Essay Instructions:

Literary Analysis

Instructions for the Literary Analysis Essay  (English 1302 Online)

Literary Analysis

In this essay you should combine your practice responding and analyzing short stories with support derived from research. So far, in the discussion boards, we have practiced primarily formal analysis.  Now I want you to practice “joining the conversation.”  In this essay you will write a literary analysis that incorporates the ideas of others.  The trick is to accurately present ideas and interpretations gathered from your research while adding to the conversation by presenting your own ideas and analysis.    

You will be evaluated, in part, on how well you use external sources.  I want to see that you can quote, paraphrase and summarize without plagiarizing.  Remember, any unique idea must be credited, even if you put it in your own words.

Choose one of the approaches explained in the “Approaches to Literary Analysis” located at the bottom of this document. Each approach will require research, and that research should provide the context in which you present your own ideas and support your thesis.  Be sure to properly document your research.  Review the links in the “Writing about Literature” tab as these will help guide you.

While I am asking you to conduct outside research, do not lose sight of the primary text to which you are responding—the story!  Your research should support your interpretations of the story. Be sure that your thesis is relevant to the story and that you quote generously from the story.

Purpose:  critical analysis, writing from sources

Length: 5 pages, approx 1500 words

Documentation:  Minimum of 5 sources required.  Documented in MLA format. (Note: review the material in “finding and evaluating sources” to help you choose relevant and trustworthy sources.)

Choose from the following short stories, all located in the folder located in this unit.

A Perfect Day for a Bananafish

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

The Wall

The Swimmer

The Lesson

At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers

The Bound Man

The Birthmark

For Esme… with Love and Squalor

Below are some examples.  I do not require you to choose one of these topics.  They are just here to give you an idea of the type of approaches that will work for this essay.

1.   Philosophical analysis: How do the stories by Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus reflect the philosophy of existentialism?  

2.   Socio/cultural analysis:  What opinion about marriage and gender roles does Hemingway advance in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”? 

3.  Historical analysis: What social dilemmas faced by African Americans in the 1960s might have inspired Toni Cade Bambara to write “The Lesson”?

4.  Biographical analysis:  What events in Salman Rushdie’s life might have influenced the events in “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”?

5. Psychological analysis:  How is John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” a metaphor for the psychology of addiction?

Approaches to Literary analysis

Formal analysis – This type of analysis focuses on the formal elements of the work (language, symbolism, plot, character, setting) in an effort to explain how the story functions. It is concerned with the parts of the text and how those parts fit together to create meaning.  Outside information such as the author’s background and historical events are generally not referenced in formalist criticism. A formal analysis conceives of the literary work as a self-contained experience.

If you choose this approach you will need to research scholarly interpretations of your selected story and include those as part of the conversation.

Historical analysis- This type of analysis uses historical context to understand the work. Many 20 th century stories can be best understood within the framework of major events: Industrialization, The Holocaust, WWII, The Great Depression, The Civil Rights Movement, feminism, etc.  A historical analysis will “base interpretations on the interplay between the text and historical contexts.”

” a piece of literature is shaped by the time period in which it was written and thus must be examined and interpreted in the context of that time period. This theory attempts to tie the characters, events and language in a piece of literature to events from the time period in which it was written. “

If you choose this approach for your literary analysis, you should be well aware of the major events of the time period.

Biographical analysis – This type of analysis uses the author’s life as a starting point for interpreting the story. The belief is that it is necessary to know about the author and the political, economical, and sociological context of his times in order to truly understand his works.  How do the themes present in the story reflect the concerns and experiences of the author?  In this approach there may be considerable overlap with historical analysis.  That’s ok-they are not mutually exclusive.

Sociological analysis (cultural criticism) –  This type of analysis interprets the story in term of social structures:  class, race, gender, culture, nationality or economics. Feminist criticism, postcolonial criticism, Marxist criticism, etc. all fall into this category. It can also overlap with historical analysis.  For example, a Marxist criticism of Catcher in the Rye might claim that Holden’s depression is derived from material wealth and social inequality.

Philosophical  analysis:   This approach uses a philosophical framework from which to approach the work.  The belief is that the larger purpose of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues. Existentialism is a common philosophy that find roots in literature, particularly in that of Sartre and Camus.  Here are some questions to ask if you are interested in this approach.

•   What religious or ethical beliefs does the text deal with directly?  Are any  religions or philosophies mentioned specifically in the text?

•   What religious or ethical beliefs or philosophies does the author seem to favor?  How can you tell?

•   What religious or ethical beliefs or philosophies does the author seem to disfavor? 

•   What behaviors do the characters display that the author wants us to think are “right”? 

Psychological Analysis:   This approach uses theories of human behavior as a means of analyzing the story. Psychological critics view works through the lens of psychology. They look either at the psychological motivations of the characters or of the authors themselves, although the former is generally considered a more respectable approach. Most frequently, psychological critics apply Freudian psychology to works, but other approaches (such as a Jungian approach) also exist.

•   Are there any specific psychologists or psychological theories mentioned in the text?  In what ways?

•   What theories of human behavior does the writer seem to believe?  How can you tell?

•   What theories of human behavior does the writer seem to reject?  How can you tell?

•   How do people’> s minds work in the text?  How do people think?  How are their thoughts shown?

•   In what ways do the structure and organization of the text indicate the writer’� s beliefs about the workings of the mind?

 

Peer Review for Literary Analysis

Follow the same procedures as with the previous Peer Reviews.  Please answer all of the review questions below.

Peer Review for Literary Analysis

1. Does the essay appear to meet the minimum requirements for the assignment?  (5 pages, 5 sources, etc.)
2. Identify the thesis of the essay.  Does it make a clear and focused claim about the story? 
3. Is the essay well organized?  Does each paragraph have a single main idea that relates to the thesis?  Are there transitions within and between paragraphs?
4. Does the essay integrate both quotations from the story and quotations from secondary sources?  Do the quotations seem relevant and credible to you?
5. Sometimes students get caught up in researching the author’s background or historical events and they forget the primary purpose: to analyze a short story. As you read the essay, does the author clearly tie all of the research back to an analysis of the story?
6. Check the citations.  Can the source for each quotation or paraphrase be easily found on the works cited page?  Are the citations in correct MLA format?
7. Do you notice any recurring grammatical errors, formatting errors or other problems with the essay?

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J. D. Salinger
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
The New Yorker, January 31, 1948, pages 21-25

THERE WERE ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through. She used the time, though. She read an article in a women’s pocket-size magazine, called “Sex Is Fun-or Hell.” She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two freshly surfaced hairs in her mole. When the operator finally rang her room, she was sitting on the window seat and had almost finished putting lacquer on the nails of her left hand.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

With her little lacquer brush, while the phone was ringing, she went over the nail of her little finger, accentuating the line of the moon. She then replaced the cap on the bottle of lacquer and, standing up, passed her left–the wet–hand back and forth through the air. With her dry hand, she picked up a congested ashtray from the window seat and carried it with her over to the night table, on which the phone stood. She sat down on one of the made-up twin beds and–it was the fifth or sixth ring–picked up the phone.

“Hello,” she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules–her rings were in the bathroom.

“I have your call to New York now, Mrs. Glass,” the operator said.

“Thank you,” said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray.

A woman’s voice came through. “Muriel? Is that you?”

The girl turned the receiver slightly away from her ear. “Yes, Mother. How are you?” she said.

“I’ve been worried to death about you. Why haven’t you phoned? Are you all right?”

“I tried to get you last night and the night before. The phone here’s been–”

“Are you all right, Muriel?”

The girl increased the angle between the receiver and her ear. “I’m fine. I’m hot. This is the hottest day they’ve had in Florida in–”

“Why haven’t you called me? I’ve been worried to–”

“Mother, darling, don’t yell at me. I can hear you beautifully,” said the girl. “I called you twice last night. Once just after–”

“I told your father you’d probably call last night. But, no, he had to-Are you all right, Muriel? Tell me the truth.”

“I’m fine. Stop asking me that, please.”

“When did you get there?”

“I don’t know. Wednesday morning, early.”

“Who drove?”

“He did,” said the girl. “And don’t get excited. He drove very nicely. I was amazed.”

“He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word of–”

“Mother,” the girl interrupted, “I just told you. He drove very nicely. Under fifty the whole way, as a matter of fact.”

“Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?”

“I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please. I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did. He was even trying not to look at the trees-you could tell. Did Daddy get the car fixed, incidentally?”

“Not yet. They want four hundred dollars, just to–”

“Mother, Seymour told Daddy that he’d pay for it. There’s no reason for–”

“Well, we’ll see. How did he behave–in the car and all?”

“All right,” said the girl.

“Did he keep calling you that awful–”

“No. He has something new now.”

“What?”

“Oh, what’s the difference, Mother?”

“Muriel, I want to know. Your father–”

“All right, all right. He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948,” the girl said, and giggled.

“It isn’t funny, Muriel. It isn’t funny at all. It’s horrible. It’s sad, actually. When I think how–”

“Mother,” the girl interrupted, “listen to me. You remember that book he sent me from Germany? You know–those German poems. What’d I do with it? I’ve been racking my–”

“You have it.”

“Are you sure?” said the girl.

“Certainly. That is, I have it. It’s in Freddy’s room. You left it here and I didn’t have room for it in the–Why? Does he want it?”

“No. Only, he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I’d read it.”

“It was in German!”

“Yes, dear. That doesn’t make any difference,” said the girl, crossing her legs. “He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should’ve bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please.”

“Awful. Awful. It’s sad, actually, is what it is. Your father said last night–”

“Just a second, Mother,” the girl said. She went over to the window seat for her cigarettes, lit one, and returned to her seat on the bed. “Mother?” she said, exhaling smoke.

“Muriel. Now, listen to me.”

   “I’m listening.”

“Your father talked to Dr. Sivetski.”

“Oh?” said the girl.

“He told him everything. At least, he said he did–you know your father. The trees. That business with the window. Those horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away. What he did with all those lovely pictures from Bermuda–everything.”

“Well?” said the girl.

“Well. In the first place, he said it was a perfect crime the Army released him from the hospital–my word of honor. He very definitely told your father there’s a chance–a very great chance, he said–that Seymour may completely lose control of himself. My word of honor.”

“There’s a psychiatrist here at the hotel,” said the girl.

“Who? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. Rieser or something. He’s supposed to be very good.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, he’s supposed to be very good, anyway.”

“Muriel, don’t be fresh, please. We’re very worried about you. Your father wanted to wire you last night to come home, as a matter of f–”

“I’m not coming home right now, Mother. So relax.”

“Muriel. My word of honor. Dr. Sivetski said Seymour may completely lose contr–”

“I just got here, Mother. This is the first vacation I’ve had in years, and I’m not going to just pack everything and come home,” said the girl. “I couldn’t travel now anyway. I’m so sunburned I can hardly move.”

“You’re badly sunburned? Didn’t you use that jar of Bronze I put in your bag? I put it right–”

“I used it. I’m burned anyway.”

“That’s terrible. Where are you burned?”

“All over, dear, all over.”

“That’s terrible.”

“I’ll live.”

“Tell me, did you talk to this psychiatrist?”

“Well, sort of,” said the girl.

“What’d he say? Where was Seymour when you talked to him?”

“In the Ocean Room, playing the piano. He’s played the piano both nights we’ve been here.”

“Well, what’d he say?”

“Oh, nothing much. He spoke to me first. I was sitting next to him at Bingo last night, and he asked me if that wasn’t my husband playing the piano in the other room. I said yes, it was, and he asked me if Seymour’s been sick or something. So I said–”

“Why’d he ask that?”

“I don’t know, Mother. I guess because he’s so pale and all,” said the girl. “Anyway, after Bingo he and his wife asked me if I wouldn’t like to join them for a drink. So I did. His wife was horrible. You remember that awful dinner dress we saw in Bonwit’s window? The one you said you’d have to have a tiny, tiny–”

“The green?”

“She had it on. And all hips. She kept asking me if Seymour’s related to that Suzanne Glass that has that place on Madison Avenue–the millinery.”

“What’d he say, though? The doctor.”

“Oh. Well, nothing much, really. I mean we were in the bar and all. It was terribly noisy.”

“Yes, but did–did you tell him what he tried to do with Granny’s chair?”

“No, Mother. I didn’t go into details very much,” said the girl. “I’ll probably get a chance to talk to him again. He’s in the bar all day long.”

“Did he say he thought there was a chance he might get–you know–funny or anything? Do something to you!”

“Not exactly,” said the girl. “He had to have more facts, Mother. They have to know about your childhood–all that stuff. I told you, we could hardly talk, it was so noisy in there.”

“Well. How’s your blue coat?”

“All right. I had some of the padding taken out.”

“How are the clothes this year?”

“Terrible. But out of this world. You see sequins–everything,” said the girl.

“How’s your room?”

“All right. Just all right, though. We couldn’t get the room we had before the war,” said the girl. “The people are awful this year. You should see what sits next to us in the dining room. At the next table. They look as if they drove down in a truck.”

“Well, it’s that way all over. How’s your ballerina?”

“It’s too long. I told you it was too long.”

“Muriel, I’m only going to ask you once more–are you really all right?”

“Yes, Mother,” said the girl. “For the ninetieth time.”

“And you don’t want to come home?”

“No, Mother.”

“Your father said last night that he’d be more than willing to pay for it if you’d go away someplace by yourself and think things over. You could take a lovely cruise. We both thought–”

“No, thanks,” said the girl, and uncrossed her legs. “Mother, this call is costing a for–”

“When I think of how you waited for that boy all through the war-I mean when you think of all those crazy little wives who–”

“Mother,” said the girl, “we’d better hang up. Seymour may come in any minute.”

“Where is he?”

“On the beach.”

“On the beach? By himself? Does he behave himself on the beach?”

“Mother,” said the girl, “you talk about him as though he were a raving maniac–”

“I said nothing of the kind, Muriel.”

“Well, you sound that way. I mean all he does is lie there. He won’t take his bathrobe off.”

“He won’t take his bathrobe off? Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess because he’s so pale.”

“My goodness, he needs the sun. Can’t you make him?

“You know Seymour,” said the girl, and crossed her legs again. “He says he doesn’t want a lot of fools looking at his tattoo.”

“He doesn’t have any tattoo! Did he get one in the Army?”

“No, Mother. No, dear,” said the girl, and stood up. “Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, maybe.”

“Muriel. Now, listen to me.”

“Yes, Mother,” said the girl, putting her weight on her right leg.

“Call me the instant he does, or says, anything at all funny–you know what I mean. Do you hear me?”

“Mother, I’m not afraid of Seymour.”

“Muriel, I want you to promise me.”

“All right, I promise. Goodbye, Mother,” said the girl. “My love to Daddy.” She hung up.

“See more glass,” said Sybil Carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. “Did you see more glass?”

“Pussycat, stop saying that. It’s driving Mommy absolutely crazy. Hold still, please.”

Mrs. Carpenter was putting sun-tan oil on Sybil’s shoulders, spreading it down over the delicate, winglike blades of her back. Sybil was sitting insecurely on a huge, inflated beach ball, facing the ocean. She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.

“It was really just an ordinary silk handkerchief–you could see when you got up close,” said the woman in the beach chair beside Mrs. Carpenter’s. “I wish I knew how she tied it. It was really darling.”

“It sounds darling,” Mrs. Carpenter agreed. “Sybil, hold still, pussy.”

“Did you see more glass?” said Sybil.

Mrs. Carpenter sighed. “All right,” she said. She replaced the cap on the sun-tan oil bottle. “Now run and play, pussy. Mommy’s going up to the hotel and have a Martini with Mrs. Hubbel. I’ll bring you the olive.”

Set loose, Sybil immediately ran down to the flat part of the beach and began to walk in the direction of Fisherman’s Pavilion. Stopping only to sink a foot in a soggy, collapsed castle, she was soon out of the area reserved for guests of the hotel.

She walked for about a quarter of a mile and then suddenly broke into an oblique run up the soft part of the beach. She stopped short when she reached the place where a young man was lying on his back.

“Are you going in the water, see more glass?” she said.

The young man started, his right hand going to the lapels of his terry-cloth robe. He turned over on his stomach, letting a sausaged towel fall away from his eyes, and squinted up at Sybil.

“Hey. Hello, Sybil.”

“Are you going in the water?”

“I was waiting for you,” said the young man. “What’s new?”

“What?” said Sybil.

“What’s new? What’s on the program?”

“My daddy’s coming tomorrow on a nairiplane,” Sybil said, kicking sand.

“Not in my face, baby,” the young man said, putting his hand on Sybil’s ankle. “Well, it’s about time he got here, your daddy. I’ve been expecting him hourly. Hourly.”

“Where’s the lady?” Sybil said.

“The lady?” the young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. “That’s hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser’s. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children, in her room.” Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. “Ask me something else, Sybil,” he said. “That’s a fine bathing suit you have on. If there’s one thing I like, it’s a blue bathing suit.”

Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. “This is a yellow,” she said. “This is a yellow.”

“It is? Come a little closer.” Sybil took a step forward. “You’re absolutely right. What a fool I am.”

“Are you going in the water?” Sybil said.

“I’m seriously considering it. I’m giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you’ll be glad to know.”

Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a head-rest. “It needs air,” she said.

“You’re right. It needs more air than I’m willing to admit.” He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. “Sybil,” he said, “you’re looking fine. It’s good to see you. Tell me about yourself.” He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil’s ankles in his hands. “I’m Capricorn,” he said. “What are you?”

“Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you,” Sybil said.

“Sharon Lipschutz said that?”

Sybil nodded vigorously.

He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. “Well,” he said, “you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn’t push her off, could I?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no. No. I couldn’t do that,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you what I did do, though.”

“What?”

“I pretended she was you.”

Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. “Let’s go in the water,” she said.

“All right,” said the young man. “I think I can work it in.”

