داستانهایی به زبان انگلیسی

[ریپورتر]

Haircut

Ring Lardner
I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain't no New York: City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and don't have no leisure to drop in here and get themselves prettied up.
You're a newcomer, ain't you? I thought I hadn't seen you round before. I hope you like it good enough to stay. As I say, we ain't no New York City or Chicago, but we have pretty good times. Not as good, though, since Jim Kendall got killed. When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin' done here than any town its size in America.
Jim was comical, and Hod was pretty near a match for him. Since Jim's gone, Hod tries to hold his end up just the same as ever, but it's tough goin' when you ain't got nobody to kind of work with.
They used to be plenty fun in here Saturdays. This place is jampacked Saturdays, from four o'clock on. Jim and Hod would show up right after their supper round six o'clock. Jim would set himself down in that big chair, nearest the blue spittoon. Whoever had been settin' in that chair, why they'd get up when Jim come in and at" it to him.
You'd of thought it was a reserved seat like they have sometimes in a theaytre. Hod would generally always stand or walk up and down or some Saturdays, of course, he'd be settin' in this chair part of the time, gettin' a haircut.
Well, Jim would set there a w'ile without opening his mouth only to spit, and then finally he'd say to me, "Whitey,"--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, "Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin' some of your aw de cologne."
So I'd say, "No, Jim, but you look like you'd been drinkin' something of that kind or somethin' worse."
Jim would have to laugh at that, but then he'd speak up and say, "No, I ain't had nothin' to drink, but that ain't sayin' I wouldn't like somethin'. I wouldn't even mind if it was wood alcohol."
Then Hod Meyers would say, "Neither would your wife." That would set everybody to laughin' because Jim and his wife wasn't on very good terms. She'd of divorced him only they wasn't no chance to get alimony and she didn't have no way to take care of herself and the kids. She couldn't never understand Jim. He was kind of rough, but a good fella at heart.
Him and Hod had all kinds of sport with Milt Sheppard. I don't suppose you've seen Milt. Well, he's got an Adam's apple that looks more like a mush-melon. So I'd be shavin' Milt and when I'd start to shave down here on his neck, Hod would holler, "Hey, Whitey, wait a minute! Before you cut into it, let's make up a pool and see who can guess closest to the number of seeds."
And Jim would say, "If Milt hadn't of been so hoggish, he'd of ordered a half a cantaloupe instead of a whole one and it might not of stuck in his throat."
All the boys would roar at this and Milt himself would force a smile, though the joke was on him. Jim certainly was a card!
There's his shavin' mug, setting on the shelf, right next to Charley Vail's. "Charles M. Vail." That's the druggist. He comes in regular for his shave, three times a week. And Jim's is the cup next to Charley's. "dames H. Kendall." Jim won't need no shavin' mug no more, but I'll leave it there just the same for old time's sake. Jim certainly was a character!
Years ago, Jim used to travel for a canned goods concern over in Carterville. They sold canned goods. Jim had the whole northern half of the State and was on the road five days out of every week. He'd drop in here Saturdays and tell his experiences for that week. It was rich.
I guess he paid more attention to playin' jokes than makin' sales. Finally the concern let him out and he come right home here and told everybody he'd been fired instead of sayin' he'd resigned like most fellas would of.
It was a Saturday and the shop was full and Jim got up out of that chair and says, "Gentlemen, I got an important announcement to make. I been fired from my job."
Well, they asked him if he was in earnest and he said he was and nobody could think of nothin' to say till Jim finally broke the ice himself. He says, "I been sellin' canned goods and now I'm canned goods myself.
You see, the concern he'd been workin' for was a factory that made canned goods. Over in Carterville. And now Jim said he was canned himself. He was certainly a card!
Jim had a great trick that he used to play w'ile he was travelin'. For instance, he'd be ridin' on a train and they'd come to some little town like, well, like, well, like, we'll say, like Benton. Jim would look out the train window and read the signs of the stores.
For instance, they'd be a sign, "Henry Smith, Dry Goods." Well, Jim would write down the name and the name of the town and when he got to wherever he was goin' he'd mail back a postal card to Henry Smith at Benton and not sign no name to it, but he'd write on the card, well somethin' like "Ask your wife about that book agent that spent the afternoon last week," or "Ask your Missus who kept her from gettin' lonesome the last time you was in Carterville." And he'd sign the card, "A Friend."
Of course, he never knew what really come of none of these jokes, but he could picture what probably happened and that was enough.
Jim didn't work very steady after he lost his position with the Carterville people. What he did earn, coin' odd jobs round town why he spent pretty near all of it on gin, and his family might of starved if the stores hadn't of carried them along. Jim's wife tried her hand at dressmakin', but they ain't nobody goin' to get rich makin' dresses in this town.
As I say, she'd of divorced Jim, only she seen that she couldn't support herself and the kids and she was always hopin' that some day Jim would cut out his habits and give her more than two or three dollars a week.
They was a time when she would go to whoever he was workin' for and ask them to give her his wages, but after she done this once or twice, he beat her to it by borrowin' most of his pay in advance. He told it all round town, how he had outfoxed his Missus. He certainly was a caution!
But he wasn't satisfied with just outwittin' her. He was sore the way she had acted, tryin' to grab off his pay. And he made up his mind he'd get even. Well, he waited till Evans's Circus was advertised to come to town. Then he told his wife and two kiddies that he was goin' to take them to the circus. The day of the circus, he told them he would get the tickets and meet them outside the entrance to the tent.
Well, he didn't have no intentions of bein' there or buyin' tickets or nothin'. He got full of gin and laid round Wright's poolroom all day. His wife and the kids waited and waited and of course he didn't show up. His wife didn't have a dime with her, or nowhere else, I guess. So she finally had to tell the kids it was all off and they cried like they wasn't never goin' to stop.
Well, it seems, w'ile they was cryin', Doc Stair come along and he asked what was the matter, but Mrs. Kendall was stubborn and wouldn't tell him, but the kids told him and he insisted on takin' them and their mother in the show. Jim found this out afterwards and it was one reason why he had it in for Doc Stair.
Doc Stair come here about a year and a half ago. He's a mighty handsome young fella and his clothes always look like he has them made to order. He goes to Detroit two or three times a year and w'ile he's there must have a tailor take his measure and then make him a suit to order. They cost pretty near twice as much, but they fit a whole lot better than if you just bought them in a store.
For a w'ile everybody was wonderin' why a young doctor like Doc Stair should come to a town like this where we already got old Doc Gamble and Doc Foote that's both been here for years and all the practice in town was always divided between the two of them.
Then they was a story got round that Doc Stair's gal had thronged him over, a gal up in the Northern Peninsula somewhere, and the reason he come here was to hide himself away and forget it. He said himself that he thought they wasn't nothin' like general practice in a place like ours to fit a man to be a good all round doctor. And that's why he'd came.
Anyways, it wasn't long before he was makin' enough to live on, though they tell me that he never dunned nobody for what they owed him, and the folks here certainly has got the owin' habit, even in my business. If I had all that was comin' to me for just shaves alone, I could go to Carterville and put up at the Mercer for a week and see a different picture every night. For instance, they's old George Purdy--but I guess I shouldn't ought to be gossipin'.
Well, last year, our coroner died, died of the flu. Ken Beatty, that was his name. He was the coroner. So they had to choose another man to be coroner in his place and they picked Doc Stair. He laughed at first and said he didn't want it, but they made him take it. It ain't no job that anybody would fight for and what a man makes out of it in a year would just about buy seeds for their garden. Doc's the kind, though, that can't say no to nothin' if you keep at him long enough.
But I was goin' to tell you about a poor boy we got here in town-Paul Dickson. He fell out of a tree when he was about ten years old. Lit on his head and it done somethin' to him and he ain't never been right. No harm in him, but just silly. Jim Kendall used to call him cuckoo; that's a name Jim had for anybody that was off their head, only he called people's head their bean. That was another of his gags, callin' head bean and callin' crazy people cuckoo. Only poor Paul ain't crazy, but just silly.
You can imagine that Jim used to have all kinds of fun with Paul. He'd send him to the White Front Garage for a left-handed monkey wrench. Of course they ain't no such thing as a left-handed monkey wrench.
And once we had a kind of a fair here and they was a baseball game between the fats and the leans and before the game started Jim called Paul over and sent him way down to Schrader's hardware store to get a key for the pitcher's box.
They wasn't nothin' in the way of gags that Jim couldn't think up, when he put his mind to it.
Poor Paul was always kind of suspicious of people, maybe on account of how Jim had kept foolin' him. Paul wouldn't have much to do with anybody only his own mother and Doc Stair and a girl here in town named Julie Gregg. That is, she ain't a girl no more, but pretty near thirty or over.
When Doc first come to town, Paul seemed to feel like here was a real friend and he hung round Doc's office most of the w'ile; the only time he wasn't there was when he'd go home to eat or sleep or when he seen Julie Gregg coin' her shoppin'.
When he looked out Doc's window and seen her, he'd run downstairs and join her and tag along with her to the different stores. The poor boy was crazy about Julie and she always treated him mighty nice and made him feel like he was welcome, though of course it wasn't nothin' but pity on her side.
Doc done all he could to improve Paul's mind and he told me once that he really thought the boy was getting better, that they was times when he was as bright and sensible as anybody else.
But I was goin' to tell you about Julie Gregg. Old man Gregg was in the lumber business, but got to drinkin' and lost the most of his money and when he died, he didn't leave nothin' but the house and just enough insurance for the girl to skimp along on.
Her mother was a kind of a half invalid and didn't hardly ever leave the house. Julie wanted to sell the place and move somewhere else after the old man died, but the mother said she was born here and would die here. It was tough on Julie as the young people round this town--well, she's too good for them.
She'd been away to school and Chicago and New York and different places and they ain't no subject she can't talk on, where you take the rest of the young folks here and you mention anything to them outside of Gloria Swanson or Tommy Meighan and they think you're delirious. Did you see Gloria in Wages of Virtue? You missed somethin'!
Well, Doc Stair hadn't been here more than a week when he came in one day to get shaved and I recognized who he was, as he had been pointed out to me, so I told him about my old lady. She's been ailin' for a couple years and either Doc Gamble or Doc Foote, neither one, seemed to be helpin' her. So he said he would come out and see her, but if she was able to get out herself, it would be better to bring her to his office where he could make a completer examination.
So I took her to his office and w'ile I was waitin' for her in the reception room, in come Julie Gregg. When somebody comes in Doc Stair's office, they's a bell that rings in his inside office so he can tell they's somebody to see him.
So he left my old lady inside and come out to the front office and that's the first time him and Julie met and I guess it was what they call love at first sight. But it wasn't fifty-fifty. This young fella was the slickest lookin' fella she'd ever seen in this town and she went wild over him. To him she was just a young lady that wanted to see the doctor.
She'd came on about the same business I had. Her mother had been doctorin' for years with Doc Gamble and Doc Foote and with" out no results. So she'd heard they was a new doc in town and decided to give him a try. He promised to call and see her mother that same day.
I said a minute ago that it was love at first sight on her part. I'm not only judgin' by how she acted afterwards but how she looked at him that first day in his office. I ain't no mind reader, but it was wrote all over her face that she was gone.
Now Jim Kendall, besides bein' a jokesmith and a pretty good drinker, well Jim was quite a lady-killer. I guess he run pretty wild durin' the time he was on the road for them Carterville people, and besides that, he'd had a couple little affairs of the heart right here in town. As I say, his wife would have divorced him, only she couldn't.
But Jim was like the majority of men, and women, too, I guess. He wanted what he couldn't get. He wanted Julie Gregg and worked his head off tryin' to land her. Only he'd of said bean instead of head.
Well, Jim's habits and his jokes didn't appeal to Julie and of course he was a married man, so he didn't have no more chance than, well, than a rabbit. That's an expression of Jim's himself. When somebody didn't have no chance to get elected or somethin', Jim would always say they didn't have no more chance than a rabbit.
He didn't make no bones about how he felt. Right in here, more than once, in front of the whole crowd, he said he was stuck on Julie and anybody that could get her for him was welcome to his house and his wife and kids included. But she wouldn't have nothin' to do with him; wouldn't even speak to him on the street. He finally seen he wasn't gettin' nowheres with his usual line so he decided to try the rough stuff. He went right up to her house one evenin' and when she opened the door he forced his way in and grabbed her. But she broke loose and before he could stop her, she run in the next room and locked the door and phoned to Joe Barnes. Joe's the marshal. Jim could hear who she was phonin' to and he beat it before Joe got there.
Joe was an old friend of Julie's pa. Joe went to Jim the next day and told him what would happen if he ever done it again.
I don't know how the news of this little affair leaked out. Chances is that Joe Barnes told his wife and she told somebody else's wife and they told their husband. Anyways, it did leak out and Hod Meyers had the nerve to kid Jim about it, right here in this shop. Jim didn't deny nothin' and kind of laughed it off and said for us all to wait; that lots of people had tried to make a monkey out of him, but he always got even.
Meanw'ile everybody in town was wise to Julie's bein' wild mad over the Doc. I don't suppose she had any idea how her face changed when him and her was together; of course she couldn't of, or she'd of kept away from him. And she didn't know that we was all noticin' how many times she made excuses to go up to his office or pass it on the other side of the street and look up in his window to see if he was there. I felt sorry for her and so did most other people.
Hod Meyers kept rubbin' it into Jim about how the Doc had cut him out. Jim didn't pay no attention to the kiddie' and you could see he was plannin' one of his jokes.
One trick Jim had was the knack of changin' his voice. He could make you think he was a girl talkie' and he could mimic any man's voice. To show you how good he was along this line, I'll tell you the joke he played on me once.
You know, in most towns of any size, when a man is dead and needs a shave, why the barber that shaves him soaks him five dollars for the job; that is, he don't soak him, but whoever ordered the shave. I just charge three dollars because personally I don't mind much shavin' a dead person. They lay a whole lot stiller than live customers. The only thing is that you don't feel like talkie' to them and you get kind of lonesome.
Well, about the coldest day we ever had here, two years ago last winter, the phone rung at the house w'ile I was home to dinner and I answered the phone and it was a woman's voice and she said she was Mrs. John Scott and her husband was dead and would I come out and shave him.
Old John had always been a good customer of mine. But they live seven miles out in the country, on the Streeter road. Still I didn't see how I could say no.
So I said I would be there, but would have to come in a jitney and it might cost three or four dollars besides the price of the shave. So she, or the voice, it said that was all right, so I got Frank Abbott to drive me out to the place and when I got there, who should open the door but old John himself! He wasn't no more dead than, well, than a rabbit.
It didn't take no private detective to figure out who had played me this little joke. Nobody could of thought it up but Jim Kendall. He certainly was a card!
I tell you this incident just to show you how he could disguise his voice and make you believe it was somebody else talkie'. I'd of swore it was Mrs. Scott had called me. Anyways, some woman.
Well, Jim waited till he had Doc Stair's voice down pat; then he went after revenge.
He called Julie up on a night when he knew Doc was over in Carterville. She never questioned but what it was Doc's voice. Jim said he must see her that night; he couldn't wait no longer to tell her somethin'. She was all excited and told him to come to the house. But he said he was expectin' an important long distance call and wouldn't she please forget her manners for once and come to his office. He said they couldn't nothin' hurt her and nobody would see her and he just must talk to her a little w'ile. Well, poor Julie fell for it.
Doc alway

