole, unblemished, contradiction in terms, conveying adequate, complete, sound, doubtfulness. ANTONYMS: (n) impassioned: (adj) fervent, fanatical, boundless, capable, flawless possibility, probability fiery, burning, passionate, hot, imperfectly: (adv) faultily, impossibly: (adv) unusually, torrid, vehement, keen, zealous; defectively, badly, deficiently, unthinkably, doubtfully, (adj, v) enthusiastic. ANTONYMS:


am also aware that the various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least notice of Mr. Micawber's communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family, that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my papa and mama, were they still living.' I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction. 'It may be a sacrifice,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'to immure one's-self in a Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me, it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities.' 'Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?' said I. Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand jug, replied: 'To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of - and to be - his confidential clerk.' I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise. 'I am bound to state to you,' he said, with an official air, 'that the business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs. Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual recognition. Of my friend Heep,' said Mr. Micawber, 'who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect. My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such address and intelligence as I chance to possess,' said Mr. Micawber, boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, 'will be devoted to my friend Heep's service. I have already some acquaintance with the law - as a defendant on civil process - and I shall immediately apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and remarkable of our English jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.' These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber's discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing


ever. Her eyes were fixed on his, with an appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain. A curious emotion stirred in Winston's heart. In front of him was an enemy who was trying to kill him: in front of him, also, was a human creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken bone. Already he had instinctively file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (58 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt started forward to help her. In the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it had been as though he felt the pain in his own body. 'You're hurt?' he said. 'It's nothing. My arm. It'll be all right in a second.' She spoke as though her heart were fluttering. She had certainly turned very pale. 'You haven't broken anything?' 'No, I'm all right. It hurt for a moment, that's all.' She held out her free hand to him, and he helped her up. She had regained some of her colour, and appeared very much better. 'It's nothing,' she repeated shortly. 'I only gave my wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks, comrade!' And with that she walked on in the direction in which she had been going, as briskly as though it had really been nothing. The whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in any case they had been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened. Nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped something into his hand. There was no question that she had done it intentionally. It was something small and flat. As he passed through the lavatory door he transferred it to his pocket and felt it with the tips of his fingers. It was a scrap of paper folded into a square. While he stood at the urinal he managed, with a little more fingering, to get it unfolded. Obviously there must be a message of some kind written on it. For a moment he was tempted to take it into one of the water-closets and read it at once. But that would be shocking folly, as he well knew. There was no place where you could be more certain that the telescreens were watched continuously. He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment of paper casually among the other papers on the desk, put on his spectacles and hitched the speakwrite towards him. 'Five minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at the very least!' His heart bumped in his breast with frightening loudness. Fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was mere routine, the rectification of a long list of figures, not needing close attention. Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political meaning. So far as he could see there were two


to me with love and humor and, that night, that magic night,

respect.

70

https://m.facebook.com/groups/182281287 1297698 https://t.:me/Afghansalarlibrary

I wish I’d asked about her husband, King George VI, who died young. Or

her brother-in-law, King Edward VIII, whom she’d apparently loathed. He

gave up his crown for love. Gan-Gan believed in love, but nothing

transcended the Crown. She also reportedly despised the woman he’d

chosen.

I wish I’d asked about her distant ancestors in Glamis, home to Macbeth.

She’d seen so much, knew so much, there was so much to be learned

from her, but I just wasn’t mature enough, despite the growth spurt, or brave

enough, despite the gin.

I did, however, make her laugh. Normally that was Pa’s job; he had a

knack for finding Gan-Gan’s funny bone. He loved her as much as he loved

anybody in the world, perhaps more. I recall him glancing over several times

and looking pleased that I was getting such good giggles out of his favorite

person.

At one point I told Gan-Gan about Ali G, the character played by Sacha

Baron Cohen. I taught her to say Booyakasha, showing her how to flick her

fingers the way Sacha did. She couldn’t grasp it, she had no idea what I was

talking about, but she had such fun trying to flick and say the word. With

every repetition of that word, Booyakasha, she’d shriek, which would make

everyone else smile. It tickled me, thrilled me. It made me feel...a part of

things.

This was my family, in which I, for one night at least, had a distinctive

role.

And that role, for once, wasn’t the Naughty One.

30.

\ \ } EEKS LATER, BACK at Eton, I was walking past two blue doors, almost

exactly the same blue as one of Gan-Gan’s kilts. She’d have liked

these doors, I thought.

They were the doors to the TV room, one of my sanctuaries.