“Next time, push her off,” Sybil said. “Push who off?”

“Sharon Lipschutz.”

“Ah, Sharon Lipschutz,” said the young man. “How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire.” He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. “Sybil,” he said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll see if we can catch a bananafish.”

“A what?”

“A bananafish,” he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil’s hand.

The two started to walk down to the ocean.

“I imagine you’ve seen quite a few bananafish in your day,” the young man said.

Sybil shook her head.

“You haven’t? Where do you live, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” said Sybil.

“Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she’s only three and a half.”

Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. “Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost.

“Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” said the young man. “Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?”

Sybil looked at him. “That’s where I live,” she said impatiently. “I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut.” She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times.

“You have no idea how clear that makes everything,” the young man said.

Sybil released her foot. “Did you read `Little Black Sambo’?” she said.

“It’s very funny you ask me that,” he said. “It so happens I just finished reading it last night.” He reached down and took back Sybil’s hand. “What did you think of it?” he asked her.

“Did the tigers run all around that tree?”

“I thought they’d never stop. I never saw so many tigers.”

“There were only six,” Sybil said.

“Only six!” said the young man. “Do you call that only?”

“Do you like wax?” Sybil asked.

“Do I like what?” asked the young man. “Wax.”

“Very much. Don’t you?”

Sybil nodded. “Do you like olives?” she asked.

“Olives–yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without ’em.”

“Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?” Sybil asked.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” said the young man. “What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won’t believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn’t. She’s never mean or unkind. That’s why I like her so much.”

Sybil was silent.

“I like to chew candles,” she said finally.

“Who doesn’t?” said the young man, getting his feet wet. “Wow! It’s cold.” He dropped the rubber float on its back. “No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait’ll we get out a little bit.”

They waded out till the water was up to Sybil’s waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

“Don’t you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?” he asked.

“Don’t let go,” Sybil ordered. “You hold me, now.”

“Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. “You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.”

“I don’t see any,” Sybil said.

“That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar.” He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. “They lead a very tragic life,” he said. “You know what they do, Sybil?”

She shook her head.

“Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas.” He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. “Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.”

“Not too far out,” Sybil said. “What happens to them?”

“What happens to who?”

“The bananafish.”

“Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?”

“Yes,” said Sybil.

“Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.”

“Why?” asked Sybil.

“Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.”

“Here comes a wave,” Sybil said nervously.

“We’ll ignore it. We’ll snub it,” said the young man. “Two snobs.” He took Sybil’s ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil’s blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, “I just saw one.”

“Saw what, my love?”

“A bananafish.”

“My God, no!” said the young man. “Did he have any bananas in his mouth?”

“Yes,” said Sybil. “Six.”

The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil’s wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

“Hey!” said the owner of the foot, turning around.

“Hey, yourself We’re going in now. You had enough?”

“No!”

“Sorry,” he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

“Goodbye,” said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

“I see you’re looking at my feet,” he said to her when the car was in motion.

“I beg your pardon?” said the woman.

“I said I see you’re looking at my feet.”

“I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,” said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

“If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. “But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.”

“Let me out here, please,” the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

“I have two normal feet and I can’t see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them,” said the young man. “Five, please.” He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

The Wall (1939)

By Jean-Paul Sarte

They pushed us into a big white room and I began to blink because the light hurt my eyes. Then I saw a table and four men behind the table, civilians, looking over the papers. They had bunched another group of prisoners in the back and we had to cross the whole room to join them. There were several I knew and some others who must have been foreigners. The two in front of me were blond with round skulls: they looked alike. I supposed they were French. The smaller one kept hitching up his pants: nerves.

It lasted about three hours: I was dizzy and my head was empty; but the room was well heated and I found that pleasant enough: for the past 24 hours we hadn’t stopped shivering. The guards brought the prisoners up to the table, one after the other. The four men asked each one his name and occupation. Most of the time they didn’t go any further–or they would simply ask a question here and there: “Did you have anything to do with the sabotage of munitions?” Or “Where were you the morning of the 9th and what were you doing?” They didn’t listen to the answers or at least didn’t seem to. They were quiet for a moment and then looking straight in front of them began to write. They asked Tom if it were true he was in the International Brigade: Tom couldn’t tell them otherwise because of the papers they found in his coat. They didn’t ask Juan anything but they wrote for a long time after he told them his name.

“My brother Jose is the anarchist,” Juan said “You know he isn’t here any more. I don’t belong to any party. I never had anything to do with politics.”

They didn’t answer. Juan went on, “I haven’t done anything. I don’t want to pay for somebody else.”

His lips trembled. A guard shut him up and took him away. It was my turn.

“Your name is Pablo Ibbieta?”

“Yes.”

The man looked at the papers and asked me “Where’s Ramon Gris?”

“I don’t know.”

“You hid him in your house from the 6th to the 19th.”

“No.”

They wrote for a minute and then the guards took me out. In the corridor Tom and Juan were waiting between two guards. We started walking. Tom asked one of the guards, “So?”

“So what?” the guard said.

“Was that the cross-examination or the sentence?”

“Sentence” the guard said.

“What are they going to do with us?”

The guard answered dryly, “Sentence will be read in your cell.”

As a matter of fact, our cell was one of the hospital cellars. It was terrifically cold there because of the drafts. We shivered all night and it wasn’t much better during the day. I had spent the previous five days in a cell in a monastery, a sort of hole in the wall that must have dated from the middle ages: since there were a lot of prisoners and not much room, they locked us up anywhere. I didn’t miss my cell; I hadn’t suffered too much from the cold but I was alone; after a long time it gets irritating. In the cellar I had company. Juan hardly ever spoke: he was afraid and he was too young to have anything to say. But Tom was a good talker and he knew Spanish well.

There was a bench in the cellar and four mats. When they took us back we sat and waited in silence. After a long moment, Tom said, “We’re screwed.”

“l think so too,” I said, “but I don’t think they’ll do any thing to the kid.”.

“They don’t have a thing against him,” said Tom. “He’s the brother of a militiaman and that’s all.”

I looked at Juan: he didn’t seem to hear. Tom went on, “You know what they do in Saragossa? They lay the men down on the road and run over them with trucks. A Moroccan deserter told us that. They said it was to save ammunition.”

“It doesn’t save gas.” I said.

I was annoyed at Tom: he shouldn’t have said that.

“Then there’s officers walking along the road,” he went on, “supervising it all. They stick their hands in their pockets and smoke cigarettes. You think they finish off the guys? Hell no. They let them scream. Sometimes for an hour. The Moroccan said he damned near puked the first time.”

“I don’t believe they’ll do that here,” I said. “Unless they’re really short on ammunition.”

Day was coming in through four air holes and a round opening they had made in the ceiling on the left, and you could see the sky through it. Through this hole, usually closed by a trap, they unloaded coal into the cellar. Just below the hole there was a big pile of coal dust: it had been used to heat the hospital, but since the beginning of the war the patients were evacuated and the coal stayed there, unused; sometimes it even got rained on because they had forgotten to close the trap.

Tom began to shiver. “Good Jesus Christ, I’m cold,” he said. “Here it goes again.”

He got up and began to do exercises. At each movement his shirt opened on his chest, white and hairy. He lay on his back, raised his legs in the air and bicycled. I saw his great rump trembling. Tom was husky but he had too much fat. I thought how riffle bullets or the sharp points of bayonets would soon be sunk into this mass of tender flesh as in a lump of butter. It wouldn’t have made me feel like that if he’d been thin.

I wasn’t exactly cold, but I couldn’t feel my arms and shoulders any more. Sometimes I had the impression I was missing something and began to look around for my coat and then suddenly remembered they hadn’t given me a coat. It was rather uncomfortable. They took our clothes and gave them to their soldiers leaving us only our shirts–and those canvas pants that hospital patients wear in the middle of summer. After a while Tom got up and sat next to me, breathing heavily.

“Warmer?”

“Good Christ, no. But I’m out of wind.”

Around eight o’clock in the evening a major came in with two falangistas. He had a sheet of paper in his hand. He asked the guard, “What are the names of those three?”

“Steinbock, Ibbieta and Mirbal,” the guard said.

The major put on his eyeglasses and scanned the list: “Steinbock…Steinbock…Oh yes…You are sentenced to death. You will be shot tomorrow morning.” He went on looking. “The other two as well.”

“That’s not possible,” Juan said. “Not me.” The major looked at him amazed. “What’s your name?”

“Juan Mirbal” he said.

“Well your name is there,” said the major. “You’re sentenced.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Juan said.

The major shrugged his shoulders and turned to Tom and me.

“You’re Basque?”

“Nobody is Basque.”

He looked annoyed. “They told me there were three Basques. I’m not going to waste my time running after them. Then naturally you don’t want a priest?”

We didn’t even answer.

He said, “A Belgian doctor is coming shortly. He is authorized to spend the night with you.” He made a military salute and left.

“What did I tell you,” Tom said. “We get it.”

“Yes, I said, “it’s a rotten deal for the kid.”

I said that to be decent but I didn’t like the kid. His face was too thin and fear and suffering had disfigured it, twisting all his features. Three days before he was a smart sort of kid, not too bad; but now he looked like an old fairy and I thought how he’d never be young again, even if they were to let him go. It wouldn’t have been too hard to have a little pity for him but pity disgusts me, or rather it horrifies me. He hadn’t said anything more but he had turned grey; his face and hands were both grey. He sat down again and looked at the ground with round eyes. Tom was good hearted, he wanted to take his arm, but the kid tore himself away violently and made a face.

“Let him alone,” I said in a low voice, “you can see he’s going to blubber.”

Tom obeyed regretfully: he would have liked to comfort the kid, it would have passed his time and he wouldn’t have been tempted to think about himself. But it annoyed me: I’d never thought about death because I never had any reason to, but now the reason was here and there was nothing to do but think about it.

Tom began to talk. “So you think you’ve knocked guys off, do you?” he asked me. I didn’t answer. He began explaining to me that he had knocked off six since the beginning of August; he didn’t realize the situation and I could tell he didn’t want to realize it. I hadn’t quite realized it myself, I wondered if it hurt much, I thought of bullets, I imagined their burning hail through my body. All that was beside the real question; but I was calm: we had all night to understand. After a while Tom stopped talking and I watched him out of the corner of my eye; I saw he too had turned grey and he looked rotten; I told myself “Now it starts.” It was almost dark, a dim glow filtered through the air holes and the pile of coal and made a big stain beneath the spot of sky; I could already see a star through the hole in the ceiling: the night would be pure and icy.

The door opened and two guards came in, followed by a blonde man in a tan uniform. He saluted us. “I am the doctor,” he said. “I have authorization to help you in these trying hours.”

He had an agreeable and distinguished voice. I said, “What do you want here?”

“I am at your disposal. I shall do all I can to make your last moments less difficult.”

“What did you come here for? There are others, the hospital’s full of them.”

“I was sent here,” he answered with a vague look. “Ah! Would you like to smoke?” he added hurriedly, “I have cigarettes and even cigars.”

He offered us English cigarettes and puros, but we refused. I looked him in the eyes and he seemed irritated. I said to him, “You aren’t here on an errand of mercy. Besides, I know you. I saw you with the fascists in the barracks yard the day I was arrested.”

I was going to continue, but something surprising suddenly happened to me; the presence of this doctor no longer interested me. Generally when I’m on somebody I don’t let go. But the desire to talk left me completely; I shrugged and turned my eyes away. A little later I raised my head; he was watching me curiously. The guards were sitting on a mat. Pedro, the tall thin one, was twiddling his thumbs, the other shook his head from time to time to keep from falling asleep.

“Do you want a light?” Pedro suddenly asked the doctor. The other nodded “Yes”: I think he was about as smart as a log, but he surely wasn’t bad. Looking in his cold blue eyes it seemed to me that his only sin was lack of imagination. Pedro went out and came back with an oil lamp which he set on the corner of the bench. It gave a bad light but it was better than nothing: they had left us in the dark the night before. For a long time I watched the circle of light the lamp made on the ceiling. I was fascinated. Then suddenly I woke up, the circle of light disappeared and I felt myself crushed under an enormous weight. It was not the thought of death, or fear; it was nameless. My cheeks burned and my head ached.

I shook myself and looked at my two friends. Tom had hidden his face in his hands. I could only see the fat white nape of his neck. Little Juan was the worst, his mouth was open and his nostrils trembled. The doctor went to him and put his hand on his shoulder to comfort him: but his eyes stayed cold. Then I saw the Belgian’s hand drop stealthily along Juan’s arm, down to the wrist. Juan paid no attention. The Belgian took his wrist between three fingers, distractedly, the same time drawing back a little and turning his back to me. But I leaned backward and saw him take a watch from his pocket and look at it for a moment, never letting go of the wrist. After a minute he let the hand fall inert and went and leaned his back against the wall, then, as if he suddenly remembered something very important which had to be jotted down on the spot, he took a notebook from his pocket and wrote a few lines. “Bastard,” I thought angrily, “let him come and take my pulse. I’ll shove my fist in his rotten face.”

He didn’t come but I felt him watching me. I raised my head and returned his look. Impersonally, he said to me “Doesn’t it seem cold to you here?” He looked cold, he was blue.

I’m not cold,” I told him.

He never took his hard eyes off me. Suddenly I understood and my hands went to my face: I was drenched in sweat. In this cellar, in the midst of winter, in the midst of drafts, I was sweating. I ran my hands through my hair, gummed together with perspiration: at the same time I saw my shirt was damp and sticking to my skin: I had been dripping for an hour and hadn’t felt it. But that swine of a Belgian hadn’t missed a thing; he had seen the drops rolling down my cheeks and thought: this is the manifestation of an almost pathological state of terror; and he had felt normal and proud of being alive because he was cold. I wanted to stand up and smash his face but no sooner had I made the slightest gesture than my rage and shame were wiped out; I fell back on the bench with indifference.

I satisfied myself by rubbing my neck with my handkerchief because now I felt the sweat dropping from my hair onto my neck and it was unpleasant. I soon gave up rubbing, it was useless; my handkerchief was already soaked and I was still sweating. My buttocks were sweating too and my damp trousers were glued to the bench.

Suddenly Juan spoke. “You’re a doctor?”

“Yes,” the Belgian said.

“Does it hurt… very long?”

“Huh? When… ? Oh, no” the Belgian said paternally “Not at all. It’s over quickly.” He acted as though he were calming a cash customer.

“But I… they told me… sometimes they have to fire twice.”

“Sometimes,” the Belgian said, nodding. “It may happen that the first volley reaches no vital organs.”

“Then they have to reload their rifles and aim all over again?” He thought for a moment and then added hoarsely, “That takes time!”

He had a terrible fear of suffering, it was all he thought about: it was his age. I never thought much about it and it wasn’t fear of suffering that made me sweat.

I got up and walked to the pile of coal dust. Tom jumped up and threw me a hateful look: I had annoyed him because my shoes squeaked. I wondered if my face looked as frightened as his: I saw he was sweating too. The sky was superb, no light filtered into the dark corner and I had only to raise my head to see the Big Dipper. But it wasn’t like it had been: the night before I could see a great piece of sky from my monastery cell and each hour of the day brought me a different memory. Morning, when the sky was a hard, light blue, I thought of beaches on the Atlantic: at noon I saw the sun and I remembered a bar in Seville where I drank manzanilla and ate olives and anchovies: afternoons I was in the shade and I thought of the deep shadow which spreads over half a bull-ring leaving the other half shimmering in sunlight: it was really hard to see the whole world reflected in the sky like that. But now I could watch the sky as much as I pleased, it no longer evoked anything tn me. I liked that better. I came back and sat near Tom. A long moment passed.

Tom began speaking in a low voice. He had to talk, without that he wouldn’t have been able no recognize himself in his own mind. I thought he was talking to me but he wasn’t looking at me. He was undoubtedly afraid to see me as I was, grey and sweating: we were alike and worse than mirrors of each other. He watched the Belgian, the living.

“Do you understand?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

I began to speak in a low voice too. I watched the Belgian. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“Something is going to happen to us than I can’t understand.”

There was a strange smell about Tom. It seemed to me I was more sensitive than usual to odors. I grinned. “You’ll understand in a while.”

“It isn’t clear,” he said obstinately. “I want to be brave but first I have to know. . . .Listen, they’re going to take us into the courtyard. Good. They’re going to stand up in front of us. How many?”

“l don’t know. Five or eight. Not more.”

“All right. There’ll be eight. Someone’ll holler ‘aim!’ and I’ll see eight rifles looking at me. I’ll think how I’d like to get inside the wall, I’ll push against it with my back. . . . with every ounce of strength I have, but the wall will stay, like in a nightmare. I can imagine all that. If you only knew how well I can imagine it.”

“All right, all right!” I said. “I can imagine it too.”

“lt must hurt like hell. You know they aim at the eyes and the mouth to disfigure you,” he added mechanically. “I can feel the wounds already. I’ve had pains in my head and in my neck for the past hour. Not real pains. Worse. This is what I’m going to feel tomorrow morning. And then what?”

I well understood what he meant but I didn’t want to act as if I did. I had pains too, pains in my body like a crowd of tiny scars. I couldn’t get used to it. But I was like him. I attached no importance to it. “After,” I said. “you’ll be pushing up daisies.”

He began to talk to himself: he never stopped watching the Belgian. The Belgian didn’t seem to be listening. I knew what he had come to do; he wasn’t interested in what we thought; he came to watch our bodies, bodies dying in agony while yet alive.

“It’s like a nightmare,” Tom was saying. “You want to think something, you always have the impression that it’s all right, that you’re going to understand and then it slips, it escapes you and fades away. I tell myself there will be nothing afterwards. But I don’t understand what it means. Sometimes I almost can…. and then it fades away and I start thinking about the pains again, bullets, explosions. I’m a materialist, I swear it to you; I’m not going crazy. But something’s the matter. I see my corpse; that’s not hard but I’m the one who sees it, with my eyes. I’ve got to think… think that I won’t see anything anymore and the world will go on for the others. We aren’t made to think that, Pablo. Believe me: I’ve already stayed up a whole night waiting for something. But this isn’t the same: this will creep up behind us, Pablo, and we won’t be able to prepare for it.”