[ریپورتر]

Jon Mallalieu
The Banana Season's Over
"Poison." It's one of the kibbutzniks that speaks, a large woman probably in her forties. "We poison the wildlife every now and again you know, to keep things under control."
She must have just finished her night shift because she is wearing work overalls: a pair of beige, stained dungarees. I gather by the smell that she works in the cowsheds.
"It's the pigeons mainly," she says; "they're a real pest, shit all over the dairy buildings, eat the cattle feed. Unfortunately some of the cats get it too but they're only strays."
I am incensed. "I don't think that's quite the point."
We all turn toward the cat which is now making a rasping choking sound as it tries to clear its blocked airways. Its tongue, cherry red, flashes desperately against the white spittle that fills its tiny mouth. I feel physically sick at the sight of its writhing body turning over the dead leaves. The others mutter in agreement, unhappy with her casual attitude. I continue, "And the pigeons, Jesus, look at the pigeons," all gathering in the same corner, huddled between the road and the yellow shower block. I can't work out why at first and then I figure that it's probably the wind gathering them, trapping them helplessly in a whirling eddy of feathers. Below us more pigeons have appeared on the corrugated roofs of the volunteer huts while others circle and fall from the sky as if the air is too thin to support their weight. Unhappy with her audience she waddles off towards the block of members' housing. We watch her fat rolling backside and her uneven heavy gait. Eddie mutters, "Bitch," under his breath and Tom says, "bloody Israelis," just loud enough to make her turn her head before disappearing from view.

That was kind of how it was on the kibbutz. When I mentioned the incident to Motti the next day in the banana fields he looked a little perplexed and motioned me to climb up onto the warm trailer. He pointed up over the top of the tattered banana leaves at the kibbutz.
"Look Blake, you see the kibbutz?" I nod courteously, shielding my eyes with my palm from the glare of the sun.
"When my parents arrived you know there were no buildings there? Just this bare hill and a row of white tents. Of course there was no running water, no power, no nothing. Well look now, eh? Isn't she beautiful? It's our home and we made it by working on the land. I don't know, maybe it's hard for you to understand, but we have to place things into some kind of order, and animals, well they come low down. You know the history, Blake, our history. Think about the history."

< 2 >

I jump down from the trailer and think about the history.

Work in the bananas is hard graft and by mid-morning I am already exhausted. The sun is high in the clear sky and the dappled shade under the trees is disappearing fast. To make things worse my bare arms are covered in the thin sticky residue of the banana trees and I am stood shin deep in a carpet of dead leaves. I am working with Egal, a grey haired kibbutz elder. He doesn't say much but we have an efficient working partnership. His faded T-shirt is pulled tight around his middle and on his bony hip hangs the blackened leather scabbard, home to his banana knife. It's a beauty: twelve inches long and a butcher's delight. I follow him to a particularly tall tree and watch while he lifts the heavy knife slowly above his head. He brings it swiftly down making a single deft slash in the moist trunk. The knife is stuck fast and he has to pull heavily with both hands on the wooden handle to release it. As it drags free, it emits a wet squeak like the sound of a finger down a wet bathroom mirror. Then the tree slips forward obediently, dutifully, dipping the hard green bananas to a height that can be reached by an expert arm. I grab the fat purple bud that hangs pendulously beneath the bunch with one sticky hand and, leaning forward, push it gently away until the fruit is slanted high above my right shoulder. Then I stand beneath with my knees bent in anticipation until another powerful blow slices through the woody stem and releases the weighty bunch down onto me. The trick is to dip with the falling fruit, to absorb the weight and only then to stand. I now have to find the trailer but it's often hard because the trees can be disorientating and the dusty track is the same colour as the dried fallen leaves. So I stand still momentarily and listen for the voices of other labourers.
When I arrive Tom is sitting on the tailgate of the dented trailer, right on the very edge so his skin doesn't touch the hot sunburned metal. I gasp as I dump my load heavily onto the trailer. Tom looks up, he is chewing gum whilst opening the lid on the polystyrene flask of cold water. He hands it to me and I raise it to my chapped lips. The water traces an icy path to my stomach and I realise then that I never really knew what water was, not until I worked the bananas.

< 3 >

From around the corner Motti appears driving the John Deer. He is pulling another open trailer and in it are the rest of the volunteers grimacing and huddled like weary cattle. They lift and thump with every pothole and cling tightly to the side of the vehicle. I can see Eddie and he raises a pale hand lazily in recognition.
"Typical," says Tom in a resigned drawl jumping to his feet. "Been working like a dog all morning and Motti sees me sitting on my arse, now I'll be for it." But Motti says nothing. He has stopped and is waiting patiently for us to jump up. Egal has appeared red-faced and spectacled at the edge of the track and we all amble silently toward the ticking tractor.
From here the road sweeps neatly along the edge of the wide fields and on past the Roman springs where the water is not only deep but clean and still. It is a favourite swimming spot after a hard hot day's work. Along the edge of the wide pools amongst the avocado trees Roman buildings are gradually disintegrating, giving up their history to the hungry water. In any other country they would be in museums but here it seems you can prop up your garden shed with a Roman column. We move on, wheels grinding over the bleached stone track until we see the square limestone hut. Within minutes we are drinking sweet black coffee flavoured with cardamom and fighting over the tasteless kibbutz biscuits. Sitting outside in the shade of the hut we light our cigarettes and rest our bare elbows on the grubby floor of the trailer, copper-coloured legs splayed out behind us.

The view from here is magnificent. To the west through the hazy shimmer of rising heat we can make out the Mediterranean Sea and the terracotta roofs of the houses in the coastal town of Naharia. It sparkles like a tiara with a hundred glinting solar panels. To the east through the fug the Golan Heights rise proudly like bony knuckles, lifting gently away from the fertile plains. Behind us, high above the tops of the stately avocado trees, is the kibbutz. It stands splendid and palatial amongst the heavily scented pine trees. The gentle slopes that form the ramparts of the community are, however, barren. Weed-less and rocky, they descend monotonously to the main road.