Almost every day, straight after lunch,


got a callback about my application to Google—and an offer. They wanted me to be their head of national security relations. The pay was higher than any job I’d had, and after years of a public service salary, I accepted without a second thought. Google seems like adult Disneyland. A few weeks later, I started work and found that our Washington, D.C., office boasted unlimited gourmet food, nap pods, game rooms, and massages. At orientation in Mountain View, California, they’d showered us with electronics and swag. To boot, the work was interesting, since I was charged with managing the company’s relationships with the CIA, FBI, and other national security agencies. Then I encountered the activist employee base. A few California-based staff heard that the D.C. office had hired a “Trump official” and decided to make a point. With whatever scant information they could find about me online at the time, they determined that I was clearly MAGA—and the mastermind behind Trump’s worst policies. They say a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on. In the tech sector, it travels at fiber-optic speed. All the while, the truth is dead asleep. Left-leaning press outlets and tech blogs posted about how Google had hired a Trump immigration fanatic. They portrayed me as a champion of the Muslim ban and an architect of family separation, based on thin sourcing and an avalanche of false assumptions. I got a call from a reporter who asked me for a comment about the fact that Google employees were protesting the hiring of a MAGA hard-liner. If they only knew, I thought. The CEO, Sundar Pichai, was forced to address my employment at a company-wide town hall. His office called ahead of time to offer support. They knew the stories were the opposite of the truth (I’d helped dismantle the Muslim ban and end family separation, including repeatedly blocking its reinstatement) and defended me against the misleading broadsides. If I wanted, I was welcome to put out a statement or address my colleagues, they said. I chose to say nothing. Enough years in Washington had taught me that if you extend a hand to a pitchfork mob, they’ll eventually try to take your head. Just as important, I wasn’t going to let this be the moment I came out against Trump, disrupting my plans. But the defiance wasn’t easy. That week I was stranded in California. On the flight out for an event, I had a sinus infection, and my eardrum burst with explosive pain. I was told to stay put until it healed. Alone in a hotel room, I watched the virtual town hall on my laptop, as fellow employees (whom I’d never met) painted me as a bigot. The comments made in the meeting and on public message boards were a gut punch. “It makes no sense why we would hire someone with clear racial bias into a government-facing role.” “How can we respect Google’s DEI values and avoid hiring those who dehumanize marginalized groups?” “As a Muslim, it makes me


hurt or anger you? Do the worries of which you spoke on my wedding day still trouble you? If you could know—truly know—how lonely I am, you would come to me. I’m sure of it. I’m confused. I feel myself swirling down, down, down. I will forever be your friend, Yunxian I reread the letter, making sure I haven’t written a character Meiling won’t recognize. Next, I write to Grandmother, telling her that I’m well—I don’t want her to be concerned about my welfare—letting her know how I’d like to treat Yining, and including a list of the ingredients I’d like her to send so I can make a formula, if I’m correct, and some extra herbs for me that won’t alert Grandmother to my condition and will confuse Lady Kuo if I’m caught. “Poppy,” I call, “take these to Grandmother. She’ll get the letter to Meiling.” I anticipate that Poppy will return with a note from my grandmother saying the usual things—that all is fine, that Miss Zhao has been helping her in the pharmacy, and that Yifeng is studying hard—along with the herbs I requested. But will she bring a letter from Meiling? * * * A husband is Heaven to his wife. I want to please Maoren. I want to make him happy. I want us to create a life that parallels all the scenes of marital bliss that are in the silk paintings and tiny carvings that surround my bed, but Maoren and I don’t spend much time together. He’s busy during the day with his tutors. Many nights he continues his studies in his library and doesn’t come to me at all. And soon Maoren will leave the compound for his final push before taking the municipal exam to become a scholar of the juren level. Although our hours together are scant, I believe in my heart that he likes me. I like him too. In time, our affection will grow, I hope, into the deep-heart love the concubines are always talking about. Tonight, since Poppy has yet to return from her errand, I serve my husband a simple meal of a soup, duck glazed with kumquat, water spinach sautéed in ginger and garlic, and tofu with black mushrooms and pickled turnip. When I pour his wine, he touches my hand. “Sit with me tonight,” he says. “Let me feed you.” It’s hardly proper. Wives don’t eat with their husbands, but no one is here to see what we’re doing. He uses his chopsticks to lift a sliver of duck. With his other hand cupped beneath the morsel, he guides it to my mouth. The way he watches me chew causes my cheeks to flush, which seems to please him even more. I’m equally fascinated by him: the precision with which he picks up a slice of mushroom, the gentleness with which he places it between my lips, the look in his eyes as he takes in my features. He’s the first man, apart from my father and grandfather, with whom I’ve spent time alone; I suspect—but