“Shut up,” I said, “Do you want me to call a priest?”

He didn’t answer. I had already noticed he had the tendency to act like a prophet and call me Pablo, speaking in a toneless voice. I didn’t like that: but it seems all the Irish are that way. I had the vague impression he smelled of urine. Fundamentally, I hadn’t much sympathy for Tom and I didn’t see why, under the pretext of dying together, I should have any more. It would have been different with some others. With Ramon Gris, for example. But I felt alone between Tom and Juan. I liked that better, anyhow: with Ramon I might have been more deeply moved. But I was terribly hard just then and I wanted to stay hard.

He kept on chewing his words, with something like distraction. He certainly talked to keep himself from thinking. He smelled of urine like an old prostate case. Naturally, I agreed with him. I could have said everything he said: it isn’t natural to die. And since I was going to die, nothing seemed natural to me, not this pile of coal dust, or the bench, or Pedro’s ugly face. Only it didn’t please me to think the same things as Tom. And I knew that, all through the night, every five minutes, we would keep on thinking things at the same time. I looked at him sideways and for the first time he seemed strange to me: he wore death on his face. My pride was wounded: for the past 24 hours I had lived next to Tom, I had listened to him. I had spoken to him and I knew we had nothing in common. And now we looked as much alike as twin brothers, simply because we were going to die together. Tom took my hand without looking at me.

“Pablo. I wonder… I wonder if it’s really true that everything ends.”

I took my hand away and said, “Look between your feet, you pig.”

There was a big puddle between his feet and drops fell from his pants-leg.

“What is it,” he asked, frightened.

“You’re pissing in your pants,” I told him.

“lt isn’t true,” he said furiously. “I’m not pissing. I

don’t feel anything.”

The Belgian approached us. He asked with false solicitude. “Do you feel ill?”

Tom did not answer. The Belgian looked at the puddle and said nothing.

“I don’t know what it is,” Tom said ferociously. “But I’m not afraid. I swear I’m not afraid.”

The Belgian did not answer. Tom got up and went to piss in a corner. He came back buttoning his fly, and sat down without a word. The Belgian was taking notes.

All three of us watched him because he was alive. He had the motions of a living human being, the cares of a living human being; he shivered in the cellar the way the living are supposed to shiver; he had an obedient, well-fed body. The rest of us hardly felt ours–not in the same way anyhow. I wanted to feel my pants between my legs but I didn’t dare; I watched the Belgian, balancing on his legs, master of his muscles, someone who could think about tomorrow. There we were, three bloodless shadows; we watched him and we sucked his life like vampires.

Finally he went over to little Juan. Did he want to feel his neck for some professional motive or was he obeying an impulse of charity? If he was acting by charity it was the only time during the whole night.

He caressed Juan’s head and neck. The kid let himself be handled, his eyes never leaving him, then suddenly he seized the hand and looked at it strangely. He held the Belgian’s hand between his own two hands and there was nothing pleasant about them, two grey pincers gripping this fat and reddish hand. I suspected what was going to happen and Tom must have suspected it too: but the Belgian didn’t see a thing, he smiled paternally. After a moment the kid brought the fat red hand to his mouth and tried to bite it. The Belgian pulled away quickly and stumbled back against the wall. For a second he looked at us with horror, he must have suddenly understood that we were not men like him. I began to laugh and one of the guards jumped up. The other was asleep, his wide open eyes were blank.

I felt relaxed and over-excited at the same time. I didn’t want to think any more about what would happen at dawn, at death. It made no sense. I only found words or emptiness. But as soon as I tried to think of anything else I saw rifle barrels pointing at me. Perhaps I lived through my execution twenty times; once I even thought it was for good: I must have slept a minute. They were dragging me to the wall and I was struggling; I was asking for mercy. I woke up with a start and looked at the Belgian: I was afraid I might have cried out in my sleep. But he was stroking his moustache, he hadn’t noticed anything. If I had wanted to, I think I could have slept a while; I had been awake for 48 hours. I was at the end of my rope. But I didn’t want to lose two hours of life; they would come to wake me up at dawn. I would follow them, stupefied with sleep and I would have croaked without so much as an “Oof!”; I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to die like an animal, I wanted to understand. Then I was afraid of having nightmares. I got up, walked back and forth, and, to change my ideas, I began to think about my past life. A crowd of memories came back to me pell-mell. There were good and bad ones–or at least I called them that before. There were faces and incidents. I saw the face of a little novillero who was gored tn Valencia during the Feria, the face of one of my uncles, the face of Ramon Gris. I remembered my whole life: how I was out of work for three months in 1926, how I almost starved to death. I remembered a night I spent on a bench in Granada: I hadn’t eaten for three days. I was angry, I didn’t want to die. That made me smile. How madly I ran after happiness, after women, after liberty. Why? I wanted to free Spain, I admired Pi y Margall, I joined the anarchist movement, I spoke in public meetings: I took everything as seriously as if I were immortal.

At that moment I felt that I had my whole life in front of me and I thought, “It’s a damned lie.” It was worth nothing because it was finished. I wondered how I’d been able to walk, to laugh with the girls: I wouldn’t have moved so much as my little finger if I had only imagined I would die like this. My life was in front of me, shut, closed, like a bag and yet everything inside of it was unfinished. For an instant I tried to judge it. I wanted to tell myself, this is a beautiful life. But I couldn’t pass judgment on it; it was only a sketch; I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing. I missed nothing: there were so many things I could have missed, the taste of manzanilla or the baths I took in summer in a little creek near Cadiz; but death had disenchanted everything.

The Belgian suddenly had a bright idea. “My friends,” he told us, “I will undertake–if the military administration will allow it–to send a message for you, a souvenir to those who love you. . . .”

Tom mumbled, “I don’t have anybody.”

I said nothing. Tom waited an instant then looked at me with curiosity. “You don’t have anything to say to Concha?”

“No.”

I hated this tender complicity: it was my own fault, I had talked about Concha the night before. I should have controlled myself. I was with her for a year. Last night I would have given an arm to see her again for five minutes. That was why I talked about her, it was stronger than I was. Now I had no more desire to see her, I had nothing more to say to her. I would not even have wanted to hold her in my arms: my body filled me with horror because it was grey and sweating–and I wasn’t sure that her body didn’t fill me with horror. Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she would have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. When she looked at me something passed from her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn’t reach me. I was alone.

Tom was alone too but not in the same way. Sitting cross-legged, he had begun to stare at the bench with a sort of smile, he looked amazed. He put out his hand and touched the wood cautiously as if he were afraid of breaking something, then drew back his hand quickly and shuddered. If I had been Tom I wouldn’t have amused myself by touching the bench; this was some more Irish nonsense, but I too found that objects had a funny look: they were more obliterated, less dense than usual. It was enough for me to look at the bench, the lamp, the pile of coal dust, to feel that I was going to die. Naturally I couldn’t think clearly about my death but I saw it everywhere, on things, in the way things fell back and kept their distance, discreetly, as people who speak quietly at the bedside of a dying man. It was his death which Tom had just touched on the bench.

In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal. I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm–because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more. I had to touch it and look at it to find out what was happening, as if it were the body of someone else. At times I could still feel it, I felt sinkings, and fallings, as when you’re in a plane taking a nose dive, or I felt my heart beating. But that didn’t reassure me. Everything that came from my body was all cockeyed. Most of the time it was quiet and I felt no more than a sort of weight, a filthy presence against me; I had the impression of being tied to an enormous vermin. Once I felt my pants and I felt they were damp; I didn’t know whether it was sweat or urine, but I went to piss on the coal pile as a precaution.

The Belgian took out his watch, looked at it. He said, “It is three-thirty.”

Bastard! He must have done it on purpose. Tom jumped; we hadn’t noticed time was running out; night surrounded us like a shapeless, somber mass. I couldn’t even remember that it had begun.

Little Juan began to cry. He wrung his hands, pleaded, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

He ran across the whole cellar waving his arms in the air then fell sobbing on one of the mats. Tom watched him with mournful eyes, without the slightest desire to console him. Because it wasn’t worth the trouble: the kid made more noise than we did, but he was less touched: he was like a sick man who defends himself against his illness by fever. It’s much more serious when there isn’t any fever.

He wept: I could clearly see he was pitying himself; he wasn’t thinking about death. For one second, one single second, I wanted to weep myself, to weep with pity for myself. But the opposite happened: I glanced at the kid, I saw his thin sobbing shoulders and I felt inhuman: I could pity neither the others nor myself. I said to myself, “I want to die cleanly.”

Tom had gotten up, he placed himself just under the round opening and began to watch for daylight. I was determined to die cleanly and I only thought of that. But ever since the doctor told us the time, I felt time flying, flowing away drop by drop.

It was still dark when I heard Tom’s voice: “Do you hear them?”

Men were marching in the courtyard.

“Yes.”

“What the hell are they doing? They can’t shoot in the dark.”

After a while we heard no more. I said to Tom, “It’s day.”

Pedro got up, yawning, and came to blow out the lamp. He said to his buddy, “Cold as hell.”

The cellar was all grey. We heard shots in the distance.

“It’s starting,” I told Tom. “They must do it in the court in the rear.”

Tom asked the doctor for a cigarette. I didn’t want one; I didn’t want cigarettes or alcohol. From that moment on they didn’t stop firing.

“Do you realize what’s happening,” Tom said.

He wanted to add something but kept quiet, watching the door. The door opened and a lieutenant came in with four soldiers. Tom dropped his cigarette.

“Steinbock?”

Tom didn’t answer. Pedro pointed him out.

“Juan Mirbal?”

“On the mat.”

“Get up,” the lieutenant said.

Juan did not move. Two soldiers took him under the arms and set him on his feet. But he fell as soon as they released him.

The soldiers hesitated.

“He’s not the first sick one,” said the lieutenant. “You two carry him: they’ll fix it up down there.”

He turned to Tom. “Let’s go.”

Tom went out between two soldiers. Two others followed, carrying the kid by the armpits. He hadn’t fainted; his eyes were wide open and tears ran down his cheeks. When I wanted to go out the lieutenant stopped me.

“You Ibbieta?”

“Yes.”

“You wait here: they’ll come for you later.”

They left. The Belgian and the two jailers left too, I was alone. I did not understand what was happening to me but I would have liked it better if they had gotten it over with right away. I heard shots at almost regular intervals; I shook with each one of them. I wanted to scream and tear out my hair. But I gritted my teeth and pushed my hands in my pockets because I wanted to stay clean.

After an hour they came to get me and led me to the first floor, to a small room that smelt of cigars and where the heat was stifling. There were two officers sitting smoking in the armchairs, papers on their knees.

“You’re Ibbieta?”

“Yes.”

“Where is Ramon Gris?”

“l don’t know.”

The one questioning me was short and fat. His eyes were hard behind his glasses. He said to me, “Come here.”

I went to him. He got up and took my arms, staring at me with a look that should have pushed me into the earth. At the same time he pinched my biceps with all his might. It wasn’t to hurt me, it was only a game: he wanted to dominate me. He also thought he had to blow his stinking breath square in my face. We stayed for a moment like that, and I almost felt like laughing. It takes a lot to intimidate a man who is going to die; it didn’t work. He pushed me back violently and sat down again. He said, “It’s his life against yours. You can have yours if you tell us where he is.”

These men dolled up with their riding crops and boots were still going to die. A little later than I, but not too much. They busied themselves looking for names in their crumpled papers, they ran after other men to imprison or suppress them: they had opinions on the future of Spain and on other subjects. Their little activities seemed shocking and burlesqued to me; I couldn’t put myself in their place. I thought they were insane. The little man was still looking at me, whipping his boots with the riding crop. All his gestures were calculated to give him the look of a live and ferocious beast.

“So? You understand?”

I don’t know where Gris is,” I answered. “I thought he was in Madrid.”

The other officer raised his pale hand indolently. This indolence was also calculated. I saw through all their little schemes and I was stupefied to find there were men who amused themselves that way.

“You have a quarter of an hour to think it over,” he said slowly. “Take him to the laundry, bring him back in fifteen minutes. If he still refuses he will he executed on the spot.”

They knew what they were doing: I had passed the night in waiting; then they had made me wait an hour in the cellar while they shot Tom and Juan and now they were locking me up in the laundry; they must have prepared their game the night before. They told themselves that nerves eventually wear out and they hoped to get me that way.

They were badly mistaken. In the laundry I sat on a stool because I felt very weak and I began to think. But not about their proposition. Of course I knew where Gris was; he was hiding with his cousins, four kilometers from the city. I also knew that I would not reveal his hiding place unless they tortured me (but they didn’t seem to be thinking about that). All that was perfectly regulated, definite and in no way interested me. Only I would have liked to understand the reasons for my conduct. I would rather die than give up Gris. Why? I didn’t like Ramon Gris any more. My friendship for him had died a little while before dawn at the same time as my love for Concha, at the same time as my desire to live. Undoubtedly I thought highly of him: he was tough. But it was not for this reason that I consented to die in his place; his life had no more value than mine; no life had value. They were going to slap a man up against a wall and shoot at him till he died, whether it was I or Gris or somebody else made no difference. I knew he was more useful than I to the cause of Spain but I thought to hell with Spain and anarchy; nothing was important. Yet I was there, I could save my skin and give up Gris and I refused to do it. I found that somehow comic; it was obstinacy. I thought, “I must be stubborn!” And a droll sort of gaiety spread over me.

They came for me and brought me back to the two officers. A rat ran out from under my feet and that amused me. I turned to one of the falangistas and said, “Did you see the rat?”

He didn’t answer. He was very sober, he took himself seriously. I wanted to laugh but I held myself back because I was afraid that once I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop. The falangista had a moustache. I said to him again, “You ought to shave off your moustache, idiot.” I thought it funny that he would let the hairs of his living being invade his face. He kicked me without great conviction and I kept quiet.

“Well,” said the fat officer, “have you thought about it?”

I looked at them with curiosity, as insects of a very rare species. I told them, “I know where he is. He is hidden in the cemetery. In a vault or in the gravediggers’ shack.”

It was a farce. I wanted to see them stand up, buckle their belts and give orders busily.

They jumped to their feet. “Let’s go. Molés, go get fifteen men from Lieutenant Lopez. You,” the fat man said, “I’ll let you off if you’re telling the truth, but it’ll cost you plenty if you’re making monkeys out of us.”

“They left in a great clatter and I waited peacefully under the guard of falangistas. From time to time I smiled, thinking about the spectacle they would make. I felt stunned and malicious. I imagined them lifting up tombstones, opening the doors of the vaults one by one. I represented this situation to myself as if I had been someone else: this prisoner obstinately playing the hero, these grim falangistas with their moustaches and their men in uniform running among the graves; it was irresistibly funny. After half an hour the little fat man came back alone. I thought he had come to give the orders to execute me. The others must have stayed in the cemetery.

The officer looked at me. He didn’t look at all sheepish. “Take him into the big courtyard with the others,” he said. “After the military operations a regular court will decide what happens to him.”

“Then they’re not… not going to shoot me?…”

“Not now, anyway. What happens afterwards is none of my business.”

I still didn’t understand. I asked, “But why…?”

He shrugged his shoulders without answering and the soldiers took me away. In the big courtyard there were about a hundred prisoners, women, children and a few old men. I began walking around the central grass plot, I was stupefied. At noon they let us eat in the mess hall. Two or three people questioned me. I must have known them, but I didn’t answer: I didn’t even know where I was.

Around evening they pushed about ten new prisoners into the court. I recognized Garcia, the baker. He said, “What damned luck you have! I didn’t think I’d see you alive.”

“They sentenced me to death,” I said, “and then they changed their minds. I don’t know why.”

“They arrested me at two o’clock,” Garcia said.

“Why?” Garcia had nothing to do with politics.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They arrest everybody who doesn’t think the way they do.” He lowered his voice. “They got Gris.”

I began to tremble. “When?”

“This morning. He messed it up. He left his cousin’s on Tuesday because they had an argument. There were plenty of people to hide him but he didn’t want to owe anything to anybody. He said, ‘ I’d go and hide in Ibbieta’s place, but they got him, so I’ll go hide in the cemetery.'”

“In the cemetery?”

“Yes. What a fool. Of course they went by there this morning, that was sure to happen. They found him in the gravediggers’ shack. He shot at them and they got him.”

“In the cemetery!”

Everything began to spin and I found myself sitting on the ground: I laughed so hard I cried.

The Swimmer

by John Cheever

It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.” You might have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium, heard it from the golf links and the tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible hangover. “I drank too much,” said Donald Westerhazy. “We all drank too much,” said Lucinda Merrill. “It must have been the wine,” said Helen Westerhazy. “I drank too much of that claret.”

This was at the edge of the Westerhazys’ pool. The pool, fed by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade of green. It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance—from the bow of an approaching ship—that it might have had a name. Lisbon. Hackensack. The sun was hot. Neddy Merrill sat by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin. He was a slender man—he seemed to have the especial slenderness of youth—and while he was far from young he had slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of Aphrodite on the hall table a smack, as he jogged toward the smell of coffee in his dining room. He might have been compared to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one, and while he lacked a tennis racket or a sail bag the impression was definitely one of youth, sport, and clement weather. He had been swimming and now he was breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could gulp into his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure. It all seemed to flow into his chest. His own house stood in Bullet Park, eight miles to the south, where his four beautiful daughters would have had their lunch and might be playing tennis. Then it occurred to him that by taking a dogleg to the southwest he could reach his home by water.