< 4 >

Eddie is smoking and sitting on the trailer swinging his large feet in a rhythmic motion. "Does it ever snow?" He speaks quietly looking up at me through his cherubic curls. I glance upwards. "What, you mean here on the kibbutz?"
"I mean in Israel, does it snow in the winter? That would be nice that would, picking bananas in the snow, not having these damn peeling shoulders" He plucks a flake of skin from one of his broad freckled shoulders and lets it fall gently like a spent leaf onto the dirt. He shifts position, leans back, and raises his legs so that his heavy boots rest in his cupped hands.
"Only up in the mountains," I say, "I think you can ski up there. Motti told me he fought up there in the war, up in the Golan Heights. It's always cold when you're high up."
"Right," he sounds enthused, "the wind I guess." But I look confused so he adds thoughtfully, "That's what makes it cold?"
"I guess," but now I'm off imagining snow falling quietly in Jerusalem capping the golden Dome of the Rock. Muting the honking traffic and settling gently, silently on the ancient twisted branches of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.
"It reminds me of home," says Eddie, looking doleful, "makes me think of London in the winter. We used to have a laugh, when it snowed I mean." He jumps down from the trailer and stands with his legs slightly apart in the dust. His face has suddenly become animated. "You know I remember once," he pauses as a small bird flits past us and into the warm shade of the avocado trees, "I think I'd just finished a short stretch inside. Anyhow we'd had a few beers when we saw this Asian guy waltzing down the high street. He was walking slowly, carefully picking at a big soggy bag of chips. I could see the steam rising off them and smell the salt and vinegar in the cold air. And it was cold that night. We were spent up from drinking so we followed him quietly, stealthily. And all that I can remember is that I really wanted that warm bag in my freezing fingers. It was still snowing hard, you could see it when he passed under the street lights, big fat wet flakes." He holds his plump hand six inches from the floor of the trailer to illustrate its depth.

< 5 >

"The guy wore his woolly hat pulled down over his ears, probably off home after a hard day's work. Well, we crouched down low behind some oak trees, sniggering, and made snowballs, tight ones. We squeezed them hard as stones then crept up carefully behind him. We let him have it. The first one smacked him squarely on the head; he didn't know what hit him. He yelled out like a school girl, tried to run but we got him from every angle, the back, the side, the front, took his glasses clean off. His chips were splashed out in the snow, and he started screaming, you bastards, you bloody bastards, come back. I give you bloody hiding, bastards!" (He gets the intonation just right.)
"We could hear him minutes later still yelling looking for his specs in the snow whilst we were laughing, screaming, running through the park. Be great if it snowed here, bloody great."
I want to react. I want to make disapproving noises, to tut or draw my breath sharply over my teeth, but the longer I wait the more it seems unlikely. It's partly because the picture in my head is so damn clear, so beautifully intact, and partly that I enjoyed its clarity, how he took me effortlessly to the exact spot where the warm chips have sunk making dark holes in the fresh snow. And there's this guy, his ears still stinging, ringing, on his knees still looking helplessly for his glasses. I want to ponder on it, to turn the picture over in my head and examine how I feel. The silence is uncomfortable and I know we can all feel it but I can't help myself. I start to laugh, crouching down low, my palms on my bare dirty knees. Quietly at first but then I can't contain it. It's Tom, his laugh is infectious, a kind of high pitched hen-like cackle. And then we are all taken with the moment, and dancing with delight skipping over the dirt track. Eddie grabs a ripe banana from the trailer and lobs it to me; I catch it two handed. The exchange is part of the contract and Eddie, awash with confidence, bounces back, "We never did get any chips."

I spend the rest of the morning walking the pipes with Tom. The irrigation pipes meander along the narrow aisles of banana trees. They provide each tree at its wide base with an allotted dose of water and nutrients. We are checking for leaks and every now and then one of us stops abruptly, kneels on the dried banana leaves and studies a faulty joint in the line. Sometimes the droppers are simply blocked with dirt and it's an easy job to clear the eye with a needle, but other times the pipe needs cutting and reconnecting. While one of us busies ourselves dealing with the problem, the other leans lazily against a tree or patiently takes a drink of water from the flask. We walk for miles accompanied only by our soft voices and the soporific rustle of dead leaves. Sometimes we don't talk for hours and then neither of us wants to break the delicate silence. Other times we while a morning or afternoon away lobbing rotten bananas at each other or singing Simon and Garfunkel tunes.

< 6 >

Last week, where the pipe had split and left a wide puddle in the dirt, we came across a family of tortoises drinking gently at its ragged edge. Laying down quietly on our fronts, hands under our chins we watched them dip and raise their horny heads for an age. Tom eventually looked up at me. "Nature," he said grinning. "Bloody marvellous," and then we were up and off again.
I like Tom. Something about him makes me feel safe. It might be the neatness of his physical frame. He has the lithe, taut body of a rock climber and his skin is a deep chestnut tan. Sometimes, when we go jogging together in the early evening I watch the sweat running down the muscular ridges of his naked back. His posture is athletic, self assured. The way he comfortably plants his grey trainers in the loose dirt of the mud track, the natural rhythm of his pace, his breathing, all these things breed a kind of unspoken respect in me. There is a stillness about him too that holds your attention when he talks. And when he listens his blue eyes shine and behind them you can almost sense his thoughts. But above all these things, it is his smile that beguiles you. It is the natural easy smile of a child and it has the same innocent and honest quality.

I had arrived at kibbutz Briac on a warm September evening; I was tired. The taxi, a yellow Mercedes, dropped me off at the bottom of the hill and I could feel the heat rising from the pitted tarmac. The smell of the tar was reassuring. It reminded me of the summer I had just left behind a thousand miles away. I was eighteen and still a schoolboy fresh from the playing fields, plucked suddenly from the safety of a High School education. If I closed my eyes tightly I could even see my graffiti, bright and yellow, carved like a valley deep into the sloping wooden desk. I walked slowly, lost in my thoughts up the narrow winding road toward the checkpoint. Its red and white striped barrier was slung down low, forbiddingly, across the brow of the hill. My mind was buzzing with fatigue, for the journey had been exhausting and my backpack felt double the burden it had in the morning.

< 7 >

I remember the young man on duty because he was wearing creased army fatigues and smoking a large cheroot. He looked like a captain in some banana republic. Leaning back on his plastic stool, he jumped when he saw me and struck an official-looking pose as if he were being filmed for some documentary. Demanding to see my paperwork, he looked awkward and embarrassed when it was obvious that I had none. Clearly agitated, he picked up the black telephone at his side and pressed it to a greasy ear. He dialled three numbers in rapid succession and spoke briefly in Hebrew, the result of which was that he looked cross but nonetheless allowed me to pass. Then, pointing with a slender finger to a group of low buildings in the distance he sniffed, put his hands in his pockets and mumbled something which I failed to understand.
A few minutes later I was stood perfectly still, staring through a narrow gap between two tall pine trees. There was a fire spitting orange and yellow beads up into the evening sky. It was piled high with freshly cut logs and it gave off an incense of pine resin which hung heavily in the cool air about me. Around the fire there was a group of about six or seven shadowy figures, some sitting cross-legged others kneeling. They were talking and laughing, gently rocking back and forth as if they occupied a small boat which was bobbing on a sea of grass. Their chatter mingled with the crackle of the fire and disappeared with the plume of twisting smoke into the night. Darkness had fallen and above me the first stars were appearing. They looked like chinks of light in a theatre curtain, full of promise. On one of the walls of the yellow huts nearby I noticed that someone had scratched "God shave the Queen" into the thin plaster and I smiled and walked slowly over to meet them.

Standing like a pale castle on top of a rocky hill, the kibbutz was only a stone's throw away from the Lebanese border. Ironically, stones were never thrown, but periodically a shell would whistle angrily across the shapeless mountains only to thump innocuously into the soft brown mud. The craters large as busses filled slowly with tepid water, only to sprout months later with new life. Reeds as thick as broom handles and rangy wind-bent grasses all skirted the static water. In these little ‘manmade' pockets of wildlife coots nested on tiny floating islands and dragonflies hovered reflecting metallic greens and blues in the opaque water. Once or twice at dusk I even spotted terrapins bobbing gently like dark green apples under the gloomy surface.

< 8 >

The earth was a rich golden brown and the valley was blanketed green and yellow by banana plantations and lines of dull green avocado trees. There were fresh water springs which bubbled clear and blue and that ran like veins lazily curling across the patchwork of fields. Here and there the streams met and pooled, swirling in deep dark blots like eyes studying the tumbled-down remains of ancient sandstone buildings.
In the early mornings the sun rose sluggishly from behind the snow-capped Golan Heights, and in the evening it fell swiftly into the listless Mediterranean Sea. It was a fertile landscape in every sense of the word, not least because of the succulent fruit it provided, but also because it held securely in its generous palm this community rich in culture and diverse in origin, the wandering Jews, the Diaspora. The people who tilled and planted the earth did so because they were driven, because the land bound them as walls bind a prisoner. It was their sweat and their breath that gave life to the valley and their history which bound them to each other. It was a good place to be.

The single dusty track that swung gently up the incline from the main road met, at its summit, the high steel fence. The fence ran for a gleaming mile surrounding and ensnaring the community, its posts driven firmly into the stony ground and its rim topped angrily with razor wire. The fence both protected but simultaneously managed to create a feeling of siege among its occupants. There were pine trees, gangling and ungainly, leaning lazily into the slope. Their cones spread out like litter at the base of their rutted trunks and amongst them the members' housing was scattered like popcorn. There was grass too, wide watered lawns criss-crossed by rough concrete paths and dotted with freshly turned rose beds.
The paths all seem to converge like wheel spokes toward the dining room, which was at meal times as cavernous and busy as a train station. It was the hub of kibbutz life, where the workers grumbled over their morning coffee before taking the wagons and trailers down into the dew-covered valley. Where the dark-haired school kids copied out homework and ate their soft-boiled eggs, eggs that had been inside a chicken only the evening before, and that now dripped orange streaks down clean white T-shirts.

< 9 >

Kettles gleamed along one side, simmering and agitated, whilst fresh vegetables were set out in wide steel trays ready for the next meal. Deep, welcoming tubs of Schnitzel and couscous, fish and boiled new potatoes, artichoke hearts in olive oil and vats of buttermilk were all tended to fastidiously by women dressed neatly in dark blue dungarees. From the dining room one could sit and watch the ocean through the narrow windows which ran along one side. A thin strip of bright blue light against the grey-blue horizon. Often when I think back to my life here this is where I am at three in the morning. Alone in the dining room. Alone in the marbled darkness and leaning back on a hard wooden chair. I'm drinking sweet black tea and although it is night I can still make out the ocean because the moon is out and full and the water is fat and still.