His life was not confining and the delight he took in this observation could not be explained by its suggestion of escape. He seemed to see, with a cartographer’s eye, that string of swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean stream that curved across the county. He had made a discovery, a contribution to modern geography; he would name the stream Lucinda after his wife. He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool but he was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a legendary figure. The day was beautiful and it seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate its beauty.

He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and dove in. He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools. He swam a choppy crawl, breathing either with every stroke or every fourth stroke and counting somewhere well in the back of his mind the one-two one-two of a flutter kick. It was not a serviceable stroke for long distances but the domestication of swimming had saddled the sport with some customs and in his part of the world a crawl was customary. To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition, and he would have liked to swim without trunks, but this was not possible, considering his project. He hoisted himself up on the far curb—he never used the ladder—and started across the lawn. When Lucinda asked where he was going he said he was going to swim home.

The only maps and charts he had to go by were remembered or imaginary but these were clear enough. First there were the Grahams, the Hammers, the Lears, the Howlands, and the Crosscups. He would cross Ditmar Street to the Bunkers and come, after a short portage, to the Levys, the Welchers, and the public pool in Lancaster. Then there were the Hallorans, the Sachses, the Biswangers, Shirley Adams, the Gilmartins, and the Clydes. The day was lovely, and that he lived in a world so generously supplied with water seemed like a clemency, a beneficence. His heart was high and he ran across the grass. Making his way home by an uncommon route gave him the feeling that he was a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with a destiny, and he knew that he would find friends all along the way; friends would line the banks of the Lucinda River.

He went through a hedge that separated the Westerhazys’ land from the Grahams’, walked under some flowering apple trees, passed the shed that housed their pump and filter, and came out at the Grahams’ pool. “Why, Neddy,” Mrs. Graham said, “what a marvelous surprise. I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all morning. Here, let me get you a drink.” He saw then, like any explorer, that the hospitable customs and traditions of the natives would have to be handled with diplomacy if he was ever going to reach his destination. He did not want to mystify or seem rude to the Grahams nor did he have the time to linger there. He swam the length of their pool and joined them in the sun and was rescued, a few minutes later, by the arrival of two carloads of friends from Connecticut. During the uproarious reunions he was able to slip away. He went down by the front of the Grahams’ house, stepped over a thorny hedge, and crossed a vacant lot to the Hammers’. Mrs. Hammer, looking up from her roses, saw him swim by although she wasn’t quite sure who it was. The Lears heard him splashing past the open windows of their living room. The Howlands and the Crosscups were away. After leaving the Howlands’ he crossed Ditmar Street and started for the Bunkers’, where he could hear, even at that distance, the noise of a party.

The water refracted the sound of voices and laughter and seemed to suspend it in midair. The Bunkers’ pool was on a rise and he climbed some stairs to a terrace where twenty-five or thirty men and women were drinking. The only person in the water was Rusty Towers, who floated there on a rubber raft. Oh, how bonny and lush were the banks of the Lucinda River! Prosperous men and women gathered by the sapphire-colored waters while caterer’s men in white coats passed them cold gin. Overhead a red de Haviland trainer was circling around and around and around in the sky with something like the glee of a child in a swing. Ned felt a passing affection for the scene, a tenderness for the gathering, as if it was something he might touch. In the distance he heard thunder. As soon as Enid Bunker saw him she began to scream: “Oh, look who’s here! What a marvelous surprise! When Lucinda said that you couldn’t come I thought I’d die.” She made her way to him through the crowd, and when they had finished kissing she led him to the bar, a progress that was slowed by the fact that he stopped to kiss eight or ten other women and shake the hands of as many men. A smiling bartender he had seen at a hundred parties gave him a gin and tonic and he stood by the bar for a moment, anxious not to get stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage. When he seemed about to be surrounded he dove in and swam close to the side to avoid colliding with Rusty’s raft. At the far end of the pool he bypassed the Tomlinsons with a broad smile and jogged up the garden path. The gravel cut his feet but this was the only unpleasantness. The party was confined to the pool, and as he went toward the house he heard the brilliant, watery sound of voices fade, heard the noise of a radio from the Bunkers’ kitchen, where someone was listening to a ball game. Sunday afternoon. He made his way through the parked cars and down the grassy border of their driveway to Alewives Lane. He did not want to be seen on the road in his bathing trunks but there was no traffic and he made the short distance to the Levys’ driveway, marked with a PRIVATE PROPERTY sign and a green tube for The New York Times. All the doors and windows of the big house were open but there were no signs of life; not even a dog barked. He went around the side of the house to the pool and saw that the Levys had only recently left. Glasses and bottles and dishes of nuts were on a table at the deep end, where there was a bathhouse or gazebo, hung with Japanese lanterns. After swimming the pool he got himself a glass and poured a drink. It was his fourth or fifth drink and he had swum nearly half the length of the Lucinda River. He felt tired, clean, and pleased at that moment to be alone; pleased with everything.

It would storm. The stand of cumulus cloud—that city—had risen and darkened, and while he sat there he heard the percussiveness of thunder again. The de Haviland trainer was still circling overhead and it seemed to Ned that he could almost hear the pilot laugh with pleasure in the afternoon; but when there was another peal of thunder he took off for home. A train whistle blew and he wondered what time it had gotten to be. Four? Five? He thought of the provincial station at that hour, where a waiter, his tuxedo concealed by a raincoat, a dwarf with some flowers wrapped in newspaper, and a woman who had been crying would be waiting for the local. It was suddenly growing dark; it was that moment when the pin-headed birds seem to organize their song into some acute and knowledgeable recognition of the storm’s approach. Then there was a fine noise of rushing water from the crown of an oak at his back, as if a spigot there had been turned. Then the noise of fountains came from the crowns of all the tall trees. Why did he love storms, what was the meaning of his excitement when the door sprang open and the rain wind fled rudely up the stairs, why had the simple task, of shutting the windows of an old house seemed fitting and urgent, why did the first watery notes of a storm wind have for him the unmistakable sound of good news, cheer, glad tidings? Then there was an explosion, a smell of cordite, and rain lashed the Japanese lanterns that Mrs. Levy had bought in Kyoto the year before last, or was it the year before that?

He stayed in the Levys’ gazebo until the storm had passed. The rain had cooled the air and he shivered. The force of the wind had stripped a maple of its red and yellow leaves and scattered them over the grass and the water. Since it was midsummer the tree must be blighted, and yet he felt a peculiar sadness at this sign of autumn. He braced his shoulders, emptied his glass, and started for the Welchers’ pool. This meant crossing the Lindleys’ riding ring and he was surprised to find it overgrown with grass and all the jumps dismantled. He wondered if the Lindleys had sold their horses or gone away for the summer and put them out to board. He seemed to remember having heard something about the Lindleys and their horses but the memory was unclear. On he went, barefoot through the wet grass, to the Welchers’, where he found their pool was dry.

This breach in his chain of water disappointed him absurdly, and he felt like some explorer who seeks a torrential headwater and finds a dead stream. He was disappointed and mystified. It was common enough to go away for the summer but no one ever drained his pool. The Welchers had definitely gone away. The pool furniture was folded, stacked, and covered with a tarpaulin. The bathhouse was locked. All the windows of the house were shut, and when he went around to the driveway in front he saw a FOR SALE sign nailed to a tree. When had he last heard from the Welchers—when, that is, had he and Lucinda last regretted an invitation to dine with them? It seemed only a week or so ago. Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth? Then in the distance he heard the sound of a tennis game. This cheered him, cleared away all his apprehensions and let him regard the overcast sky and the cold air with indifference. This was the day that Neddy Merrill swam across the county. That was the day! He started off then for his most difficult portage.

Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play, had his car broken down, or was he merely a fool. Standing barefoot in the deposits of the highway—beer cans, rags, and blowout patches—exposed to all kinds of ridicule, he seemed pitiful. He had known when he started that this was a part of his journey—it had been on his maps—but confronted with the lines of traffic, worming through the summery light, he found himself unprepared. He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him, and he had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation. He could have gone back, back to the Westerhazys’, where Lucinda would still be sitting in the sun. He had signed nothing, vowed nothing, pledged nothing, not even to himself. Why, believing as he did, that all human obduracy was susceptible to common sense, was he unable to turn back? Why was he determined to complete his journey even if it meant putting his life in danger? At what point had this prank, this joke, this piece of horseplay become serious? He could not go back, he could not even recall with any clearness the green water at the Westerhazys’, the sense of inhaling the day’s components, the friendly and relaxed voices saying that they had drunk too much. In the space of an hour, more or less, be had covered a distance that made his return impossible.

An old man, tooling down the highway at fifteen miles an hour, let him get to the middle of the road, where there was a grass divider. Here he was exposed to the ridicule of the northbound traffic, but after ten or fifteen minutes he was able to cross. From here he had only a short walk to the Recreation Center at the edge of the village of Lancaster, where there were some handball courts and a public pool.

The effect of the water on voices, the illusion of brilliance and suspense, was the same here as it had been at the Bunkers’ but the sounds here were louder, harsher, and more shrill, and as soon as he entered the crowded enclosure he was confronted with regimentation. “ALL SWIMMERS MUST TAKE A SHOWER BEFORE USING THE POOL. ALL SWIMMERS MUST USE THE FOOTBATH, ALL SWIMMERS MUST WEAR THEIR IDENTIFICATION DISKS.” He took a shower, washed his feet in a cloudy and bitter solution, and made his way to the edge of the water. It stank of chlorine and looked to him like a sink. A pair of lifeguards in a pair of towers blew police whistles at what seemed to be regular intervals and abused the swimmers through a public address system. Neddy remembered the sapphire water at the Bunkers’ with longing and thought that he might contaminate himself—damage his own prosperousness and charm—by swimming in this murk, but he reminded himself that be was an explorer, a pilgrim, and that this was merely a stagnant bend in the Lucinda River. He dove, scowling with distaste, into the chlorine and had to swim with his head above water to avoid collisions, but even so he was bumped into, splashed, and jostled. When he got to the shallow end both lifeguards were shouting at him: “Hey, you, you without the identification disk, get outa the water.” He did, but they had no way of pursuing him and he went through the reek of suntan oil, and chlorine out through the hurricane fence and passed the handball courts. By crossing the road he entered the wooded part of the Halloran estate. The woods were not cleared and the footing was treacherous and difficult until he reached the lawn and the clipped beech hedge that encircled their pool.

The Hallorans were friends, an elderly couple of enormous wealth who seemed to bask in the suspicion that they might be Communists. They were zealous reformers but they were not Communists, and yet when they were accused, as they sometimes were, of subversion, it seemed to gratify and excite them. Their beech hedge was yellow and he guessed this had been blighted like the Levys’ maple. He called hullo, hullo, to warn the Hallorans of his approach, to palliate his invasion of their privacy. The Hallorans, for reasons that had never been explained to him, did not wear bathing suits. No explanations were in order, really. Their nakedness was a detail in their uncompromising zeal for reform and he stepped politely out of his trunks before he went through the opening in the hedge.

Mrs. Halloran, a stout woman with white hair and a serene face, was reading the Times. Mr. Halloran was taking beech leaves out of the water with a scoop. They seemed not surprised or displeased to see him. Their pool was perhaps the oldest in the country, a fieldstone rectangle, fed by a brook. It had no filter or pump and its waters were the opaque gold of the stream.

“I’m swimming across the county,” Ned said.

“Why, I didn’t know one could,” exclaimed Mrs. Halloran.

“Well, I’ve made it from the Westerhazys’,” Ned said. “That must be about four miles.”

He left his trunks at the deep end, walked to the shallow end, and swam this stretch. As he was pulling himself out of the water he heard Mrs. Halloran say, “We’ve been terribly sorry to bear about all your misfortunes, Neddy.”

“My misfortunes?” Ned asked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why, we heard that you’d sold the house and that your poor children . . . ”

“I don’t recall having sold the house,” Ned said, “and the girls are at home.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Halloran sighed. “Yes . . . ” Her voice filled the air with an unseasonable melancholy and Ned spoke briskly. “Thank you for the swim.”

“Well, have a nice trip,” said Mrs. Halloran.

Beyond the hedge he pulled on his trunks and fastened them. They were loose and he wondered if, during the space of an afternoon, he could have lost some weight. He was cold and he was tired and the naked Hallorans and their dark water had depressed him. The swim was too much for his strength but how could he have guessed this, sliding down the banister that morning and sitting in the Westerhazys’ sun? His arms were lame. His legs felt rubbery and ached at the joints. The worst of it was the cold in his bones and the feeling that he might never be warm again. Leaves were falling down around him and he smelled wood smoke on the wind. Who would be burning wood at this time of year?

He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through the last of his journey, refresh his feeling that it was original and valorous to swim across the county. Channel swimmers took brandy. He needed a stimulant. He crossed the lawn in front of the Hallorans’ house and went down a little path to where they had built a house, for their only daughter, Helen, and her husband, Eric Sachs. The Sachses’ pool was small and he found Helen and her husband there.

“Oh, Neddy, ” Helen said. “Did you lunch at Mother’s?”

“Not really, ” Ned said. “I did stop to see your parents.” This seemed to be explanation enough. “I’m terribly sorry to break in on you like this but I’ve taken a chill and I wonder if you’d give me a drink.”

“Why, I’d love to,” Helen said, “but there hasn’t been anything in this house to drink since Eric’s operation. That was three years ago.”

Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and that his friend had been ill? His eyes slipped from Eric’s face to his abdomen, where be saw three pale, sutured scars, two of them at least a foot long. Gone was his navel, and what, Neddy thought, would the roving hand, bed-checking one’s gifts at 3 a.m., make of a belly with no navel, no link to birth, this breach in the succession?

“I’m sure you can get a drink at the Biswangers’,” Helen said. “They’re having an enormous do. You can hear it from here. Listen!”

She raised her head and from across the road, the lawns, the gardens, the woods, the fields, he heard again the brilliant noise of voices over water. “Well, I’ll get wet,” he said, still feeling that he had no freedom of choice about his means of travel. He dove into the Sachses’ cold water and, gasping, close to drowning, made his way from one end of the pool to the other. “Lucinda and I want terribly to see you,” he said over his shoulder, his face set toward the Biswangers’. “We’re sorry it’s been so long and we’ll call you very soon.”

He crossed some fields to the Biswangers’ and the sounds of revelry there. They would be honored to give him a drink, they would be happy to give him a drink. The Biswangers invited him and Lucinda for dinner four times a year, six weeks in advance. They were always rebuffed and yet they continued to send out their invitations, unwilling to comprehend the rigid and undemocratic realities of their society. They were the sort of people who discussed the price of things at cocktails, exchanged market tips during dinner, and after dinner told dirty stories to mixed company. They did not belong to Neddy’s set—they were not even on Lucinda’s Christmas-card list. He went toward their pool with feelings of indifference, charity, and some unease, since it seemed to be getting dark and these were the longest days of the year. The party when he joined it was noisy and large. Grace Biswanger was the kind of hostess who asked the optometrist, the veterinarian, the real-estate dealer, and the dentist. No one was swimming and the twilight, reflected on the water of the pool, had a wintry gleam. There was a bar and he started for this. When Grace Biswanger saw him she came toward him, not affectionately as he had every right to expect, but bellicosely.

“Why, this party has everything,” she said loudly, “including a gate crasher.”

She could not deal him a social blow—there was no question about this and he did not flinch. “As a gate crasher,” he asked politely, “do I rate a drink?”

“Suit yourself,” she said. “You don’t seem to pay much attention to invitations.”

She turned her back on him and joined some guests, and he went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. The bartender served him but be served him rudely. His was a world in which the caterer’s men kept the social score, and to be rebuffed by a part-time barkeep meant that be had suffered some loss of social esteem. Or perhaps the man was new and uninformed. Then he heard Grace at his back say: “They went for broke overnight—nothing but income—and he showed up drunk one Sunday and asked us to loan him five thousand dollars. . . .” She was always talking about money. It was worse than eating your peas off a knife. He dove into the pool, swam its length and went away.

The next pool on his list, the last but two, belonged to his old mistress, Shirley Adams. If he had suffered any injuries at the Biswangers’ they would be cured here. Love—sexual roughhouse in fact—was the supreme elixir, the pain killer, the brightly colored pill that would put the spring back into his step, the joy of life in his heart. They had had an affair last week, last month, last year. He couldn’t remember, It was he who had broken it off, his was the upper hand, and he stepped through the gate of the wall that surrounded her pool with nothing so considered as self-confidence. It seemed in a way to be his pool, as the lover, particularly the illicit lover, enjoys the possessions of his mistress with an authority unknown to holy matrimony. She was there, her hair the color of brass, but her figure, at the edge of the lighted, cerulean water, excited in him no profound memories. It had been, he thought, a lighthearted affair, although she had wept when he broke it off. She seemed confused to see him and he wondered if she was still wounded. Would she, God forbid, weep again?

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I’m swimming across the county.”

“Good Christ. Will you ever grow up?”

“What’s the matter?”

“If you’ve come here for money,” she said, “I won’t give you another cent.”

“You could give me a drink.”

“I could but I won’t. I’m not alone.”

“Well, I’m on my way.”

He dove in and swam the pool, but when be tried to haul himself up onto the curb he found that the strength in his arms and shoulders had gone, and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out. Looking over his shoulder be saw, in the lighted bathhouse, a young man. Going out onto the dark lawn he smelled chrysanthemums or marigolds—some stub- born autumnal fragrance—on the night air, strong as gas. Looking overhead he saw that the stars had come out, but why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia? What had become of the constellations of midsummer? He began to cry.

It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered. He could not understand the rudeness of the caterer’s barkeep or the rudeness of a mistress who had come to him on her knees and showered his trousers with tears. He had swum too long, he had been immersed too long, and his nose and his throat were sore from the water. What he needed then was a drink, some company, and some clean, dry clothes, and while he could have cut directly across the road to his home he went on to the Gilmartins’ pool. Here, for the first time in his life, he did not dive but went down the steps into the icy water and swam a bobbled sidestroke that he might have learned as a youth. He staggered with fatigue on his way to the Clydes’ and paddled the length of their pool, stopping again and again with his hand on the curb to rest. He climbed up the ladder and wondered if he had the strength to get home. He had done what he wanted, he had swum the county, but he was so stupefied with exhaustion that his triumph seemed vague. Stooped, holding on to the gateposts for support, he turned up the driveway of his own house.

The place was dark. Was it so late that they had all gone to bed? Had Lucinda stayed at the Westerhazys’ for supper? Had the girls joined her there or gone someplace else? Hadn’t they agreed, as they usually did on Sunday, to regret all their invitations and stay at home? He tried the garage doors to see what cars were in but the doors were locked and rust came off the handles onto his hands. Going toward the house, he saw that the force of the thunderstorm had knocked one of the rain gutters loose. It hung down over the front door like an umbrella rib, but it could be fixed in the morning. The house was locked, and he thought that the stupid cook or the stupid maid must have locked the place up until he remembered that it had been some time since they had employed a maid or a cook. He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty.

The Lesson

Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995)

Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask. Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky. And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then spread out gradual to breathe. And our parents would yank our heads into some kinda shape and crisp up our clothes so we’d be presentable for travel with Miss Moore, who always looked like she was going to church though she never did. Which is just one of the things the grownups talked about when they talked behind her back like a dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she’d sewed up or some gingerbread she’d made or some book, why then they’d all be too embarrassed to turn her down and we’d get handed over all spruced up. She’d been to college and said it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones’ education, and she not even related by marriage or blood. So they’d go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She was the main gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go for, you send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it’s a blood-deep natural thing with her. Which is how she got saddled with me and Sugar and Junior in the first place while our mothers were in a la-de-da apartment up the block having a good ole time.

So this one day Miss Moore rounds us all up at the mailbox and it’s puredee hot and she’s knockin herself out about arithmetic. And school suppose to let up in summer I heard, but she don’t never let up. And the starch in my pinafore scratching the shit outta me and I’m really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree. I’d much rather go to the pool or to the show where it’s cool. So me and Sugar leaning on the mailbox being surly, which is a Miss Moore word. And Flyboy checking out what everybody brought for lunch. And Fat Butt already wasting his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich like the pig he is. And Junebug punchin on Q.T.’s arm for potato chips. And Rosie Giraffe shifting from one hip to the other waiting for somebody to step on her foot or ask her if she from Georgia so she can kick ass, preferably Mercedes’. And Miss Moore asking us do we know what money is like we a bunch of retards. I mean real money, she say, like it’s only poker chips or monopoly papers we lay on the grocer. So right away I’m tired of this and say so. And would much rather snatch Sugar and go to the Sunset and terrorize the West Indian kids and take their hair ribbons and their money too. And Miss Moore files that remark away for next week’s lesson on brotherhood, I can tell. And finally I say we oughta get to the subway cause it’s cooler an’ besides we might meet some cute boys. Sugar done swiped her mama’s lipstick, so we ready.

So we heading down the street and she’s boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain’t divided up right in this country. And then she gets to the part about we all poor and live in the slums which I don’t feature. And I’m ready to speak on that, but she steps out in the street and hails two cabs just like that. Then she hustles half the crew in with her and hands me a five-dollar bill and tells me to calculate 10 percent tip for the driver. And we’re off. Me and Sugar and Junebug and Flyboy hangin out the window and hollering to everybody, putting lipstick on each other cause Flyboy a faggot anyway, and making farts with our sweaty armpits. But I’m mostly trying to figure how to spend this money. But they are fascinated with the meter ticking and Junebug starts laying bets as to how much it’ll read when Flyboy can’t hold his breath no more. Then Sugar lays bets as to how much it’ll be when we get there. So I’m stuck. Don’t nobody want to go for my plan, which is to jump out at the next light and run off to the first bar-b-que we can find. Then the driver tells us to get the hell out cause we there already. And the meter reads eighty-five cents. And I’m stalling to figure out the tip and Sugar say give him a dime. And I decide he don’t need it bad as I do, so later for him. But then he tries to take off with Junebug foot still in the door so we talk about his mama something ferocious. Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy.

“This is the place, ” Miss Moore say, presenting it to us in the voice she uses at the museum. “Let’s look in the windows before we go in.”

“Can we steal?” Sugar asks very serious like she’s getting the ground rules squared away before she plays. “I beg your pardon,” say Miss Moore, and we fall out. So she leads us around the windows of the toy store and me and Sugar screamin, “This is mine, that’s mine, I gotta have that, that was made for me, I was born for that,” till Big Butt drowns us out.

“Hey, I’m goin to buy that there.”

“That there? You don’t even know what it is, stupid.”

“I do so,” he say punchin on Rosie Giraffe. “It’s a microscope.”

“Whatcha gonna do with a microscope, fool?”

“Look at things.”

“Like what, Ronald?” ask Miss Moore. And Big Butt ain’t got the first notion. So here go Miss Moore gabbing about the thousands of bacteria in a drop of water and the somethinorother in a speck of blood and the million and one living things in the air around us is invisible to the naked eye. And what she say that for? Junebug go to town on that “naked” and we rolling. Then Miss Moore ask what it cost. So we all jam into the window smudgin it up and the price tag say $300. So then she ask how long’d take for Big Butt and Junebug to save up their allowances. “Too long,” I say. “Yeh,” adds Sugar, “outgrown it by that time.” And Miss Moore say no, you never outgrow learning instruments. “Why, even medical students and interns and,” blah, blah, blah. And we ready to choke Big Butt for bringing it up in the first damn place.

“This here costs four hundred eighty dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. So we pile up all over her to see what she pointin out. My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy, and different-color inks dripped into the splits, then the whole thing put into a oven or something. But for $480 it don’t make sense.

“That’s a paperweight made of semi-precious stones fused together under tremendous pressure,” she explains slowly, with her hands doing the mining and all the factory work.

“So what’s a paperweight?” asks Rosie Giraffe.

“To weigh paper with, dumbbell,” say Flyboy, the wise man from the East.

“Not exactly,” say Miss Moore, which is what she say when you warm or way off too. “It’s to weigh paper down so it won’t scatter and make your desk untidy. ” So right away me and Sugar curtsy to each other and then to Mercedes who is more the tidy type.

“We don’t keep paper on top of the desk in my class,” say Junebug, figuring Miss Moore crazy or lyin one.

“At home, then,” she say. “Don’t you have a calendar and a pencil case and a blotter and a letter-opener on your desk at home where you do your homework?” And she know damn well what our homes look like cause she nosys around in them every chance she gets.

“I don’t even have a desk,” say Junebug. “Do we?”

“No. And I don’t get no homework neither,” says Big Butt.

“And I don’t even have a home,” say Flyboy like he do at school to keep the white folks off his back and sorry for him. Send this poor kid to camp posters, is his specialty.

“I do,” says Mercedes. “I have a box of stationery on my desk and a picture of my cat. My godmother bought the stationery and the desk. There’s a big rose on each sheet and the envelopes smell like roses.”

“Who wants to know about your smelly-ass stationery,” say Rosie Giraffe fore I can get my two cents in.

“It’s important to have a work area all your own so that . . .”

“Will you look at this sailboat, please,” say Flyboy, cuttin her off and pointin to the thing like it was his. So once again we tumble all over each other to gaze at this magnificent thing in the toy store which is just big enough to maybe sail two kittens across the pond if you strap them to the posts tight. We all start reciting the price tag like we in assembly. “Hand-crafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.”

“Unbelievable,” I hear myself say and am really stunned. I read it again for myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance. Same thing. For some reason this pisses me off. We look at Miss Moore and she lookin at us, waiting for I dunno what.

“Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? It must have a motor and a whole lot else besides,” I say. “My sailboat cost me about fifty cents.”

“But will it take water?” say Mercedes with her smart ass.

“Took mine to Alley Pond Park once,” say Flyboy. “String broke. Lost it. Pity.”

“Sailed mine in Gentral Park and it keeled over and sank. Had to ask my father for another dollar.”

“And you got the strap,” laugh Big Butt. “The jerk didn’t even have a string on it. My old man wailed on his behind.”

Little Q.T. was staring hard at the sailboat and you could see he wanted it bad. But he too little and somebody’d just take it from him. So what the hell. “This boat for kids, Miss Moore?”

“Parents silly to buy something like that just to get all broke up,” say Rosie Giraffe.

“That much money it should last forever,” I figure.

“My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.”

“Your father, my ass,” say Rosie Giraffe getting a chance to finally push Mercedes.

“Must be rich people shop here,” say Q.T.

“You are a very bright boy,” say Flyboy. “What was your first clue?” And he rap him on the head with the back of his knuckles, since Q.T. the only one he could get away with. Though Q.T. liable to come up behind you years later and get his licks in when you half expect it.

“What I want to know is,” I says to Miss Moore though I never talk to her, I wouldn’t give the bitch that satisfaction, “is how much a real boat costs? I figure a thousand’d get you a yacht any day.”

“Why don’t you check that out,” she says, “and report back to the group?” Which really pains my ass. If you gonna mess up a perfectly good swim day least you could do is have some answers. “Let’s go in,” she say like she got something up her sleeve. Only she don’t lead the way. So me and Sugar turn the corner to where the entrance is, but when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of, just a toy store. But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be shamed about? Got as much right to go in as anybody. But somehow I can’t seem to get hold of the door, so I step away from Sugar to lead. But she hangs back too. And I look at her and she looks at me and this is ridiculous. I mean, damn, I have never ever been shy about doing nothing or going nowhere. But then Mercedes steps up and then Rosie Giraffe and Big Butt crowd in behind and shove, and next thing we all stuffed into the doorway with only Mercedes squeezing past us, smoothing out her jumper and walking right down the aisle. Then the rest of us tumble in like a glued-together jigsaw done all wrong. And people lookin at us. And it’s like the time me and Sugar crashed into the Catholic church on a dare. But once we got in there and everything so hushed and holy and the candles and the bowin and the handkerchiefs on all the drooping heads, I just couldn’t go through with the plan. Which was for me to run up to the altar and do a tap dance while Sugar played the nose flute and messed around in the holy water. And Sugar kept givin me the elbow. Then later teased me so bad I tied her up in the shower and turned it on and locked her in. And she’d be there till this day if Aunt Gretchen hadn’t finally figured I was lyin about the boarder takin a shower.

Same thing in the store. We all walkin on tiptoe and hardly touchin the games and puzzles and things. And I watched Miss Moore who is steady watchin us like she waitin for a sign. Like Mama Drewery watches the sky and sniffs the air and takes note of just how much slant is in the bird formation. Then me and Sugar bump smack into each other, so busy gazing at the toys, ‘specially the sailboat. But we don’t laugh and go into our fat-lady bump-stomach routine. We just stare at that price tag. Then Sugar run a finger over the whole boat. And I’m jealous and want to hit her. Maybe not her, but I sure want to punch somebody in the mouth.

“Watcha bring us here for, Miss Moore?”

“You sound angry, Sylvia. Are you mad about something?” Givin me one of them grins like she tellin a grown-up joke that never turns out to be funny. And she’s lookin very closely at me like maybe she plannin to do my portrait from memory. I’m mad, but I won’t give her that satisfaction. So I slouch around the store bein very bored and say, “Let’s go.”

Me and Sugar at the back of the train watchin the tracks whizzin by large then small then gettin gobbled up in the dark. I’m thinkin about this tricky toy I saw in the store. A clown that somersaults on a bar then does chin-ups just cause you yank lightly at his leg. Cost $35. I could see me askin my mother for a $35 birthday clown. “You wanna who that costs what?” she’d say, cocking her head to the side to get a better view of the hole in my head. Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy. Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Grand-daddy Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too. Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it? Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out. But it don’t necessarily have to be that way, she always adds then waits for somebody to say that poor people have to wake up and demand their share of the pie and don’t none of us know what kind of pie she talking about in the first damn place. But she ain’t so smart cause I still got her four dollars from the taxi and she sure ain’t gettin it Messin up my day with this shit. Sugar nudges me in my pocket and winks.

Miss Moore lines us up in front of the mailbox where we started from, seem like years ago, and I got a headache for thinkin so hard. And we lean all over each other so we can hold up under the draggy ass lecture she always finishes us off with at the end before we thank her for borin us to tears. But she just looks at us like she readin tea leaves. Finally she say, “Well, what did you think of

 

F.A.0. Schwarz

?”

Rosie Giraffe mumbles, “White folks crazy.”

“I’d like to go there again when I get my birthday money,” says Mercedes, and we shove her out the pack so she has to lean on the mailbox by herself.

“I’d like a shower. Tiring day,” say Flyboy.

Then Sugar surprises me by sayin, “You know, Miss Moore, I don’t think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs.” And Miss Moore lights up like somebody goosed her. “And?” she say, urging Sugar on. Only I’m standin on her foot so she don’t continue.

“Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. What do you think?”

“I think,” say Sugar pushing me off her feet like she never done before cause I whip her ass in a minute, “that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” Miss Moore is besides herself and I am disgusted with Sugar’s treachery. So I stand on her foot one more time to see if she’ll shove me. She shuts up, and Miss Moore looks at me, sorrowfully I’m thinkin. And somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest. “Anybody else learn anything today?” lookin dead at me. I walk away and Sugar has to run to catch up and don’t even seem to notice when I shrug her arm off my shoulder.

“Well, we got four dollars anyway,” she says.

“Uh hun.”

“We could go to Hascombs and get half a chocolate layer and then go to the Sunset and still have plenty money for potato chips and ice cream sodas.”

“Uh hun.”

“Race you to Hascombs,” she say.

We start down the block and she gets ahead which is O.K. by me cause I’m going to the West End and then over to the Drive to think this day through. She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.

–1972

Hemingway1
THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER

By Ernest Hemingway

IT WAS NOW lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending
that nothing had happened.

“Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.
“I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.
“I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.
“I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three gimlets.”
The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in

the wind that blew through the trees that shaded the tents.
“What had I ought to give them?” Macomber asked.
“A quid would be plenty,” Wilson told him. “You don’t want to spoil them.”
“Will the headman distribute it?”
“Absolutely.”
Francis Macomber had, half an hour before, been carried to his tent from the edge of the camp in triumph on

the arms and shoulders of the cook, the personal boys, the skinner and the porters. The gun-bearers had taken no
part in the demonstration. When the native boys put him down at the door of his tent, he had shaken all their
hands, received their congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the bed until his wife came in. She
did not speak to him when she came in and he left the tent at once to wash his face and hands in the portable
wash basin outside and go over to the dining tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the breeze and the
shade.

“You’ve got your lion,” Robert Wilson said to him, “and a damned fine one too.”
Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an extremely handsome and well-kept woman of the

beauty and social position which had, five years before, commanded five thousand dollars as the price of
endorsing, with photographs, a beauty product which she had never used. She had been married to Francis
Macomber for eleven years.

“He is a good lion, isn’t he?” Macomber said. His wife looked at him now. She looked at both these men as
though she had never seen them before.

One, Wilson, the white hunter, she knew she had never truly seen before. He was about middle height with
sandy hair, a stubby mustache, a very red face and extremely cold blue eyes with faint white wrinkles at the
corners that grooved merrily when he smiled. He smiled at her now and she looked away from his face at the
way his shoulders sloped in the loose tunic he wore with the four big cartridges held in loops where the left
breast pocket should have been, at his big brown hands, his old slacks, his very dirty boots and back to his red
face again. She noticed where the baked red of his face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his
Stetson hat that hung now from one of the pegs of the tent pole.

(8)
“Well, here’s to the lion,” Robert Wilson said. He smiled at her again and, not smiling, she looked curiously

at her husband.
Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did not mind that length of bone, dark, his hair

cropped like an oarsman, rather thin-lipped, and was considered handsome. He was dressed in the same sort of
safari clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new, he was thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was
good at court games, had a number of big game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very publicly, to be
a coward.

“Here’s to the lion,” he said. “I can’t ever thank you for what you did.”
Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.
“Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.
Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.
“It’s been a very strange day,” she said. “Hadn’t you ought to put your hat on even under the canvas at noon?

You told me that, you know.”
“Might put it on,” said Wilson.

Hemingway 2
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“You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,” she told him and smiled again.
“Drink,” said Wilson.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face is never red.”
“It’s red today,” Macomber tried a joke.
“No,” said Margaret. “It’s mine that’s red today. But Mr. Wilson’s is always red.”
“Must be racial,” said Wilson. “I say, you wouldn’t like to drop my beauty as a topic, would you?”
“I’ve just started on it.”
“Let’s chuck it,” said Wilson.

(24)
“Conversation is going to be so difficult,” Margaret said.
“Don’t be silly, Margot,” her husband said.
“No difficulty,” Wilson said. “Got a damn fine lion.”
Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she was going to cry. Wilson had seen it coming for a

long time and he dreaded it. Macomber was past dreading it.
“I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said and started for her tent. She made no

noise of crying but they could see that her shoulders were shaking under the rose-colored, sun-proofed shirt she
wore.

“Women upset,” said Wilson to the tall man. ” Amounts to nothing. Strain on the nerves and one thing’n
another.”

“No,” said Macomber. “I suppose that I rate that for the rest of my life now.”
“Nonsense. Let’s have a spot of the giant killer,” said Wilson.

(32)
“Forget the whole thing. Nothing to it anyway.”
“We might try,” said Macomber. “I won’t forget what you did for me though.”
“Nothing,” said Wilson. ” All nonsense.”
So they sat there in the shade where the camp was pitched under some wide-topped acacia trees with a

boulder-strewn cliff behind them, and a stretch of grass that ran to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front
with forest beyond it, and drank their just-cool lime drinks and avoided one another’s eyes while the boys set the
table for lunch. Wilson could tell that the boys all knew about it now and when he saw Macomber’s personal
boy looking curiously at his master while he was putting dishes on the table he snapped at him in Swahili. The
boy turned away with his face blank.