I am in the dining room now, its lunchtime and I have just come in from the fields. Motti the banana boss has driven us up in the trailer, the bone-shaker all the way from the far side of the Jezreel valley. The room is a beehive, awash with noise. The banter of relieved hungry workers, the chink of cheap cutlery on cheap china. The chuckle of cool water being poured from glass jugs into white handle-less cups.
You can tell who works in the bananas by the stains on their clothes. The thin sticky sap that runs from the wounds in the fleshy trunks leaves deep brown welts on cloth. No amount of washing can remove it and anyway it is our mark, our badge, the banana logo. Tom and Eddie are already seated spooning down chicken and potato hungrily. Steffi is over at the urns making tea, tall and shapely. Her shorts are far too small and I can't help but gaze at the back of her pale dimpled thighs.
"I know what you're doing," Tom says with a wry smile.
Eddie looks up guiltily from his plate. "What?" A mop of curly blonde hair flops down over his blue eyes. There is a morsel of food lodged in the corner of his mouth.
"Not you, you fool. Blake, he's ogling Steffi again." He looks me in the eye almost apologetically. "You know you've not a hope. She's a tease. I've heard she scours the laundry room for clothes two sizes too small just to tantalise us all with those long legs." He smirks and glances over again as if to reaffirm his observation.

< 10 >

"Well she can tantalise all she likes as far as I'm concerned," I mutter and sit myself down opposite them. "Sometimes it's better to travel than to arrive, isn't that what they say?"
"Don't know what you all see in her myself," says Eddie, "I mean she's pretty and all but too precious for my liking." Tom and I exchange careful glances as she makes her way toward the table. He moves over to let her in. Smiling guiltily, Tom asks how her morning has been.
"Oh not too bad you know. Those damn chickens are a nightmare. I'm mean literally, I dreamt about them last night. I was choking on feathers."
"Don't tell me, when you woke up you'd eaten your pillow." Eddie, amused with his own wit, bangs his fist on the table.
"No," says Steffi looking confused. "I woke up crying, I think it's my asthma." Her eyes look moist, red rimmed. "Sometimes I just want to go home." She curls her hair delicately behind one ear. It's a habit that she has and one that Tom and I agree is a rather ‘knowing' one. It is nevertheless an attractive, somewhat delicate movement and it makes me feel protective of her.
"Never mind eh, it's Shabbat," I say soothingly, "nothing that a few cold beers won't fix."
"I suppose," she smiles at me and takes a sip of her tea. I feel something like butterflies inside; it's not that I want her or anything but something about her makes me feel, well, tender. Maybe it's because of the night she slept in the spare bed in our room. I woke early with the birds as the cold morning air was pouring down through my open window. When I glanced across the room her thin duvet had fallen onto the tiled floor. Tom was still sleeping but I lay there for an hour caressing her naked goose-bumped curves with my eyes. Do I feel guilty? I suppose I do but although she doesn't know it I think we bonded then. I smile to myself at the thought of it and stir my tea.
Steffi is talking to me but I'm no longer listening "Blake?" she says gently…
"Sorry, I was just thinking about… about those damn pigeons." I was always a good liar. She nods approvingly as she tears a piece of bread in two and dips a piece into her chicken soup.

< 11 >

"What about Carl's dog, Blackie? He'd go crazy if it were poisoned." I say, warming to the theme.
"He'd probably shoot someone," she says, looking nervous. "Didn't he do that before?"
"I think he took a pot shot at some guy who cut him up at the lights once. Blew a couple of his tyres out. Well that's what I heard from Motti anyway."
Eddie, oblivious to the conversation, lights up a Noblesse, the cheapest of the Israeli cigarettes. We are allowed seven free packs a week as part of our allowance. He stands the soft green pack on its end and stares at it, elbows resting firmly on the plastic table. From a distance you would be forgiven for thinking that he had varicose veins, but close up as I am now you can see that his arms are covered in tattoos. The outline of the Pink Panther is sketched poorly on the inside of his thick white forearm. He has spent time in Maidstone prison and the letters HMP grace three of the red knuckles on each hand. At one time, he borrowed a friend's tattooing needle and most of his body now resembles my old school rough book, covered in a mixture of adolescent doodles and obscure graffiti. The cigarettes smell cheap and he smokes every last millimetre, taking the last drag deep into his lungs then stubbing it out into a mound of leftover mashed potato on Tom's plate.
Tom shoves the plate away across to the other side of the table and throws Eddie a withering look.
"You'd finished, hadn't you?" says Eddie defensively. "You're like a bloody old woman sometimes. Here, look, I'll take it away myself."
He stacks his tray hurriedly, untidily, and heads off for the slops bin. We all watch the flakes of mud from his suede boots trace his path across the polished floor.
"Me too, I guess," I say under my breath. "See you all back at the ghetto."

It's December now and although it's not cold, there is a chill in the air as I walk across the kibbutz towards the ghetto. Past the cowsheds and the tumbling stinking piles of rotting pomelos. Past the steaming laundry and the kolbo, the supermarket where we spend our hard earned vouchers on crates of Gold Star beer and cheap shampoo. There are rooks perched like sentries way up in the pine trees. A bird's eye view would certainly afford you a wonderful vision of the whole kibbutz. High above you would clearly see the metal fence that traps this community in a fat bubble on the landscape. The kibbutz is alive. It's a self-sufficient organism, swimming with vivid colours and movement. Right now as I'm walking I'm aware that hundreds of others are still busy at their work. Busy in the fruit fields and the glass factory, in the humid kitchens and the sprawling filthy cowsheds. There are kids playing basketball on the red clay court, their faces streaked with dirt and sweat; and there by the primary school is the swimming pool, green and stagnant during the cool winter months. There is no secondary school. The teenagers have to travel out of the kibbutz for that. It is there they learn about the world outside the fence and where they develop their unsavoury taste for another life. A life in which they can own their own house and wash their car quietly on a Saturday morning. The young yearn to escape from the confines of the kibbutz and dream constantly of leaving the unhealthy dark shadows of their forefathers. But the old, well you can see it in their yellow eyes that they are afraid. Afraid that they will be forgotten, but even more fearful that their history will forgotten with them.

< 12 >

I have reached the volunteer housing known amongst its inhabitants as the ghetto. It is scattered haphazardly across an acre of poor soil and pushed up aggressively against the tough wire meshed fence. And although the view across the valley is a fine one the ghetto feels like it is isolated from the rest of the kibbutz. Which I suppose it is and is meant to be. We are the outsiders, the untouchables, cheap labour that can be called upon in times of desperation and disposed of during the lean months. We are a transient population, the European Bedouin, and like them we appear and disappear bouncing from kibbutz to kibbutz and from job to monotonous job.
The huts in the ghetto, with their grey corrugated asbestos roofs, lie in a broad rectangle around an enclosed ramshackle plot. Clumps of dry grasses and untamed straggling bushes have invaded most of the space. There is, however, a small circle in the middle which has been lovingly cleared, and in which a fire still smoulders. A gentle reminder of the previous night when Tom, fuelled with alcohol, launched into the fire a bucket of blue paraffin. We were all rocked backwards by the flame burst and had, after a shocked pause, laughed hysterically. Only the week before he had disappeared for an hour and returned triumphantly, dragging a telegraph pole behind him. The damn thing burned for four straight days.
Outside each hut is a concrete veranda invariably strewn with muddy work boots and empty beer bottles. From one porch hangs a whole five-foot bunch of ripe bananas, and from another washing is strung out to dry along a sagging piece of orange twine. Inside, the rooms are basic. A cold tiled floor, a hand basin against one bare wall, and against another a cheap plywood wardrobe.
We live by easy rules in the ghetto. Under the corrugated gutter-less roofing and between the damp plaster walls we whisper and shout, dream of Marmite and of home. In winter we curse the draughts but nurse the yellow flame that warms our hands with the same delight, the same intensity. And when the walls of our room grow green with mould we stare at the glowing bars drying our damp socks, our faces chiselled in the shifting flickering shadows like Van Gogh's ‘Potato Eaters'. I always loved that picture.

< 13 >

Now I feel like an old hand in my kibbutz-issue ankle boots and torn blue work top. Making my way into the bare room I kick off my boots, fling my dirty shirt into the corner and lay myself prostrate on the low creaking bed. There is nothing like the deep sleep of a siesta.

In the late afternoon I wander down to the Refet, the cowsheds, plastic jug in hand and pour myself a few pints of cool creamy milk from the huge stainless steel cauldron. Uri, the dairy boss, raises an arm when he sees me and ambles over. He is wearing his trademark yellow Wellingtons. We chat about this and that over the pulsating drone of the milking machines. He has a son my age at university in Jerusalem, a daughter in high school. He worries about them both; there has been a spate of bombings recently on busses and in shopping malls. He often talks of leaving the country for Europe but as he always says, palms raised toward the heavens, "This is my homeland, where else would I go?"
Then, behind him I notice the pigeons, scattered over the roofs and the muddy grassless fields. They are eating the cattle feed, an unappetising mixture of pomelo rind and chicken shit. Out in one of the fields is the woman in the beige dungarees. She looks even heavier than I remember. She is cajoling the cattle, coaxing them aggressively into the aluminium corral with a large wooden stick. Glancing up at me as she enters the shed, her face remains expressionless, cold. Connecting up the cows to the machine, her movements seem graceless. I've seen Uri do it a hundred times and with the polished ease of a gymnast, but there is something awkward about her and I start to wonder then if the poisoning was her idea.

Now Christmas had crept up on us slowly and tapped our shoulders gently. The volunteer huts are festooned in gaudy decoration and on Christmas Eve we drive the minibus into Jerusalem. We all sing White Christmas at the top of our voices and Tom leans out of the small window shouting felicitations gleefully at passers by. The city is beautiful, glistening with the headlights of the evening traffic. It is as vibrant and as warming as a rum punch.

< 14 >

On we drive, along the narrow roads and through the golden sandstone gorges of the old city. The huge wooden gates to the city are open wide and people flow through them like melted butter, running softly, easily down the busy streets. Outside the city the street lights begin to disappear and the land falls away steeply on one side of the road. Yellow buildings give way to green coniferous forest and the air outside drops in temperature. It is dark in the bus and we talk excitedly about Christmas and home and family.
Bethlehem, when we arrive, is alive and thronging with hundreds of people and Manger Square is bedecked with cheap wooden tables and chairs. There are lights strung up overhead in brilliant gleaming rows whilst the church of the nativity looks graciously over the whole festive scene. We are all swept along willingly with the tide of religious fervour. Although none of us is a practising Christian it feels churlish to deny anything tonight, so we become believers for the evening and drink cheap red wine and sing carols with the mass of happy revellers. Later we even queue for an hour to get our passports stamped with Joyeux No'l and the crest of a black eagle. Then we dance late into the night holding hands with friends and strangers alike. I'm dancing with Steffi, whilst Tom dances with the new Danish girl Hanni. She arrived last week and is still fresh and pink from home. He winks at me. Eddie sits alone smoking black tobacco and drinking warm beer. Although Steffi and I don't talk I can feel our hands silently exchanging heat in the cool night. Later on as we walk down the hill she says "It's been a great evening, hasn't it?" She has eyes like a calf, large and curious and they kind of draw you in helplessly. I nod silently just as Tom starts to sing drunkenly in front of us at the top of his voice. I laugh and say to Steffi that it has indeed been a wonderful night. We stop, facing each other, and I touch her on the cheek with the back of my cold fingers. There is something between us but I don't think either of us really knows what it is. Her breath smells of cigarettes and wine.

< 15 >

We all drink hot sweet tea in an Arab café halfway down the hill, the owner insisting that Tom and I play backgammon with him. We teach him the backgammon chant that we yell as we throw the dice back in the ghetto, "Big doubles!" When he has mastered the chant and has soundly beaten both of us, he rips up the bill laughing loudly through his thick black moustache. As we walk out into the dawn the morning breeze is just beginning to kick up the yellow dust. It flicks it over the shop fronts and parked cars like icing sugar. At the bottom of the long hill, where the main road runs by like some dark river, there is a small park. It is surrounded by a high fence and fronted with a wide arched gate. It is locked; Tom rattles it angrily then starts to climb. The rest of the group, oblivious, walk on to meet up with the bus. I quickly follow Tom and in seconds we are both stood knee high in the thorny rose bushes, laughing. Wading to the centre of the garden, we find a patch of dry grass and sit down. I can hear the faint chatter of the group still walking slowly away towards the rising sun, crimson on the horizon. Its light is seeping between the branches of the eucalyptus trees and I can smell the perfumed leaves on the cool air. Hanging pendulously above us is a beautiful rose, its flowers dark red and just tantalisingly half open. Tom says that we should take one each for the girls and before I can reply he has leapt ferociously on the plant. I join him, twisting the wiry stems till the tight buds are released and our fingers are raw and stained green. We clamber gecko-like back over the thick iron railings and catch up with the group. I pass my rose to Steffi and Tom hands his to Hanni, chuckling as we realise that they are crawling with green fly. They take the flowers gratefully, gracefully, like athletes at a medal ceremony. Steffi smiles at me and climbs quietly, wearily onto the bus.

It's Christmas day and without lifting my head from the pillow I can see the weak shaft of light that has cut its way through the crack in my door and into my room. In it are a million flecks of dust sparkling like bubbles in champagne, rising in the thermals and bursting in the hushed darkness. I am still half asleep, aware of my breathing although separate from its hissing rise and fall. Across the room I can see my work clothes heaped and blue on the back of the wooden chair. I won't need them today. Eyes closed and lead-heavy, feet exposed at the end of the short bunk, I curl into a ball cupping my hands between my warm legs. It makes me feel safe.

< 16 >

Tom wakes later and we wish each other a happy Christmas. Sitting up in bed we look like an old married couple as we eat dried apricots wrapped around warm blocks of milk chocolate.
We spend the day in Jerusalem. First visiting the Garden of Gethsemane then walking the Stations of the Cross ending up in the beautiful church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tom has a fit of giggles when the silence and solemnity of the place gets too much for him. We have to leave the church quickly for fear of being accosted by one of the priests.
It is a beautiful day outside. The skies are clear and blue and it's a day which I never forget.

During the next few weeks there is a perceptible change of atmosphere on the kibbutz. Down in the bananas, Motti has taken to drinking his morning coffee alone and the friendly banter amongst the crew has subsided a little. There is talk in the papers of a Palestinian uprising and the road blocks and recent police presence around Naharia all seem to confirm the stories. Last week I watched a small group of elderly women clearing out one of the air-raid shelters. They had laid out the dusty gas masks on the grass in small bundles and were struggling into the shelter with large plastic packs of bottled water.
There is a rumour going round that there are no gas masks for volunteers but when I ask Motti if this is true, he laughs so loud that even Egal grins softly. It is the first time I have seen Motti smile since last week when I complained about the freezing dew on the banana leaves. "Blake my friend, I never promised you a rose garden, eh?" Then he had slapped me on the back and turned back toward the tractor, cigarette in hand.

Then it happens; later that month, after a frugal supper of vegetables and cottage cheese, I go to bed early only to be woken hours later. It is black, moonless. So dark in fact, that I'm unable to see my hand in front of my face. I'm aware however that something has woken me, aware that there is someone else in the room. I can feel a presence, a band of heat that one would expect from the bar of an electric fire. Then without warning there is a silent explosion of light, as intense and as blinding as a flash bulb. The mesh mosquito netting at the window scatters the white light across the walls of the room; it's chequered like graph paper. As my eyes adjust I can make out a figure. Steffi is standing in the centre of the room. She is barefoot, frozen on the cold tiles. All the while I'm expecting the light to suddenly vanish so I find myself studying the room, memorising the location of all objects in readiness to be plunged back into vulnerable blindness. It doesn't happen. Instead the light begins to shift slowly and the shadows start to move around the room. I'm still waking, disorientated, confused, and then there is a cold hand on my shoulder and an earnest voice, "Blake, wake up, there's fighting down in the valley."

< 17 >

Almost immediately I hear a soft "phut phut phut" from across the valley. The sound of a moped misfiring. I know what it is immediately: gunfire. Outside in the ghetto others are appearing from their doorways; Tom has moved gingerly out onto the road to get a better view. More gunfire now; it's rapid, getting louder as I clamber shakily onto the wooden pallets stacked up against my hut. From the roof I can see clearly into the valley below. The scene is incredible. High in the night sky is a star so brilliant that it has lit up the countryside as far as the eye can see. The light is hanging, perhaps falling slowly: a flare? It is so beautifully white that it has drained the landscape of any colour. The view is monochromatic, a moonscape, and the light is so powerful that it has penetrated into every crevice, every hollow in the countryside. There is shouting but it's too far away to be intelligible. Leaning over the edge of the thin roof I reach down and pull up Steffi who is still struggling vainly on the pallets. We sit down now and watch the scene together. The action is some miles away and we are in no immediate danger, but it nonetheless feels exciting. It reminds me of a black and white photograph I once saw in a school history book about the American Civil War. It showed a family perched on a grassy hillside picnicking, whilst below in the valley a bloody battle raged between the forces of the North and South. At the time something about it profoundly shocked me. And there is no doubt that there is something shocking, but at the same time slightly titillating about this scene, the uncomfortable mixture of danger and security.
The "star" is lower in the sky now and its light, although bright, is waning just slightly, but the voices seem to be louder, more intense. I wonder if she is thinking the same thing. This "star", radiant, alluring in the night sky over towards Bethlehem. It feels as if there is two thousand years of history spread out there in front of us.
Then, because it feels like a film and for no other reason, I lean forward and kiss the nape of her neck. It is perfumed and warm. For a split second I feel like a child again, driven by the same impulse that makes one reach out for the electric fence on a country ramble, just to see. She responds by rolling back gently into my arms and for a minute we sit in silence as the flare dips softly into the trees on the far side of the valley and then there is darkness.

< 18 >

The incident makes all the morning papers. A Palestinian attack on an Israeli home in Naharia. They came in from the Lebanon by boat and have left a family devastated, a boy motherless, a husband alone with his grief. By the evening there is the inevitable retaliation. The Israeli army have bulldozed a row of whitewashed homes down one dusty street in Gaza. Helicopter gun ships have taken out the car of a Hamas leader. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye… God knows who they killed; God knows if they cared, it's just a mess. There is no right and wrong anymore it seems, just an exponential anger.
Strangely, however, what stays in my mind even more clearly about that winter is my visit weeks later to Steffi's old room. She has since departed, returned to Denmark and the nursing career she always talked of. Behind her bed and above her thin pillow, pinned to the wall, is the rose I gave her that night in Bethlehem. It is dried and dark, like some Chinese herbal remedy, and something about it makes me feel empty.

It's raining. I can hear it rattling on the roof like tin tacks. Outside on the veranda I lace my work boots and kick the stanchion, loosening the dried mud from their treads. There is a low cold mist and the rainwater is beginning to run down the walls of the hut, collecting in puddles and running rivulets over the dusty earth. I'm leaving in a week so I'm trying to savour these moments. I breathe in deeply and the air smells of vegetation.
Eddie left last month, disappeared one night taking with him the wallets of several volunteers, a camera, and Tom's twelve-string guitar. I don't think anyone was surprised and something about it even amuses me. I wonder if I'll ever see him again? But Tom is staying on, he's found a nice Jewish girl and it all looks hunky-dory. I'll miss them both.
Sometimes in my quieter moments I find myself wishing I could stay here, wishing I belonged. I'm jealous; the Jews have an identity, they belong and they are something and I, I kind of feel a little lost sometimes, a little aimless. But I know it's not easy, only last week the Palestinians attacked again, blew up a night club in Tel Aviv. The kids' phones were ringing as they cleared up the bodies. Jesus Christ, I've queued outside those clubs

[ریپورتر]