“What were you telling him?” Macomber asked.
“Nothing. Told him to look alive or I’d see he got about fifteen of the best.”
“What’s that? Lashes?”
“It’s quite illegal,” Wilson said. “You’re supposed to fine them.”

(40)
“Do you still have them whipped?”
“Oh, yes. They could raise a row if they chose to complain. But they don’t. They prefer it to the fines.”
“How strange!” said Macomber.
“Not strange, really,” Wilson said. “Which would you rather do? Take a good birching or lose your pay?”
Then he felt embarrassed at asking it and before Macomber could answer he went on, “We all take a beating

every day, you know, one way or another.”
This was no better. “Good God,” he thought. “I am a diplomat, aren’t I?”
“Yes, we take a beating,” said Macomber, still not looking at him. “I’m awfully sorry about that lion

business. It doesn’t have to go any further, does it? I mean no one will hear about it, will they?”
“You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?” Wilson looked at him now coldly. He had not expected this.

So he’s a bloody four-letter man as well as a bloody coward, he thought. I rather liked him too until today. But
how is one to know about an American?

(48)

Hemingway 3
“No,” said Wilson. “I’m a professional hunter. We never talk about our clients. You can be quite easy on

that. It’s supposed to be bad form to ask us not to talk though.”
He had decided now that to break would be much easier. He would eat, then, by himself and could read a

book with his meals. They would eat by themselves. He would see them through the safari on a very formal
basis- what was it the French called it? Distinguished consideration- and it would be a damn sight easier than
having to go through this emotional trash. He’d insult him and make a good clean break. Then he could read a
book with his meals and he’d still be drinking their whisky. That was the phrase for it when a safari went bad.
You ran into another white hunter and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still
drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot.

“I’m sorry,” Macomber said and looked at him with his American face that would stay adolescent until it
became middle-aged, and Wilson noted his crew-cropped hair, fine eyes only faintly shifty, good nose, thin lips
and handsome jaw.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize that. There are lots of things I don’t know.”
So what could he do, Wilson thought. He was all ready to break it off quickly and neatly and here the

beggar was apologizing after he had just insulted him. He made one more attempt. “Don’t worry about me
talking,” he said. “I have a living to make. You know in Africa no woman ever misses her lion and no white
man ever bolts.”

“I bolted like a rabbit,” Macomber said.
Now what in hell were you going to do about a man who talked like that, Wilson wondered.
Wilson looked at Macomber with his flat, blue, machine-gunner’s eyes and the other smiled back at him. He

had a pleasant smile if you did not notice how his eyes showed when he was hurt.
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“Maybe I can fix it up on buffalo,” he said. “We’re after them next, aren’t we?”
“In the morning if you like,” Wilson told him. Perhaps he had been wrong. This was certainly the way to

take it. You most certainly could not tell a damned thing about an American. He was all for Macomber again. If
you could forget the morning. But, of course, you couldn’t. The morning had been about as bad as they come.

“Here comes the Memsahib,” he said. She was walking over from her tent looking refreshed and cheerful
and quite lovely. She had a very perfect oval face, so perfect that you expected her to be stupid. But she wasn’t
stupid, Wilson thought, no, not stupid.

“How is the beautiful red-faced Mr. Wilson? Are you feeling better, Francis, my pearl?”
“Oh, much,” said Macomber.
“I’ve dropped the whole thing,” she said, sitting down at the table. “What importance is there to whether

Francis is any good at killing lions? That’s not his trade. That’s Mr. Wilson’s trade. Mr. Wilson is really very
impressive killing anything. You do kill anything, don’t you?”

“Oh, anything,” said Wilson. “Simply anything.” They are, he thought, the hardest in the world; the hardest,
the cruelest, the most predatory and the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces nervously
as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can handle? They can’t know that much at the age they
marry, he thought. He was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women before now
because this was a very attractive one.

“We’re going after buff in the morning,” he told her.
“I’m coming,” she said.

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“No, you’re not.”
“Oh, yes, I am. Mayn’t I, Francis?”
“Why not stay in camp?”
“Not for anything,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss something like today for anything.”
When she left, Wilson was thinking, when she went off to cry, she seemed a hell of a fine woman. She

seemed to understand, to realize, to be hurt for him and for herself and to know how things really stood. She is
away for twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enameled in that American female cruelty. They are the
damnedest women. Really the damnedest.

“We’ll put on another show for you tomorrow,” Francis Macomber said.

Hemingway 4
“You’re not coming,” Wilson said.
“You’re very mistaken,” she told him. “And I want so to see you perform again. You were lovely this

morning. That is if blowing things’ heads off is lovely.”
(72)

“Here’s the lunch,” said Wilson. “You’re very merry, aren’t you?”
“Why not? I didn’t come out here to be dull.”
“Well, it hasn’t been dull,” Wilson said. He could see the boulders in the river and the high bank beyond

with the trees and he remembered the morning.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s been charming. And tomorrow. You don’t know how I look forward to tomorrow.”
“That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.
“They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”
“I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.
“It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.

(80)
“Did you shoot it, Francis?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They’re not dangerous, are they?”
“Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.
“I’m so glad.”
“Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, cutting the eland steak and putting

some mashed potato, gravy and carrot on the down-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.
“I suppose I could,” she said, “since you put it so prettily.”
“Tonight we’ll have champagne for the lion,” Wilson said.

(88)
“It’s a bit too hot at noon.”
“Oh, the lion,” Margot said. “I’d forgotten the lion!”
So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a ride, isn’t she? Or do you suppose that’s her idea

of putting up a good show? How should a woman act when she discovers her husband is a bloody coward?
She’s damn cruel but they’re all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has to be cruel sometimes.
Still, I’ve seen enough of their damn terrorism.

“Have some more eland,” he said to her politely.
That afternoon, late, Wilson and Macomber went out in the motor car with the native driver and the two

gun-bearers. Mrs.
Macomber stayed in the camp. It was too hot to go out, she said, and she was going with them in the early

morning. As they drove off Wilson saw her standing under the big tree, looking pretty rather than beautiful in
her faintly rosy khaki, her dark hair drawn back off her forehead and gathered in a knot low on her neck, her
face as fresh, he thought, as though she were in England. She waved to them as the car went off through the
swale of high grass and curved around through the trees into the small hills of orchard bush.

In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and leaving the car they stalked one old ram with long,
wide-spread horns and Macomber killed it with a very creditable shot that knocked the buck down at a good
two hundred yards and sent the herd

off bounding wildly and leaping over one another’s backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable and as
floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams.

“That was a good shot,” Wilson said. “They’re a small target.”
“Is it a worth-while head?” Macomber asked.

(96)
“It’s excellent,” Wilson told him. “You shoot like that and you’ll have no trouble.”
“Do you think we’ll find buffalo tomorrow?”
“There’s a good chance of it. They feed out early in the morning and with luck we may catch them in the

open.”
“I’d like to clear away that lion business,” Macomber said.

Hemingway 5
“It’s not very pleasant to have your wife see you do something like that.”
I should think it would be even more unpleasant to do it, Wilson thought, wife or no wife, or to talk about it

having done it. But he said, “I wouldn’t think about that any more. Any one could be upset by his first lion.
That’s all over.”

But that night after dinner and a whisky and soda by the fire before going to bed, as Francis Macomber lay
on his cot with the mosquito bar over him and listened to the night noises it was not all over .It was neither all
over nor was it beginning. It was there exactly as it happened with some parts of it indelibly emphasized and he
was miserably ashamed at it. But more than shame he felt cold, hollow fear in him. The fear was still there like
a cold slimy hollow in all the emptiness where once his confidence had been and it made him feel sick. It was
still there with him now. It had started the night before when he had wakened and heard the lion roaring
somewhere up along the river. It was a deep sound and at the end there were sort of coughing grunts that made
him seem just outside the tent, and when Francis Macomber woke in the night to hear it he was afraid. He could
hear his wife breathing quietly, asleep. There was no one

to tell he was afraid, nor to be afraid with him, and, lying alone, he did not know the Somali proverb that
says a brave man is always frightened three times by a lion; when he first sees his track, when he first hears him
roar and when he first confronts him. Then while they were eating breakfast by lantern light out in the dining
tent, before the sun was up, the lion roared again and Francis thought he was just at the edge of camp.

“Sounds like an old-timer,” Robert Wilson said, looking up from his kippers and coffee. “Listen to him
cough.”

(104)
“Is he very close?”
“A mile or so up the stream.”
“Will we see him?”
“We’ll have a look.”
“Does his roaring carry that far? It sounds as though he were right in camp.”
“Carries a hell of a long way,” said Robert Wilson. “It’s strange the way it carries. Hope he’s a shootable cat.

The boys said there was a very big one about here.”
“If I get a shot, where should I hit him,” Macomber asked, “to stop him?”
“In the shoulders,” Wilson said. “In the neck if you can make it. Shoot for bone. Break him down.”

(112)
“I hope I can place it properly,” Macomber said.
“You shoot very well,” Wilson told him. “Take your time. Make sure of him. The first one in is the one that

counts.”
“What range will it be?”
“Can’t tell. Lion has something to say about that. Won’t shoot unless it’s close enough so you can make

sure.”
“At under a hundred yards?” Macomber asked.
Wilson looked at him quickly.
“Hundred’s about right. Might have to take him a bit under. Shouldn’t chance a shot at much over that. A

hundred’s a decent range. You can hit him wherever you want at that. Here comes the Memsahib.”
“Good morning,” she said. ” Are we going after that lion?”

(120)
“As soon as you deal with your breakfast,” Wilson said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Marvellous,” she said. “I’m very excited.”
“I’ll just go and see that everything is ready,” Wilson went off. As he left the lion roared again.
“Noisy beggar,” Wilson said. “We’ll put a stop to that.”
“What’s the matter, Francis?” his wife asked him.
“Nothing,” Macomber said.
“Yes, there is,” she said. “What are you upset about?”
“Nothing,” he said.

Hemingway 6
“Tell me,” she looked at him. “Don’t you feel well?”
“It’s that damned roaring,” he said. “It’s been going on all night, you know.”
“Why didn’t you wake me,” she said. “I’d love to have heard it.”
“I’ve got to kill the damned thing,” Macomber said, miserably.
“Well, that’s what you’re out here for, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But I’m nervous. Hearing the thing roar gets on my nerves.”
“Well then, as Wilson said, kill him and stop his roaring.”
(128)
“Yes, darling,” said Francis Macomber. “It sounds easy, doesn’t it?”
“You’re not afraid, are you?”
“Of course not. But I’m nervous from hearing him roar all night.”
“You’ll kill him marvellously,” she said. “I know you will. I’m awfully anxious to see it.”
“Finish your breakfast and we’ll be starting.”
“It’s not light yet,” she said. “This is a ridiculous hour.”
Just then the lion roared in a deep-chested moaning, suddenly guttural, ascending vibration that seemed to

shake the air and ended in a sigh and a heavy, deep-chested grunt.
“He sounds almost here,” Macomber’s wife said.
(144)
“My God,” said Macomber. “I hate that damned noise.”
“It’s very impressive.”
“Impressive. It’s frightful.”
Robert Wilson came up then carrying his short, ugly, shockingly big-bored .505 Gibbs and grinning.
“Come on,” he said. “Your gun-bearer has your Springfield and the big gun. Everything’s in the car. Have

you solids?”
“Yes.”
“I’m ready,” Mrs. Macomber said.
“Must make him stop that racket,” Wilson said. “You get in front. The Memsahib can sit back here with

me.”
(152)
They climbed into the motor car and, in the gray first daylight, moved off up the river through the trees.

Macomber opened the breech of his rifle and saw he had metal-cased bullets, shut the bolt and put the rifle on
safety. He saw his hand was trembling. He felt in his pocket for more cartridges and moved his fingers over the
cartridges in the loops of his tunic front. He turned back to where Wilson sat in the rear seat of the doorless,
box-bodied motor car beside his wife, them both grinning with excitement, and Wilson leaned forward and
whispered,

“See the birds dropping. Means the old boy has left his kill.”
On the far bank of the stream Macomber could see, above the trees, vultures circling and plummeting down.
“Chances are he’ll come to drink along here,” Wilson whispered. “Before he goes to lay up. Keep an eye

out.”
They were driving slowly along the high bank of the stream which here cut deeply to its boulder-filled bed,

and they wound in and out through big trees as they drove. Macomber was watching the opposite bank when he
felt Wilson take hold of his arm. The car stopped.

“There he is,” he heard the whisper.” Ahead and to the right. Get out and take him. He’s a marvellous lion.”
Macomber saw the lion now. He was standing almost broadside, his great head up and turned toward them.

The early morning breeze that blew toward them was just stirring his dark mane, and the lion looked huge,
silhouetted on the rise of bank in the gray morning light, his shoulders heavy, his barrel of a body bulking
smoothly.

“How far is he?” asked Macomber, raising his rifle.
(160)
“About seventy-five. Get out and take him.”
“Why not shoot from where I am?”

Hemingway 7
“You don’t shoot them from cars,” he heard Wilson saying in his ear. “Get out. He’s not going to stay there

all day.”
Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side of the front seat, onto the step and down onto the

ground. The lion still stood looking majestically and coolly toward this object that his eyes only showed in
silhouette, bulking like some super-rhino. There was no man smell carried toward him and he watched the
object, moving his great head a little from side to side. Then watching the object, not afraid, but hesitating
before going down the bank to drink with such a thing opposite him, he saw a man figure detach itself from it
and he turned his heavy head and swung away toward the cover of the trees as he heard a cracking crash and felt
the slam of a .30-06 220-grain solid bullet that bit his flank and ripped in sudden hot scalding nausea through
his stomach. He trotted, heavy, big-footed, swinging wounded full-bellied, through the trees toward the tall
grass and cover, and the crash came again to go past him ripping the air apart. Then it crashed again and he felt
the blow as it hit his lower ribs and ripped on through, blood sudden hot and frothy in his mouth, and he
galloped toward the high grass where he could crouch and not be seen and make them bring the crashing thing
close enough so he could make a rush and get the man that held it.

Macomber had not thought how the lion felt as he got out of the car. He only knew his hands were shaking
and as he walked away from the car it was almost impossible for him to make his legs move. They were stiff in
the thighs, but he could feel the muscles fluttering. He raised the rifle, sighted on the junction of the lion’s head
and shoulders and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened though he pulled until he thought his finger would
break. Then he knew he had the safety on and as he lowered the rifle to move the safety over he moved another
frozen pace forward, and the lion seeing his silhouette now clear of the silhouette of the car, turned and started
off at a trot, and, as Macomber fired, he heard a whunk that meant that the bullet was home; but the lion kept on
going. Macomber shot again and everyone saw the bullet throw a spout of dirt beyond the trotting lion. He shot
again, remembering to lower his aim, and they all heard the bullet hit, and the lion went into a gallop and was in
the tall grass before he had the bolt pushed forward.

Macomber stood there feeling sick at his stomach, his hands that held the Springfield still cocked, shaking,
and his wife and Robert Wilson were standing by him. Beside him too were the two gun-bearers chattering in
Wakamba.

“I hit him,” Macomber said. “I hit him twice.”
“You gut-shot him and you hit him somewhere forward,” Wilson said without enthusiasm. The gun-bearers

looked very grave. They were silent now.
(168)
“You may have killed him,” Wilson went on. “We’ll have to wait a while before we go in to find out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let him get sick before we follow him up.”
“Oh,” said Macomber.
“He’s a hell of a fine lion,” Wilson said cheerfully. “He’s gotten into a bad place though.”
“Why is it bad?”
“Can’t see him until you’re on him.”
“Oh,” said Macomber.
“Come on,” said Wilson. “The Memsahib can stay here in the car. We’ll go to have a look at the blood

spoor.”
“Stay here, Margot,” Macomber said to his wife. His mouth was very dry and it was hard for him to talk.
“Why?” she asked.
“Wilson says to.”
“We’re going to have a look,” Wilson said. “You stay here. You can see even better from here.”
“All right.”
Wilson spoke in Swahili to the driver. He nodded and said, “Yes, Bwana.”
(176)
Then they went down the steep bank and across the stream, climbing over and around the boulders and up

the other bank, pulling up by some projecting roots, and along it until they found where the lion had been

Hemingway 8
trotting when Macomber first shot. There was dark blood on the short grass that the gun bearers pointed out
with grass stems, and that ran away behind the river bank trees.

“What do we do?” asked Macomber.
“Not much choice,” said Wilson. “We can’t bring the car over. Bank’s too steep. We’ll let him stiffen up a bit

and then you and I’ll go in and have a look for him.”
“Can’t we set the grass on fire?” Macomber asked.
“Too green.”
“Can’t we send beaters?”
Wilson looked at him appraisingly. “Of course we can,” he said. “But it’s just a touch murderous. You see

we know the lion’s wounded. You can drive an unwounded lion- he’ll move on ahead of a noise- but a wounded
lion’s going to charge. You can’t see him until you’re right on him. He’ll make himself perfectly flat in cover you
wouldn’t think would hide a hare. You can’t very well send boys in there to that sort of a show. Somebody
bound to get mauled.”

“What about the gun-bearers?”
(192)
“Oh, they’ll go with us. It’s their shauri. You see, they signed on for it. They don’t look too happy though, do

they?”
“I don’t want to go in there,” said Macomber. It was out before he knew he’d said it.
“Neither do I,” said Wilson very cheerily. “Really no choice though.” Then, as an afterthought, he glanced at

Macomber and saw suddenly how he was trembling and the pitiful look on his face.
“You don’t have to go in, of course,” he said. “That’s what I’m hired for, you know. That’s why I’m so

expensive.”
“You mean you’d go in by yourself? Why not leave him there?”
Robert Wilson, whose entire occupation had been with the lion and the problem he presented, and who had

not been thinking about Macomber except to note that he was rather windy, suddenly felt as though he had
opened the wrong door in a hotel and seen something shameful.