The Metro

[IMG]file:///D:/stories/New%20Folder/story-metro_files/70metro.gif[/IMG]The discovery of a body in the Paris Metro early one morning was not particularly unusual. That it was headless sent a frisson through the sixth arrondissement, but the incident went unnoticed outside Paris.
Yet there was clearly something strange about the case. It was hardly as though the body had been decapitated to frustrate identification, for it was fully clothed and none of the owner's personal effects had been removed, save of course for his head. The Paris police soon tied up the contents of the dead man's wallet with forensic evidence from the body. Added to that, Madame Charente, the dead man's wife, could positively identify the body in the most intimate ways. (She had already reported her husband as missing.)
A few men were despatched to poke around in the warm, dark tunnels on either side of Odéon station, where the body had been found. Above ground another search was made, equally fruitlessly, and to Inspector Dutruelle it looked as though the case would linger on unsolved.
Two weeks later, four kilometres away in the west, a headless body was found at Courcelles station, again in the tunnel not far from the platform. As in the earlier case, the cause of death was apparently the severing of the head, which appeared to have been done with some precision. Again, the body was fully clothed and easily identified, and nothing but the head had apparently been removed.
"What can I tell these blessed reporters?" Inspector Dutruelle said as he handed his wife the two sticks of bread he usually bought on the way home. "They want answers for everything. And it's not just the papers now, the politicians are getting worried too. I'm reporting to the Préfet on this one."
"If there were instant answers for everything, mon petit chou, they'd have no need of you," said Madame Dutruelle. "And where would they be without you? Who cleared up that terrible Clichy case last year, and the acid bath at Reuilly Diderot?"
The little inspecteur divisionnaire-chef pulled in his stomach, puffed out his chest and rose to his full height. A smile spread across his round face. In his smart dark suit and gold-rimmed glasses you could have taken him for a provincial bank manager rather than one of Paris's most successful policemen.
"Just think," he said wryly, "they were actually about to close the file on Dr Gomes before I took charge of the investigation."
"They're fools, all of them."
"All the same, my dear, I don't know where to go on this one. There're no leads. There's no apparent motive. And it's a bizarre pattern. Assuming, of course, it is a pattern. We can't be sure of that until there's been another."
Inspector Dutruelle did not have long to wait for his pattern to emerge. A telephone call at half past five the next morning dragged him from his bed.
"It's another one, sir," said the voice at the other end.
"Another what?"
"It's identical. Another headless corpse, just like the others - male, middle-aged, white."
"Where?" asked Inspector Dutruelle fumbling for a cigarette.
"Château Rouge."
"In the Metro?"
"Yes sir, just inside the tunnel. In the anti-suicide well between the tracks."
"Close the line - if you haven't already. I'll be with you soon. And don't move it, d'you hear?"
Inspector Dutruelle replaced the receiver with a sigh as his wife padded into the room.
"I hate these early morning cases," he muttered. He lit his cigarette.
"Have a coffee before you go. Another dead body will keep."
"But we've closed the line. And it's the other side of town, my dear. North Paris."
"All the same."
He sat down heavily and watched his wife sullenly as she made the coffee. Madame Dutruelle was a simple woman of forty-six whose long, thin-lipped face was framed by stern grey hair. Her strong, practical hands were country hands, and she had never got used to city life. She lived for the day when she and her husband would retire to their home village in Les Pyrenées. Inspector Dutruelle sighed to himself again. Poor Agnes. She tried so hard to please him. How could she know that he longed to be free of her? How could she possibly know of Vololona, the young Malagasy he had met while on the Clichy case? For him it had been love at first sight.
"And for me too, my darling," Vololona had been quick to agree, her large brown eyes welling with tears as they gazed at him through the smoke of the Chatte et Lapin where she worked, "a veritable coup de foudre." She spoke French well, with a Malagasy accent and huskiness that left you with a sense of mystery and promise. Inspector Dutruelle was a happy man; but he was careful to tell no-one except Monsieur Chébaut, his closest friend, about the source of his happiness.
"I've never felt like this before, Pierre. I'm captivated by her," he said one evening when he took Monsieur Chébaut to see Vololona dancing.
It was a rare experience, even for the jaded Monsieur Chébaut. In the frantic coloured spotlights of the Chatte et Lapin Vololona danced solo and in her vitality you sensed the wildness of Madagascar. Her black limbs lashed the air to the music, which was raw and sensual.
"You know, Pierre, in thirty years of marriage I was never unfaithful. Well, you know that already. There was always my work, and the children, and I was happy enough at home. It never occured to me to look at another woman. But something happened when I met Vololona. She showed me how to live. She showed me what real ecstasy is. Look at her, Pierre. Isn't she the most exquisite thing you ever saw? And she adores me. She's crazy about me. But why, I ask you? What can she see in me - three times her age, pot-bellied, bald . . . married?"
Inspector Dutruelle leaned back in his chair and swung around to look at the other customers applauding Vololona from the shadows. He smiled proudly to himself. He knew exactly what was on their minds. Life was strange, he thought, and you could never tell. Some of them were young men, tall and handsome and virile, yet none of them knew Vololona as he knew her.
Monsieur Chébaut finished his whisky.
"I can see," he said, "that a man in your position might have certain attractions for an immigrant without papers working in one of the more dangerous quarters of Paris." Monsieur Chébaut was a lawyer.
"You're a cynic, Pierre."
"And after thirty years in the force you're not?"
"Personally, I believe her when she says she loves me. I just don't know why. Another whisky?"
"Well, one thing's for sure, Régis, it can't go on like that. One way or another things'll come to a head. But I must agree, she's exquisite all right. Like an exquisite Venus fly-trap. And at the germane moment, you know, those soft, succulent petals will close around you like a vice."
The normally placid Inspector was piqued by his friend's unreasonable attitude.
"How can you say that?" he snapped. "When you haven't even spoken to her."
"But all women are the same, Régis. Don't you know that? You should be a lawyer, then you'd know it. They can't help it, they're built that way. Believe me, it can't go on without something happening."
Inspector Dutruelle glowered at his old schoolfriend and said nothing. Monsieur Chébaut could see he had touched a raw nerve. He grinned amicably and leaned across to slap his friend playfully on the shoulder.
"Look Régis, all I'm saying is, be careful, you haven't got my experience."
Of course, that was true. When it came to women few men had Monsieur Chébaut's experience. Or his luck, for that matter. He was one of those people who go through life insulated from difficulties. He crossed roads without looking. He did not hurry for trains. He never reconciled bank accounts. Tall, slim, with boyish good looks and thick, black, wavy hair, he was the antithesis of Inspector Dutruelle.
"Look, you've got two women involved, Régis," Monsieur Chébaut continued, "and women aren't like us. Agnes isn't stupid. She must know something's going on."
"She hasn't said anything," said the Inspector brusquely. He lit another Gauloise.
"Of course she hasn't. She's cleverer than you are. She intends to keep you."
"Mind you," said Inspector Dutruelle grudgingly, "she has had some odd dreams recently - so she says. About me and another woman. But anyway, she just laughs and says she can't believe it."
"But Régis, you must know that what we say and what we think are seldom the same."
"Sometimes I wonder if I ought to tell her something, if only out of decency."
Monsieur Chébaut nearly choked on the fresh whisky he had just put to his lips.
"No," he cried with a passion that surprised the Inspector, "never, you must never tell her. Écoute Régis, even if she did mention it, you must deny everything. Even if she caught the two of you in the act, you must deny it. You can only tell a woman there's another when you've definitively made up your mind to leave her, and even then it may not be safe."
"So much for logic."
"It's no use looking for logic in women, Régis. I told you, they're not like men. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that they're not even the same species as men. Men and women aren't like dog and bitch, they're more like dog and cat. C'est bizarre, non? In any case, I do know you can't keep two women on the go without something happening. I don't know what, but something."
Now the European press had picked the story up and the little Inspector did not know how to deal with the international reporters who hung around like flies outside the old stone walls of the Préfecture de police. Their stories focussed on the bizarre nature of the killings, and the idea that there were three severed heads somewhere in Paris particularly excited them. They wanted constantly to know more. So of course did Inspector Dutruelle.
"I assure you, gentlemen," he told a press conference, "we are at least as anxious as you to recover the missing parts. We are doing everything possible. You can tell your readers that wherever they are, we'll find them."
"Can we have photographs of the victims for our readers?" asked one of the foreign reporters.
"So as we know which heads we're looking for," added a journalist from London.
It was a joke that was not shared by the people of Paris. Suddenly the normally carnival atmosphere of the Metro had evaporated. Buskers no longer worked the coaches between stations. Puppeteers and jugglers no longer entertained passengers with impromptu performances. Even the beggars, who habitually hung around the crowded stations or made impassioned speeches in the carriages, had gone. And the few passengers who remained sat more long-faced than ever, or walked more hastily down the long corridors between platforms.
Inspector Dutruelle despaired of ever clearing the case up. His mind, already excited over Vololona, was now in a turmoil. Vololona had suddenly, and tearfully, announced that she was pregnant. Then, having accepted his financial assistance to terminate the pregnancy - but refusing his offer to take her to the clinic - she told him one day on the telephone: "I thought you were going to ask me to marry you." Inspector Dutruelle was stunned.
"But you know I'm married, ma chérie," he said.
"I thought you'd leave Agnes," she replied. "I wanted to be with you. I wanted to share everything with you . . . my child . . . my life . . . my bed." Inspector Dutruelle could hear her sobbing.
"But darling, we can still see each other."
"No, it's too painful. I love you too much."
Inspector Dutruelle could not concentrate on his work at all. Day and night his thoughts were on Vololona; he longed to be with her. If only Agnes would leave him. And if only Vololona would be satisfied with what he gave her already - the dinners, the presents, the apartment. Why did women have to possess you? It seemed that the more you gave them the more they took, until there was nothing left to give but yourself. Perhaps Pierre was right after all, when you thought about it.
The investigation into the Metro murders was proceeding dismally. Inspector Dutruelle had no suspect, no leads, no motive. His superiors complained about his lack of progress and the press ridiculed him without pity. "It appears," commented France-Soir, "that the only thing Inspector Dutruelle can tell us with certainty is that with each fresh atrocity the Metro station name grows longer." The detectives under him could not understand what had happened to their normally astute Inspector, and they felt leaderless and demoralised. It was left to the security police of the Metro to point out one rather obvious fact: that the three stations where bodies had been found had one thing in common - their lines intersected at Metro Barbes Rochechouart, and it seemed that something might be learned by taking the Metro between them.
Inspector Dutruelle did not like public transport, and he especially did not like the Metro. It was cramped, smelly and claustrophobic at the best of times, and in the summer it was hot. You stood on the very edge of the platform just to feel the breeze as the blue and white trains pulled into the station. It was years since the Inspector had used the Metro.
"I can't take much more of this, Marc" he said to the young Detective Constable who was travelling with him, "it's too hot. We'll get off at the next stop."
"That's Barbes Rochechouart, sir. We can change there."
"No, Marc. We can get out there. Someone else can take a sauna, I've had enough. Anyway, we need to have a look around." Inspector Dutruelle wiped his brow. He sounded irritable. "God knows what it's like normally," he added.
When the train pulled in they took the exit for Boulevard de Rochechouart.
"At least we can get through now," said the Detective Constable as they walked up the passage towards the escalator.
"How d'you mean?" asked Inspector Dutruelle.
"Well, normally this station's packed - beggars, passengers, buskers, hawkers, plus all their tables and stalls. It's like a damn great fair and market rolled into one. You can get anything here, from Eiffel Towers to cabbages and potatoes - not to mention a spot of cannabis or heroin."
"Oh, yes," said Inspector Dutruelle, vaguely. "I remember." He passed a handkerchief across his brow again.
At the turnstyles a man was handing out publicity cards and he thrust one into Inspector Dutruelle's hand. Glancing down at it and squinting in the bright sunlight, the Inspector read aloud: "'Professor Dhiakobli, Grand Médium Voyant can help you succeed rapidly in all areas of life . . .'"
He broke off in mid-sentence with a snort.
"What a lot of mumbo-jumbo! Headless chickens and voodoo magic."
"It may be mumbo-jumbo to you, sir," said the Detective Constable with a laugh, "but round here they take that sort of thing seriously. And not only round here - after all, we use some of these techniques in the police, don't we?"
"Oh really? Such as?"
"Well, graphology for a start - you can hardly call basing a murder case on the size of someone's handwriting scientific, can you sir? Or what about astrology - employing people on the basis of the stars? Or numerology."
"Yes, Marc," said Inspector Dutruelle, pushing the card into his top pocket, "maybe you're right, and maybe when you're older you won't be so sure. Now get on the blower and call the car."
The hot July turned to hotter and more humid August. No more bodies were found in the sweltering tunnels of the Metro, and the media, bored with the lack of developments, left Inspector Dutruelle to his original obscurity. Paris, deserted by its citizens in the yearly exodus to the coast, was tolerable only to the tourists with backpacks who flocked to the cheap hotels and began again to crowd the Metro. Then, in September, the Parisiens came back and life returned to normal.
But Inspector Dutruelle's passion for Vololona did not cool with the season. Vololona had at last agreed to see him, occasionally; but she always managed (with tears in her eyes) to deflect his more amorous advances. For Inspector Dutruelle it was beneath him to observe that he continued to pay the rent on her apartment, but he was growing increasingly frustrated. The notion that she had another lover obsessed him, and in the evenings he took to prowling the broad Boulevard de Clichy between her apartment and the Chatte et Lapin. Sometimes he would stand for hours watching her door, as locals strolled past with their dogs or sat on the benches under the plane trees. Now, denied the one thing here he wanted, the scene filled him with dismay. Money and music were in the air. Lovers sipped coffee in the open and watched the whores in their doorways. Pigeons fluttered as girls in tight mini-skirts hurried to work. Tourists with their Deutschmarks arrived by the busload and the touts in dark glasses worked hard to coax them into the expensive *** shows and neon-lit video clubs. Somewhere deep below ran the Metro; but Inspector Dutruelle had no more interest in that. His superiors had given up hope of solving the Metro murders and had moved him on to other things. Sometimes he would stay all night, leaving to the tinkle of broken glass as workmen swept up after the night's revelries. Occasionally he would see Vololona leave her apartment to buy cigarettes, but he never once saw her on the arm of another man, or saw a male visitor take the lift to the seventh floor.
One night, late in October, he returned from the Boulevard de Clichy just after midnight. Madame Dutruelle, having been told that her husband was working on a case, and perhaps believing it, was already asleep. Had she been awake she would surely have been surprised to see him throw his jacket over a chair, for Inspector Dutruelle had always been meticulous with his clothes, the sort of man who irons his shoelaces. But the jacket missed and dropped to the floor. Muttering to himself, the Inspector bent and picked it up, and as he did so something fell from the top pocket. He gazed at it blankly for a moment. Then he realised it was the card he had been given at the metro station, a little the worse for having been once or twice to the cleaners, but still legible. He picked it up and slowly started to read:

PROFESSOR DHIAKOBLI
Grand Médium Voyant can help you succeed rapidly in all areas of life: luck, love, marriage, attraction of clients, examinations, ***ual potency. If you desire to make another love you or if your loved one has left with another, this is his domain, you will be loved and your partner will return. Prof. Dhiakobli will come behind you like a dog. He will create between you a perfect rapport on the basis of love. All problems resolved, even desperate cases. Every day from 9am to 9pm. Payment after results.
13b, rue Beldamme, 75018 Paris
staircase B, 6th floor, door on left
Metro: Barbes Rochechouart

Inspector Dutruelle stood in his socks and braces reading the card over and over again. "All problems resolved . . ." It was preposterous. And yet, it was tempting. What harm could there be in a little hocus pocus when everything else had failed? After all, everyone knew that even the police used clairvoyants when they were really up against it.
Rue Beldamme was a backstreet of tenement buildings in Paris's eighteenth arrondissement, an area popular with immigrants from francophone Africa. It lay close to the busy crossroads straddled by Metro Barbes Rochechouart. Inspector Dutruelle parked in the next street and walked the rest of the way, cursing because he had not brought his umbrella. The door to number 13b was swinging in the wind, its dark paint peeling badly. He stepped through into a narrow courtyard and found his way to the sixth-floor door on which a brass plaque read: "Professor Dhiakobli Spécialiste des travaux occultes Please ring". He stood there, breathing heavily from the stairs, and before he could press the bell the door opened and a man appeared.
"Please enter, my dear sir," said the man with an elegant wave of the hand and exaggerated courtesy. "I am Dhiakobli. And I have the honour to meet . . . ?"
As Inspector Dutruelle had imagined, Professor Dhiakobli was black. He had a short yet commanding figure, and was dressed in a well tailored grey suit. A large, silk handkerchief fell from his top pocket.
"For the moment," said Inspector Dutruelle, "my name is hardly important. I've only come in response to your advertisement."
"Monsieur has perhaps some small problem with which I can help? A minor indiscretion? Please be seated, sir, and let us talk about the matter."
Inspector Dutruelle handed his coat and gloves to the Professor and sat in the large, well upholstered chair to which he had been directed. Professor Dhiakobli himself settled behind a large mahogany desk, on top of which a chihuahua hardly bigger than a mouse was lounging, its wide, moist eyes gazing disdainfully at the newcomer.
"Ah, I see that Zeus approves of you," said the Professor, stroking the tiny dog with the tips of his manicured fingers, his own unblinking eyes also fixed on Inspector Dutruelle. "Poor Zeus, mon petit papillon, he is devoted to me, but he must remain here whenever I leave France. And you are fortunate, monsieur. It is only now that I return from Côte d'Ivoire. It is my country you know, I return there for a few months each summer. Paris in summer is so disagreeable, don't you agree?"
Professor Dhiakobli glittered with success. The frames of his glasses, the heavy bracelet on his right wrist and the watch on his left, the gem-studded rings on his fingers - all were of gold. From his manner and cultured French accent it was evident that he was an educated man. Around him the large room was like a shrine. Heavy curtains excluded the daylight (the only illumination was a small brass desklamp) and the dark, red walls were festooned with spears, costumes, photographs and other African memorabilia. There was a sweet smell in the air, and in one corner of the room the feathers of a ceremonial African headgear lay draped inappropriately over an enormous American refrigerator. You could not help being struck by the incongruity of this bizarre scene in the roughest quarter of Paris.
"As I say," began Inspector Dutruelle, ignoring the Professor's question, "I saw your card and I wondered just how you work."
"And may one enquire as to monsieur's little difficulty?"
Inspector Dutruelle cleared his throat and tried to adopt as nonchalant an air as he could.
"Well," - he coughed again - "first of all, I wondered what sort of things you can help people with."
The Professor's eyebrows rose.
"Anything," he said slowly, his smile revealing a set of large white teeth that shone brilliantly in the dimness against his black skin. "My dear sir, anything at all."
"And then, I wondered, how do you operate? That's to say, what exactly do you do . . . and how do you charge?"
"Ah monsieur, let us not talk of money. First I must learn just how I can help you. And for that a consultation is in order."
Inspector Dutruelle shifted in his seat.
"And what would a consultation involve? What does it . . . cost?"
Professor Dhiakobli wrung his hands and shrugged amicably.
"Mon cher monsieur, I do understand how distasteful it is to you to discuss so vulgar a matter as money. I too recoil at the mere thought of it. It has been my mission in life to help those who have suffered misfortune. And if some donate a small token of their gratitude, who am I to refuse their offering? They pay according to their means, to assist those who have little to offer. But for a preliminary consultation, monsieur, a nominal sum, as a mark of good faith, is usually in order. For a gentleman of your obvious standing, a trifle, a mere two hundred francs. And let me assure you, monsieur, of my absolute discretion. Nothing you may choose to tell me will go beyond these walls." He paused. Then he threw out his hands and added with a grin: "They have the sanctity of the confessional."
"I'm glad to hear it," said the Inspector.
"But monsieur still has the advantage of me . . ." continued Professor Dhiakobli.
Inspector Dutruelle decided that he had nothing to lose by talking. He adopted the name of Monsieur Mazodier, a Parisien wine merchant, and began to tell the Professor of the dilemma that was tearing at his soul. He told him of the young Malagasy girl he had met while entertaining clients; of their instant and passionate love for one another; of her sudden irrational refusal any longer to give herself to him; and of the wife he now knew he should never have married but whom he had not the heart to leave. Monsieur Mazodier was at his wits' end and now even his business was suffering. He feared that if he did not find a resolution to his problem he might do something that he or others would regret. The Professor listened intently, asking appropriate questions at appropriate moments. Finally Inspector Dutruelle said: "Well, Professor Dhiakobli, I think that's all I can tell you. I don't think I can tell you any more. From what I have told you, do you believe you can help me?"
For a long time there was silence. The Professor appeared to be in another world. He stared at Inspector Dutruelle, but seemed to be looking through him.
"My dear Monsieur Mazodier," he said at last, very slowly, almost mechanically, "the story you have told me is most poignant. Each of us has a hidden corner in his life, a jardin secret. Yet it is rare indeed for men to come to me with problems such as yours. Perhaps it is natural that most of my lovelorn clients should be women. At the mercy of their complex physical structure, is it any wonder that women are such emotional creatures? I help them find their lost ones, their partners of many years, to recreate again the rapport of their youth. You will understand that it is not easy. But this is my work. My domain."
"So you can't help me?" said Inspector Dutruelle, adding despondently: "Perhaps what I really need is a head-shrink."
The Professor gave a start. Again, for a long time he did not answer. Then his teeth flashed in the dimness.
"Écoutez monsieur, this is my work, my domain," he repeated. "Certainly I can help you. But you must understand that it will not be easy. It calls for a special ceremony. In the first place, you are married, and I shall be required to work my influence on not one but two women. In the second, we are both men of the world, monsieur, and you will not be offended if I remark upon the extreme disparity in your ages. And finally, it is clear to me that this young girl has chained your heart with her magic. You know, the magic of Madagascar is very strong. No, monsieur, it will not be easy. Enduring love cannot be bought with money alone. Sometimes . . ." He hesitated and looked Inspector Dutruelle straight in the eye, his own eyes suddenly cold and vacant. "Sometimes," he said, "we must make sacrifices."
"What sort of sacrifices?" asked Inspector Dutruelle dully.
"Oh, my dear sir, you must leave that to me. But one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs." His cold eyes remained fixed on the Inspector and he spoke in a monotone without pausing for breath. "You must not concern yourself with technicalities, monsieur. Your mind must be fixed on the future, on the life you have dreamed of. You must envisage your wife - happy in the arms of another. You must picture the fragile young child you so yearn for . . . secure in your arms . . . sharing your life . . . your days . . . your nights. The perfect solution to all your problems. Is it not worth a considerable sum?"
"It certainly would be worth a lot . . ." Inspector Dutruelle muttered as the Professor's words came to life in his mind.
"Shall we say thirty thousand francs?"
"I'm sorry?" muttered the Inspector.
"Let's say fifteen thousand before and fifteen afterwards," the Professor went on as though his visitor had not spoken. "Do you see, monsieur, how confident I am of success?"
Inspector Dutruelle did not reply. He was confused. He had not expected the Professor to be so blunt, or to propose quite so generous a token. But it did not seem to matter. After all, what was thirty thousand francs to achieve what he craved so desperately? And, in any case, at worst it was only fifteen thousand.
The Professor's eyes were still fixed on Inspector Dutruelle.
"Of course, monsieur, I have faith in your gratitude. I know that you will not forget, in your delight, that what I have done, I can undo. And now, monsieur, you must not allow me to detain you further. We have much work to do. In eight days you will return with photographs and details of Madame Mazodier and the Malagasy. And with some little articles of clothing, something close to their thoughts, say a scarf or a hat. You can arrange this?"
Inspector Dutruelle nodded blankly.
"Excellent, monsieur. I must know them in every detail - if I am to have a spiritual tête-à-tête with each of them. So, in fifteen days, you will return for the ceremony. It will take place beyond those curtains, in the space reserved for the ancestral spirits. Nobody but I and my assistants may enter there, but nevertheless it is imperative that you be present on the day. It must be at dawn, and you must come without fail - the ceremony cannot be deferred. Can you manage six in the morning, shall we say Monday the sixteenth?"