“What do you mean?”
“Why not just leave him?”
“You mean pretend to ourselves that he hasn’t been hit?”
(200)
“No. Just drop it.”
“It isn’t done.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, he’s certain to be suffering. For another, some one else might run onto him.”
“I see.”
“But you don’t have to have anything to do with it.”
“I’d like to,” Macomber said. “I’m just scared, you know.”
“I’ll go ahead when we go in,” Wilson said, “with Kongoni tracking. You keep behind me and a little to one

side. Chances are we’ll hear him growl. If we see him we’ll both shoot. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll keep you
backed up. As a matter of fact, you know, perhaps you’d better not go. It might be much better. Why don’t you
go over and join the Memsahib while I just get it over with?”

“No, I want to go.”
“All right,” said Wilson. “But don’t go in if you don’t want to. This is my shauri now, you know.”
“I want to go,” said Macomber.
They sat under a tree and smoked.
“Want to go back and speak to the Memsahib while we’re waiting?” Wilson asked.
“No.”
“I’ll just step back and tell her to be patient.”
“Good,” said Macomber. He sat there, sweating under his arms, his mouth dry, his stomach hollow feeling,

wanting to find courage to tell Wilson to go on and finish off the lion without him. He could not know that

Hemingway 9
Wilson was furious because he had not noticed the state he was in earlier and sent him back to his wife. While
he sat there Wilson came up. “I have your big gun,” he said. “Take it. We’ve given him time, I think. Come on.”

(208)
Macomber took the big gun and Wilson said: “Keep behind me and about five yards to the right and do

exactly as I tell you.” Then he spoke in Swahili to the two gun-bearers who looked the picture of gloom.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Could I have a drink of water?” Macomber asked. Wilson spoke to the older gun-bearer, who wore a

canteen on his belt, and the man unbuckled it, unscrewed the top and handed it to Macomber, who took it
noticing how heavy it seemed and how hairy and shoddy the felt covering was in his hand. He raised it to drink
and looked ahead at the high grass with the flat-topped trees behind it. A breeze was blowing toward them and
the grass rippled gently in the wind. He looked at the gun-bearer and he could see the gun-bearer was suffering
too with fear.

Thirty-five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened out along the ground. His ears were back and his
only movement was a slight twitching up and down of his long, black-tufted tail. He had turned at bay as soon
as he had reached this cover and he was sick with the wound through his full belly, and weakening with the
wound through his lungs that brought a thin foamy red to his mouth each time he breathed. His flanks were wet
and hot and flies were on the little openings the solid bullets had made in his tawny hide, and his big yellow
eyes, narrowed with hate, looked straight ahead, only blinking when the pain came as he breathed, and his claws
dug in the soft baked earth. All of him, pain, sickness, hatred and all of his remaining strength, was tightening
into an absolute concentration for a rush. He could hear the men talking and he waited, gathering all of himself
into this preparation for a charge as soon as the men would come into the grass. As he heard their voices his tail
stiffened to twitch up and down, and, as they came into the edge of the grass, he made a coughing grunt and
charged.

Kongoni, the old gun-bearer, in the lead watching the blood spoor, Wilson watching the grass for any
movement, his big gun ready, the second gun-bearer looking ahead and listening, Macomber close to Wilson,
his rifle cocked, they had just moved into the grass when Macomber heard the blood-choked coughing grunt,
and saw the swishing rush in the grass. The next thing he knew he was running; running wildly, in panic in the
open, running toward the stream.

He heard the ca-ra-wong! of Wilson’s big rifle, and again in a second crashing carawong! and turning saw
the lion, horrible-looking now, with half his head seeming to be gone, crawling toward Wilson in the edge of
the tall grass while the red-faced man worked the bolt on the short ugly rifle and aimed carefully as another
blasting carawong! came from the muzzle, and the crawling, heavy, yellow bulk of the lion stiffened and the
huge, mutilated head slid forward and Macomber, standing by himself in the clearing where he had run, holding
a loaded rifle, while two black men and a white man looked back at him in contempt, knew the lion was dead.
He came toward Wilson, his tallness all seeming a naked reproach, and Wilson looked at him and said:

“Want to take pictures?”
“No,” he said.
(224)
That was all any one had said until they reached the motor car. Then Wilson had said:
“Hell of a fine lion. Boys will skin him out. We might as well stay here in the shade.”
Macomber’s wife had not looked at him nor he at her and he had sat by her in the back seat with Wilson

sitting in the front seat. Once he had reached over and taken his wife’s hand without looking at her and she had
removed her hand from his. Looking across the stream to where the gun-bearers were skinning out the lion he
could see that she had been able to see the whole thing. While they sat there his wife had reached forward and
put her hand on Wilson’s shoulder. He turned and she had leaned forward over the low seat and kissed him on
the mouth.

“Oh, I say,” said Wilson, going redder than his natural baked color.
“Mr. Robert Wilson,” she said. “The beautiful red-faced Mr. Robert Wilson.”
Then she sat down beside Macomber again and looked away across the stream to where the lion lay, with

uplifted, white-muscled, tendon-marked naked forearms, and white bloating belly, as the black men fleshed
away the skin. Finally the gun-bearers brought the skin over, wet and heavy, and climbed in behind with it,

Hemingway 10
rolling it up before they got in, and the motor car started. No one had said anything more until they were back in
camp.

That was the story of the lion. Macomber did not know how the lion had felt before he started his rush, nor
during it when the unbelievable smash of the .5o5 with a muzzle velocity of two tons had hit him in the mouth,
nor what kept him coming after that, when the second ripping crash had smashed his hind quarters and he had
come crawling on toward the crashing, blasting thing that had destroyed him. Wilson knew something about it
and only expressed it by saying, “Damned fine lion,” but Macomber did not know how Wilson felt about things
either. He did not know how his wife felt except that she was through with him.

His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was very wealthy, and would be much
wealthier, and he knew she would not leave him ever now. That was one of the few things that he really knew.
He knew about that, about motor cycles-that was earliest-about motor cars, about duck-shooting, about fishing,
trout, salmon and big-sea, about sex in books, many books, too many books, about all court games, about dogs,
not much about horses, about hanging on to his money, about most of the other things his world dealt in, and
about his wife not leaving him. His wife had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa, but
she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him and better herself and she knew it
and he knew it. She had missed the chance to leave him and he knew it. If he had been better with women she
would probably have started to worry about him getting another new, beautiful wife; but she knew too much
about him to worry about him either. Also, he had always had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing
about him if it were not the most sinister.

(232)
All in all they were known as a comparatively happily married couple, one of those whose disruption is

often rumored but never occurs, and as the society columnist put it, they were adding more than a spice of
adventure to their much envied and ever-enduring Romance by a Safari in what was known as Darkest Africa
until the Martin Johnsons lighted it on so many silver screens where they were pursuing Old Simba the lion, the
buffalo, Tembo the elephant and as well collecting specimens for the Museum of Natural History. This same
columnist had reported them on the verge as least three times in the past and they had been. But they always
made it up. They had a sound basis of union. Margot was too beautiful for Macomber to divorce her and
Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave him.

It was now about three o’clock in the morning and Francis Macomber, who had been asleep a little while
after he had stopped thinking about the lion, wakened and then slept again, woke suddenly, frightened in a
dream of the bloody-headed lion standing over him, and listening while his heart pounded, he realized that his
wife was not in the other cot in the tent. He lay awake with that knowledge for two hours. At the end of that
time his wife came into the tent, lifted her mosquito bar and crawled cozily into bed.

“Where have you been?” Macomber asked in the darkness.
“Hello,” she said. ” Are you awake?”
“Where have you been?”
“I just went out to get a breath of air.”
“You did, like hell.”
“What do you want me to say, darling?”
“Where have you been?”
“Out to get a breath of air.”
“That’s a new name for it. You are a bitch.”
“Well, you’re a coward.”
” All right,” he said. “What of it?”
“Nothing as far as I’m concerned. But please let’s not talk, darling, because I’m very sleepy.”
“You think that I’ll take anything.”
“I know you will, sweet.”
(240)
“Well, I won’t.”
“Please, darling, let’s not talk. I’m so very sleepy.”
“There wasn’t going to be any of that. You promised there wouldn’t be.”

Hemingway 11
“Well, there is now,” she said sweetly.
“You said if we made this trip that there would be none of that. You promised.”
“Yes, darling. That’s the way I meant it to be. But the trip was spoiled yesterday. We don’t have to talk about

it, do we?”
“You don’t wait long when you have an advantage, do you?”
“Please let’s not talk. I’m so sleepy, darling.”
“I’m going to talk.”
“Don’t mind me then, because I’m going to sleep.” And she did.
At breakfast they were all three at the table before daylight and Francis Macomber found that, of all the

many men that he had hated, he hated Robert Wilson the most.
“Sleep well?” Wilson asked in his throaty voice, filling a pipe.
“Did you?”
“Topping,” the white hunter told him.
You bastard, thought Macomber, you insolent bastard. So she woke him when she came in, Wilson thought,

looking at them both with his flat, cold eyes. Well, why doesn’t he keep his wife where she belongs? What does
he think I am, a bloody plaster saint? Let him keep her where she belongs. It’s his own fault.

“Do you think we’ll find buffalo?” Margot asked, pushing away a dish of apricots.
(256)
“Chance of it,” Wilson said and smiled at her. “Why don’t you stay in camp?”
“Not for anything,” she told him.
“Why not order her to stay in camp?” Wilson said to Macomber.
“You order her,” said Macomber coldly.
“Let’s not have any ordering, nor,” turning to Macomber, “any silliness, Francis,” Margot said quite

pleasantly.
“Are you ready to start? ” Macomber asked.
“Any time,” Wilson told him. “Do you want the Memsahib to go?”
“Does it make any difference whether I do or not?”
The hell with it, thought Robert Wilson. The utter complete hell with it. So this is what it’s going to be like.

Well, this is what it’s going to be like, then.
“Makes no difference,” he said.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t like to stay in camp with her yourself and let me go out and hunt the buffalo?”

Macomber asked.
“Can’t do that,” said Wilson. “Wouldn’t talk rot if I were you.”
“I’m not talking rot. I’m disgusted.”
“Bad word, disgusted.”
“Francis, will you please try to speak sensibly!” his wife said.
“I speak too damned sensibly,” Macomber said. “Did you ever eat such filthy food?”
(272)
“Something wrong with the food?” asked Wilson quietly.
“No more than with everything else.”
“I’d pull yourself together, laddybuck,” Wilson said very quietly. “There’s a boy waits at table that

understands a little English.”
“The hell with him.”
Wilson stood up and puffing on his pipe strolled away, speaking a few words in Swahili to one of the gun-

bearers who was standing waiting for him. Macomber and his wife sat on at the table. He was staring at his
coffee cup.

“If you make a scene I’ll leave you, darling,” Margot said quietly.
“No, you won’t.”
“You can try it and see.”
“You won’t leave me.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t leave you and you’ll behave yourself.”

Hemingway 12
“Behave myself? That’s a way to talk. Behave myself.”
“Yes. Behave yourself.”
“Why don’t you try behaving?”
“I’ve tried it so long. So very long.”
“I hate that red-faced swine,” Macomber said. “I loathe the sight of him.”
“He’s really very nice.”
(288)
“Oh, shut up,” Macomber almost shouted. Just then the car came up and stopped in front of the dining tent

and the driver and the two gun-bearers got out. Wilson walked over and looked at the husband and wife sitting
there at the table.

“Going shooting?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Macomber, standing up. “Yes.”
“Better bring a woolly. It will be cool in the car,” Wilson said.
“I’ll get my leather jacket,” Margot said.
“The boy has it,” Wilson told her. He climbed into the front with the driver and Francis Macomber and his

wife sat, not speaking, in the back seat.
Hope the silly beggar doesn’t take a notion to blow the back of my head off, Wilson thought to himself.

Women are a nuisance on safari.
The car was grinding down to cross the river at a pebbly ford in the gray daylight and then climbed, angling

up the steep bank, where Wilson had ordered a way shovelled out the day before so they could reach the
parklike wooded rolling country on the far side.

(304)
It was a good morning, Wilson thought. There was a heavy dew and as the wheels went through the grass

and low bushes he could smell the odor of the crushed fronds. It was an odor like verbena and he liked this early
morning smell of the dew, the crushed bracken and the look of the tree trunks showing black through the early
morning mist, as the car made its way through the untracked, parklike country. He had put the two in the back
seat out of his mind now and was thinking about buffalo. The buffalo that he was after stayed in the daytime in
a thick swamp where it was impossible to get a shot, but in the night they fed out into an open stretch of country
and if he could come between them and their swamp with the car, Macomber would have a good chance at them
in the open. He did not want to hunt buff with Macomber in thick cover. He did not want to hunt buff or
anything else with Macomber at all, but he was a professional hunter and he had hunted with some rare ones in
his time. If they got buff today there would only be rhino to come and the poor man would have gone through
his dangerous game and things might pick up. He’d have nothing more to do with the woman and Macomber
would get over that too. He must have gone through plenty of that before by the look of things. Poor beggar. He
must have a way of getting over it. Well, it was the poor sod’s own bloody fault.

He, Robert Wilson, carried a double size cot on safari to accommodate any windfalls he might receive. He
had hunted for a certain clientele, the international, fast, sporting set, where the women did not feel they were
getting their money’s worth unless they had shared that cot with the white hunter. He despised them when he
was away from them although he liked some of them well enough at the time, but he made his living by them;
and their standards were his standards as long as they were hiring him.

They were his standards in all except the shooting. He had his own standards about the killing and they
could live up to them or get some one else to hunt them. He knew, too, that they all respected him for this. This
Macomber was an odd one though. Damned if he wasn’t. Now the wife. Well, the wife. Yes, the wife. Hm, the
wife. Well he’d dropped all that. He looked around at them. Macomber sat grim and furious. Margot smiled at
him. She looked younger today, more innocent and fresher and not so professionally beautiful. What’s in her
heart God knows, Wilson thought. She hadn’t talked much last night. At that it was a pleasure to see her.

The motor car climbed up a slight rise and went on through the trees and then out into a grassy prairie-like
opening and kept in the shelter of the trees along the edge, the driver going slowly and Wilson looking carefully
out across the prairie and all along its far side. He stopped the car and studied the opening with his field glasses.
Then he motioned to the driver to go on and the car moved slowly along, the driver avoiding wart-hog holes and

Hemingway 13
driving around the mud castles ants had built. Then, looking across the opening, Wilson suddenly turned and
said,

“By God, there they are.”
And looking where he pointed, while the car jumped forward and Wilson spoke in rapid Swahili to the

driver, Macomber saw three huge, black animals looking almost cylindrical in their long heaviness, like big
black tank cars, moving at a gallop across the far edge of the open prairie. They moved at a stiff-necked, stiff
bodied gallop and he could see the upswept wide black horns on their heads as they galloped heads out; the
heads not moving.

“They’re three old bulls,” Wilson said. “We’ll cut them off before they get to the swamp.”
The car was going a wild forty-five miles an hour across the open and as Macomber watched, the buffalo

got bigger and bigger until he could see the gray, hairless, scabby look of one huge bull and how his neck was a
part of his shoulders and the shiny black of his horns as he galloped a little behind the others that were strung
out in that steady plunging gait; and then, the car swaying as though it had just jumped a road, they drew up
close and he could see the plunging hugeness of the bull, and the dust in his sparsely haired hide, the wide boss
of horn and his outstretched, wide-nostrilled muzzle, and he was raising his rifle when Wilson shouted, “Not
from the car, you fool!” and he had no fear, only hatred of Wilson, while the brakes clamped on and the car
skidded, plowing sideways to an almost stop and Wilson was out on one side and he on the other, stumbling as
his feet hit the still speeding-by of the earth, and then he was shooting at the bull as he moved away, hearing the
bullets whunk into him, emptying his rifle at him as he moved steadily away, finally remembering to get his
shots forward into the shoulder, and as he fumbled to re-load, he saw the bull was down. Down on his knees, his
big head tossing, and seeing the other two still galloping he shot at the leader and hit him. He shot again and
missed and he heard the carawonging roar as Wilson shot and saw the leading bull slide forward onto his nose.

(312)
“Get that other,” Wilson said. “Now you’re shooting!”
But the other bull was moving steadily at the same gallop and he missed, throwing a spout of dirt, and

Wilson missed and the dust rose in a cloud and Wilson shouted, “Come on. He’s too far!” and grabbed his arm
and they were in the car again, Macomber and Wilson hanging on the sides and rocketing swayingly over the
uneven ground, drawing up on the steady, plunging, heavy-necked, straight-moving gallop of the bull.

They were behind him and Macomber was filling his rifle, dropping shells onto the ground, jamming it,
clearing the jam, then they were almost up with the bull when Wilson yelled “Stop,” and the car skidded so that
it almost swung over and Macomber fell forward onto his feet, slammed his bolt forward and fired as far
forward as he could aim into the galloping, rounded black back, aimed and shot again, then again, then again,
and the bullets, all of them hitting, had no effect on the buffalo that he could see. Then Wilson shot, the roar
deafening him, and he could see the bull stagger. Macomber shot again, aiming carefully, and down he came,
onto his knees.

” All right,” Wilson said. “Nice work. That’s the three.”
Macomber felt a drunken elation.
“How many times did you shoot?” he asked.
“Just three,” Wilson said. “You killed the first bull. The biggest one. I helped you finish the other two.

Afraid they might have got into cover. You had them killed. I was just mopping up a little. You shot damn
well.”

“Let’s go to the car,” said Macomber. “I want a drink.”
(320)
“Got to finish off that buff first,” Wilson told him. The buffalo was on his knees and he jerked his head

furiously and bellowed in pig-eyed, roaring rage as they came toward him.
“Watch he doesn’t get up,” Wilson said. Then, “Get a little broadside and take him in the neck just behind

the ear.”
Macomber aimed carefully at the center of the huge, jerking, rage-driven neck and shot. At the shot the head

dropped forward.
“That does it,” said Wilson. “Got the spine. They’re a hell of a looking thing, aren’t they?”
“Let’s get the drink,” said Macomber. In his life he had never felt so good.

Hemingway 14
In the car Macomber’s wife sat very white faced. “You were marvelous, darling,” she said to Macomber.

“What a ride.”
“Was it rough?” Wilson asked.
“It was frightful. I’ve never been more frightened in my life.”
(328)
“Let’s all have a drink,” Macomber said.
“By all means,” said Wilson. “Give it to the Memsahib.” She drank the neat whisky from the flask and

shuddered a little when she swallowed. She handed the flask to Macomber who handed it to Wilson.
“It was frightfully exciting,” she said. “It’s given me a dreadful headache. I didn’t know you were allowed to

shoot them from cars though.
“No one shot from cars,” said Wilson coldly.
“I mean chase them from cars.”
“Wouldn’t ordinarily,” Wilson said. “Seemed sporting enough to me though while we were doing it. Taking

more chance driving that way across the plain full of holes and one thing and another than hunting on foot.
Buffalo could have charged us each time we shot if he liked. Gave him every chance. Wouldn’t mention it to
anyone though. It’s illegal if that’s what you mean.”

“It seemed very unfair to me,” Margot said, “chasing those big helpless things in a motor car.”
“Did it?” said Wilson.
(336)
“What would happen if they heard about it in Nairobi?”
“I’d lose my license for one thing. Other unpleasantnesses,” Wilson said, taking a drink from the flask. “I’d

be out of business.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Well,” said Macomber, and he smiled for the first time all day. “Now she has something on you.”
“You have such a pretty way of putting things, Francis,” Margot Macomber said. Wilson looked at them

both. If a four-letter man marries a five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their
children be? What he said was, “We lost a gun-bearer. Did you notice it?”

“My God, no,” Macomber said.
“Here he comes,” Wilson said. “He’s all right. He must have
fallen off when we left the first bull.”
(344)
Approaching them was the middle-aged gun-bearer, limping along in his knitted cap, khaki tunic, shorts and

rubber sandals, gloomy-faced and disgusted looking. As he came up he called out to Wilson in Swahili and they
all saw the change in the white hunter’s face.

“What does he say?” asked Margot.
“He says the first bull got up and went into the bush,” Wilson said with no expression in his voice.
“Oh,” said Macomber blankly.
“Then it’s going to be just like the lion,” said Margot, full of anticipation.
“It’s not going to be a damned bit like the lion,” Wilson told her. “Did you want another drink, Macomber?”
“Thanks, yes,” Macomber said. He expected the feeling he had had about the lion to come back but it did

not. For the first time in his life he really felt wholly without fear. Instead of fear he had a feeling of definite
elation.

“We’ll go and have a look at the second bull,” Wilson said.
(352)
“I’ll tell the driver to put the car in the shade.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Margaret Macomber.
“Take a look at the buff,” Wilson said.
“I’ll come.”
“Come along.”

Hemingway 15
The three of them walked over to where the second buffalo bulked blackly in the open, head forward on the

grass, the massive horns swung wide.
“He’s a very good head,” Wilson said. “That’s close to a fifty-inch spread.”
Macomber was looking at him with delight.
“He’s hateful looking,” said Margot. “Can’t we go into the shade?”
“Of course,” Wilson said. “Look,” he said to Macomber, and pointed. “See that patch of bush?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where the first bull went in. The gun-bearer said when he fell off the bull was down. He was

watching us helling along and the other two buff galloping. When he looked up there was the bull up and
looking at him. Gun-bearer ran like hell and the bull went off slowly into that bush.”

“Can we go in after him now?” asked Macomber eagerly.
Wilson looked at him appraisingly. Damned if this isn’t a strange one, he thought. Yesterday he’s scared sick

and today he’s a ruddy fire eater.
“No, we’ll give him a while.”
“Let’s please go into the shade,” Margot said. Her face was white and she looked ill.
(360)
They made their way to the car where it stood under a single, wide-spreading tree and all climbed in.
“Chances are he’s dead in there,” Wilson remarked. “After a little we’ll have a look.”
Macomber felt a wild unreasonable happiness that he had never known before.
“By God, that was a chase,” he said. “I’ve never felt any such feeling. Wasn’t it marvelous, Margot?”
“I hated it.”
“Why?”
“I hated it,” she said bitterly. “I loathed it.”
“You know I don’t think I’d ever be afraid of anything again,” Macomber said to Wilson. “Something

happened in me after we first saw the buff and started after him. Like a dam bursting. It was pure excitement.”
(376)
“Cleans out your liver,” said Wilson. “Damn funny things happen to people.”
Macomber’s face was shining. “You know something did happen to me,” he said. “I feel absolutely

different.”
His wife said nothing and eyed him strangely. She was sitting far back in the seat and Macomber was sitting

forward talking to Wilson Who turned sideways talking over the back of the front seat.
“You know, I’d like to try another lion,” Macomber said.
“I’m really not afraid of them now. After all, what can they do to you?”
“That’s it,” said Wilson. “Worst one can do is kill you. How does it go? Shakespeare. Damned good. See if I

can remember. Oh, damned good. Used to quote it to myself at one time. Let’s see. ‘By my troth, I care not; a
man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the
next.’ Damned fine, eh?”

He was very embarrassed, having brought out this thing he had lived by, but he had seen men come of age
before and it always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first birthday.

It had taken a strange chance of hunting, a sudden precipitation ill to action without opportunity for
worrying before-hand, to bring this about with Macomber, but regardless of how it had happened it had most
certainly happened. Look at the beggar now, Wilson thought. It’s that some of them stay little boys so long,
Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives. Their figures stay boyish when they’re fifty. The great American boy-
men. Damned strange people. But he liked this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. Probably meant the
end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a damned good thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been
afraid all his life. Don’t know what started it. But over now. Hadn’t had time to be afraid with the buff. That and
being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war
work the same way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an operation. Something else
grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

(384)

Hemingway 16
From the far corner of the seat Margaret Macomber looked at the two of them. There was no change in

Wilson. She saw Wilson as she had seen him the day before when she had first realized what his great talent
was. But she saw the change in Francis Macomber now.

“Do you have that feeling of happiness about what’s going to happen?” Macomber asked, still exploring his
new wealth.

“You’re not supposed to mention it,” Wilson said, looking in the other’s face. “Much more fashionable to say
you’re scared. Mind you, you’ll be scared too, plenty of times.”

“But you have a feeling of happiness about action to come?”
“Yes,” said Wilson. “There’s that. Doesn’t do to talk too much about all this. Talk the whole thing away. No

pleasure in anything if you mouth it up too much.”
“You’re both talking rot,” said Margot. “Just because you’ve chased some helpless animals in a motor car

you talk like heroes.”
“Sorry,” said Wilson. “I have been gassing too much.” She’s worried about it already, he thought.
“If you don’t know what we’re talking about why not keep out of it?” Macomber asked his wife.
(392)
“You’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly,” his wife said contemptuously, but her contempt was not

secure. She was very afraid of something.
Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. “You know I have,” he said. “I really have.”
“Isn’t it sort of late?” Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the best she could for many years back and

the way they were together now was no one person’s fault.
“Not for me,” said Macomber.
Margot said nothing but sat back in the corner of the seat.
“Do you think we’ve given him time enough?” Macomber asked Wilson cheerfully.
“We might have a look,” Wilson said. “Have you any solids left?”
“The gun-bearer has some.”
(400)
Wilson called in Swahili and the older gun-bearer, who was skinning out one of the heads, straightened up,

pulled a box of solids out of his pocket and brought them over to Macomber, who filled his magazine and put
the remaining shells in his pocket.

“You might as well shoot the Springfield,” Wilson said.
“You’re used to it. We’ll leave the Mannlicher in the car with the Memsahib. Your gun-bearer can carry your

heavy gun. I’ve this damned cannon. Now let me tell you about them.”
He had saved this until the last because he did not want to worry Macomber. “When a buff comes he comes

with his head high and thrust straight out. The boss of the horns covers any sort of a brain shot. The only shot is
straight into the nose. The only other shot is into his chest or, if you’re to one side, into the neck or the
shoulders. After they’ve been hit once they take a hell of a lot of killing. Don’t try anything fancy. Take the
easiest shot there is. They’ve finished skinning out that head now. Should we get started?”

He called to the gun-bearers, Who came up wiping their hands, and the older one got into the back.
“I’ll only take Kongoni,” Wilson said. “The other can watch to keep the birds away.”
As the car moved slowly across the open space toward the island of brushy trees that ran in a tongue of

foliage along a dry water course that cut the open swale, Macomber felt his heart pounding and his mouth was
dry again, but it was excitement, not fear.

“Here’s where he went in,” Wilson said. Then to the gun-bearer in Swahili, “Take the blood spoor.”
(408)
The car was parallel to the patch of bush. Macomber, Wilson and the gun-bearer got down. Macomber,

looking back, saw his wife, with the rifle by her side, looking at him. He waved to her and she did not wave
back.

The brush was very thick ahead and the ground was dry. The middle-aged gun-bearer was sweating heavily
and Wilson had his hat down over his eyes and his red neck showed just ahead of Macomber. Suddenly the gun-
bearer said something in Swahili to Wilson and ran forward.

Hemingway 17
“He’s dead in there,” Wilson said. “Good work,” and he turned to grip Macomber’s hand and as they shook

hands, grinning at each other, the gun-bearer shouted wildly and they saw him coming out of the bush sideways,
fast as a crab, and the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight closed, blood dripping, massive head straight out,
coming in a charge, his little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them. Wilson, who was ahead was kneeling
shooting, and Macomber, as he fired, unhearing his shot in the roaring of Wilson’s gun, saw fragments like slate
burst from the huge boss of the horns, and the head jerked, he shot again at the wide nostrils and saw the horns
jolt again and fragments fly, and he did not see Wilson now and, aiming carefully, shot again with the buffalo’s
huge bulk almost on him and his rifle almost level with the on-coming head, nose out, and he could see the little
wicked eyes and the head started to lower and he felt a sudden white-hot, blinding flash explode inside his head
and that was all he ever felt.

Wilson had ducked to one side to get in a shoulder shot. Macomber had stood solid and shot for the nose,
shooting a touch high each time and hitting the heavy horns, splintering and chipping ‘them like hitting a slate
roof, and Mrs. Macomber, in the car, had shot at the buffalo with the 6.5 Mannlicher as it seemed about to gore
Macomber and had hit her husband about two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his skull. Francis
Macomber lay now, face down, not two yards from where the buffalo lay on his side and his wife knelt over
him with Wilson beside her.

“I wouldn’t turn him over,” Wilson said.
The woman was crying hysterically.
“I’d get back in the car,” Wilson said. “Where’s the rifle?”
She shook her head, her face contorted. The gun-bearer picked up the rifle.
(416)
“Leave it as it is,” said Wilson. Then, “Go get Abdulla so that he may witness the manner of the accident.”
He knelt down, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and spread it over Francis Macomber’s crew-cropped

head where it lay. The blood sank into the dry, loose earth.
Wilson stood up and saw the buffalo on his side, his legs out, his thinly-haired belly crawling with ticks.

“Hell of a good bull,” his brain registered automatically. “A good fifty inches, or better. Better.” He called to the
driver and told him to spread a blanket over the body and stay by it. Then he walked over to the motor car
where the woman sat crying in the corner.

“That was a pretty thing to do,” he said in a toneless voice.
“He would have left you too.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Of course it’s an accident,” he said. “I know that.”
“Stop it,” she said.
(424)
“Don’t worry,” he said. “There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs

taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There’s the testimony of the gun-bearers and the driver too. You’re
perfectly all right.”

“Stop it,” she said.
“There’s a hell of a lot to be done,” he said. ” And I’ll have to send a truck off to the lake to wireless for a

plane to take the three of us into Nairobi. Why didn’t you poison him? That’s what they do in England.”
“Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,” the woman cried.
Wilson looked at her with his flat blue eyes.
“I’m through now,” he said. “I was a little angry. I’d begun to like your husband.”
“Oh, please stop it,” she said. “Please, please stop it.”
“That’s better,” Wilson said. “Please is much better. Now I’ll stop.”
(432)

The Birthmark(1843)

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man’s ultimate control over Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.

Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.

“Georgiana,” said he, “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?”

“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.”

“Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband; “but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection.”

“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. “Then why did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!”

To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of Georgiana’s left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion–a healthy though delicate bloom–the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons–but they were exclusively of her own sex–affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana’s beauty, and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,–for he thought little or nothing of the matter before,–Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,–if Envy’s self could have found aught else to sneer at,–he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer’s sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana’s beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife’s face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife’s cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject.

“Do you remember, my dear Aylmer,” said she, with a feeble attempt at a smile, “have you any recollection of a dream last night about this odious hand?”

“None! none whatever!” replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of his emotion, “I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy.”

“And you did dream of it?” continued Georgiana, hastily; for she dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. “A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this one expression?–‘It is in her heart now; we must have it out!’ Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream.”

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana’s heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in his wife’s presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace.

“Aylmer,” resumed Georgiana, solemnly, “I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world?”

“Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,” hastily interrupted Aylmer. “I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal.”

“If there be the remotest possibility of it,” continued Georgiana, “let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,–life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?”

“Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife,” cried Aylmer, rapturously, “doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest thought–thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.”

“It is resolved, then,” said Georgiana, faintly smiling. “And, Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my heart at last.”

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek–her right cheek–not that which bore the impress of the crimson hand.

The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth–against which all seekers sooner or later stumble–that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

“Aminadab! Aminadab!” shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer’s underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master’s experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man’s physical nature; while Aylmer’s slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

“Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab,” said Aylmer, “and burn a pastil.”

“Yes, master,” answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, “If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birthmark.”

When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife’s side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.

“Where am I? Ah, I remember,” said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband’s eyes.

“Fear not, dearest!” exclaimed he. “Do not shrink from me! Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it.”

“Oh, spare me!” sadly replied his wife. “Pray do not look at it again. I never can forget that convulsive shudder.”

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower.

“It is magical!” cried Georgiana. “I dare not touch it.”

“Nay, pluck it,” answered Aylmer,–“pluck it, and inhale its brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself.”

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire.

“There was too powerful a stimulus,” said Aylmer, thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; “but,” he added, “a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it.” Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse.

“Aylmer, are you in earnest?” asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement and fear. “It is terrible to possess such power, or even to dream of possessing it.”

“Oh, do not tremble, my love,” said her husband. “I would not wrong either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the skill requisite to remove this little hand.”

At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a redhot iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating delight.

“And what is this?” asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe containing a gold-colored liquid. “It is so beautiful to the eye that I could imagine it the elixir of life.”

“In one sense it is,” replied Aylmer; “or, rather, the elixir of immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in this world. By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you might point your finger. The strength of the dose would determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my private station, should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in depriving him of it.”

“Why do you keep such a terrific drug?” inquired Georgiana in horror.

“Do not mistrust me, dearest,” said her husband, smiling; “its virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost.”

“Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?” asked Georgiana, anxiously.

“Oh, no,” hastily replied her husband; “this is merely superficial. Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper.”

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system–a strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer now hated it so much as she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works of philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the members, knowing little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might be wrought.

But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband’s own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced Aylmer and loved him more profoundly than ever, but with a less entire dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed. His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every man of genius in whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own experience in Aylmer’s journal.

So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was found by her husband.

“It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer’s books,” said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. “Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you.”

“It has made me worship you more than ever,” said she.

“Ah, wait for this one success,” rejoined he, “then worship me if you will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have sought you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest.”

So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had begun to excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal birthmark, not painful, but which induced a restlessness throughout her system. Hastening after her husband, she intruded for the first time into the laboratory.

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.

He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had assumed for Georgiana’s encouragement!

“Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully, thou man of clay!” muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant. “Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over.”

“Ho! ho!” mumbled Aminadab. “Look, master! look!”

Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.

“Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?” cried he, impetuously. “Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!”

“Nay, Aylmer,” said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed no stinted endowment, “it is not you that have a right to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own.”

“No, no, Georgiana!” said Aylmer, impatiently; “it must not be.”

“I submit,” replied she calmly. “And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand.”

“My noble wife,” said Aylmer, deeply moved, “I knew not the height and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know, then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to be tried. If that fail us we are ruined.”

“Why did you hesitate to tell me this?” asked she.

“Because, Georgiana,” said Aylmer, in a low voice, “there is danger.”

“Danger? There is but one danger–that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!” cried Georgiana. “Remove it, remove it, whatever be the cost, or we shall both go mad!”

“Heaven knows your words are too true,” said Aylmer, sadly. “And now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested.”

He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love–so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.

The sound of her husband’s footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of fear or doubt.

“The concoction of the draught has been perfect,” said he, in answer to Georgiana’s look. “Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot fail.”

“Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his wife, “I might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die.”

“You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her husband “But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant.”

On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.

“There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly. “Give me the goblet I joyfully stake all upon your word.”

“Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. “There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect.”

She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

“It is grateful,” said she with a placid smile. “Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset.”

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,–such were the details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana’s cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

“By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!”

He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant Aminadab’s expression of delight.

“Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy, “you have served me well! Matter and spirit–earth and heaven –have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned the right to laugh.”

These exclamations broke Georgiana’s sleep. She slowly unclosed her eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer’s face with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for.

“My poor Aylmer!” murmured she.

“Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!” exclaimed he. “My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!”

“My poor Aylmer,” she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, “you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!”

Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark–that sole token of human imperfection–faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.