Inspector Dutruelle did not sleep well on the night of the fifteenth of December. At four o'clock in the morning he got out of bed. Though his wife stirred she did not wake. He showered and dressed. His nerves were on edge as he fiddled around in the kitchen, boiling water for his coffee. He drank two cups, strong and black, but he looked helplessly at the croissants he had spread clumsily with jam. He lit a Gauloise and paced the room. Then he pulled the windows open and leaned on the railing, finishing his cigarette. Below him the courtyard was dark and silent, and above him the sky was black. But away in the east, through the open end of the court, a violet hue was creeping over Paris. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past five and time to fetch the car. It would seem strange, leaving at that time of the morning without an official car and driver. He wondered what the concierge would make of it all - she was bound to be polishing the brasses by the time he reached the ground floor. He gave a shiver and pushed the windows shut.
Then he put the keys of the Renault in his coat pocket and checked that he had everything. He looked into the bedroom. Gently, he drew the duvet back and looked at his wife as she slept, her arms clasped about her knees. He leaned over and touched his lips to her cheek. Then he closed the bedroom door silently behind him, switched the lights off in the living room and kitchen, and opened the front door. As he did so the telephone rang. It startled him and he cursed aloud. He closed the front door again and hurried to answer the phone so that his wife should not wake.
"Inspector Dutruelle?" said the voice at the other end.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Sorry to disturb you at this time of the morning, Monsieur l'Inspecteur. It's the Préfecture."
"Never mind the time," said Inspector Dutruelle with as much irritation as his whispering voice could convey. "I'm off duty today."
"Well, that's the point, Inspector. The Préfet's ordered us to call you specially. He appreciates you're not on duty, but he wants you anyway."
"It's quite impossible."
"I'm afraid he insists, sir."
"Why?"
"He insists you come on duty immediately, sir. We're sending a car round for you."
"Yes, yes, I understand, but why?"
"It's the Metro again, sir."
"The Metro?"
"Yes, sir. They've found another corpse on the line, decapitated again."
Inspector Dutruelle did not reply. He was cursing to himself. He was cursing the Préfet, the police, this homicidal maniac, his wife. Why today? Why ever today?
"Sir? Hello sir? The car'll be with you in five minutes."
"Yes, all right. I'll be ready in five minutes."
The big black Citroen was soon speeding away from Rue Dauphine and heading north across Pont Neuf. Inspector Dutruelle looked at the winter mists rising from the Seine. His dreams, it seemed, were evaporating just as surely.
"You'd better brief me on this as quick as you can," he said wearily to the Detective Sergeant he had found waiting for him in the car. "Where was the body found?"
"Barbes Rochechouart, sir."
A cold shiver passed through the Inspector.
"I presume it's the same as the others?" he asked.
"Well, in as much as there's nothing to go on, it's the same, sir. Otherwise it couldn't be more different. For a start, we've just heard they've found two of them now. And this time they're women. One white, in her forties, and one black. A young black girl - still in her teens, by the look of things."
But Inspector Dutruelle was not listening. He was staring blankly through the glass to his right, and as they turned at Place du Châtelet the empty streets were no more than a cold, grey blur to him. The car swung onto the broad Boulevard de Sébastopol and accelerated northwards to cover the three kilometres to Metro Barbes Rochechouart. It was the route he should have been taking in his own car.
Outside the station, now closed to passengers, people were standing around under the street lights with their collars up. Inspector Dutruelle got out of the car. He hesitated. He glanced towards Rue Beldamme (just a stone's throw away across the bleak Boulevard de Rochechouart) where the Professor would be waiting for him. He shrugged and went down the station steps.
Underground, on the number four line, there was an air of gloom. Both bodies lay where they had been spotted by the first train-drivers through that morning. Inspector Dutruelle looked impassively at the first one. It was the body of a middle-aged woman, quite unexceptional, coarse and wiry, like his wife.
"She's forty-seven, Monsieur l'Inspecteur," said somebody beside him. "French. Name of Madame Catherine Dubur. Not like the other one."
"The other one?" said the Inspector blankly.
"I told you in the car, sir," said the Detective Sergeant at his ear, "there's two of them."
"You'd better show me."
They strolled in their overcoats to the other end of the platform and went down the little steps that led to the track. A uniformed policeman pulled back the blanket that covered the second body, which lay on its back. Inspector Dutruelle stared dispassionately at the stiff, black limbs that stuck out awkwardly across the railway lines. Suddenly he shuddered in alarm. Even in the dim lights of the train that was pulled up beyond you could see the resemblance to Vololona.
"Identity?" he asked. He tried to control his voice.
"We don't know, sir - this is all we found," said a policeman, handing him a tattered greetings card. Inside, in large, green handwriting, were the words: "Happy Nineteenth Birthday, from Everyone in Antananarivo."
"D'you think she's Malagasy, sir?" asked the policeman. The Inspector shrugged his shoulders, then held out an open hand.
"Your torch, please," he said.
He played its beam over the body, up and down the long, slender legs, across the clothes. At least he did not recognise the clothes. Yet the body's size, its build, its colour, everything pointed to Vololona. He bent down and flashed the light onto the fingers of the left hand and laughed weakly to himself as he saw the tawdry rings that glinted back at him. He stood up in relief. That was certainly not Vololona. Yet it was uncanny how this body reminded him of her - and the other of Agnes, for that matter. Even the ages were the same.
He smoked as he stood staring at the headless corpse. He could not understand. Was the magic of Madagascar really so strong that now he saw Vololona everywhere? And what of Agnes? How would Professor Dhiakobli explain that? How could he explain it, when you came to think of it? When you came to think of it, he had explained very little. He had been happy enough to take the money, and free enough with his words - all those grandiose notions of mission and sacrifice and spiritual tête-à-têtes . . .
Inspector Dutruelle gasped.
"The devil," he muttered to himself. Suddenly he understood everything.
"The what, sir?" said somebody beside him.
"Never mind," he answered quietly, putting his hand to his breast pocket. His heart had started to pound with a sense of danger and his head suddenly ached with questions. He took out his cigarette case and lit another Gauloise. Through its curling blue smoke, back-lit by the lights of the train, the black limbs were splayed out in a grotesque dance, while beside him men's voices were thrumming in his ear. Why was there no time to think, to extricate himself from this nightmare? He cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid? He cursed his wife and Vololona. And Professor Dhiakobli. What madness had driven him to this? Then he cursed himself again, and turned abruptly to one of the men babbling at his side.
"What time is it?"
"Six-fifteen, sir."
For a moment, he hesitated. Then he called for the Detective Sergeant who was with the photographer at the other body.
"Écoute Guy, when he's got his pictures they can move the bodies and fix things up," he said. "Now get me the Préfet."
The Préfet was beside himself with rage at this further disturbance to his sleep, and he exploded with indignation when Inspector Dutruelle offered his resignation.
"Are you insane, man? You're in the middle of an investigation!"
"The investigation is over, Monsieur le Préfet."
"So, you have the killer at last!"
"In fifteen minutes, monsieur, in fifteen minutes."
"Then why in the name of God are you asking to be relieved from duty?"
"Monsieur le Préfet, my position is impossible. On this occasion it was I that paid the killer," he answered calmly as he took another cigarette from his silver cigarette case.

[ریپورتر]

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said--it the apparent heart that went with his request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher" --an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment --that of looking down within the tarn--had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy --a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eve, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence --an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved-in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit-an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued illness --indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister--his sole companion for long years--his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain --that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom

[ریپورتر]

A Haunted House

Virginia Woolf
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

[ریپورتر]

Wayne Harper
A Betting Man
I walked right past him and went up to the third floor. Outside the ward I put on my mask, a rectangle of blue cellulose which covered my face from under my chin to the bridge of my nose. My glasses immediately steamed up. I pushed open the heavily-sprung door and went through. I could hardly see. I walked tentatively down the blue corridor like a diver at the bottom of the ocean. Two or three patients were strolling around, bright-eyed and alert above their masks. These, by definition, were healthy patients, people in remission who were feeling reasonably well. The sick ones were all in their rooms, in their beds, tubed up to glass bottles and plastic bags and humming steel cabinets, not feeling well at all.
John wasn't in his room. He hadn't gone very far, though. A copy of Racing Results 1996 lay cracked open on the pillow, and the laptop on his bedside table had its lid up. The numerous Sicilian family who constantly surrounded the other patient in the room didn't know where John had gone, nor did the nurse in the office. I borrowed a sheet of paper and a pen and left a note on his bed. "Came to see you Friday one thirty p.m.," I wrote. "But you'd gone out (!?). I'll try again tomorrow. Bill."
Outside, I nearly walked past him again. He was sitting on a bench, reading a magazine, close to a sprinkler that was watering the grass and the rose bushes behind him. I hadn't recognised him on my way in partly because I hadn't been expecting to see him there. He was supposed to be in bed, respectably ill, not loafing around in the sunshine like some holiday-maker. I also hadn't noticed him because he'd become depersonalised with his featureless hospital pyjamas, standard-issue mask, and shiny hairless head. I'd seen the cancer patient, someone who was intimately involved with chemotherapy, but I hadn't seen my friend John. I simply hadn't recognised him.
"Hello," I said, sitting down next to him. "How are things?"
He looked up from his magazine. "Oh, hello. I wasn't expecting you. It's nice to see you."
"It's nice to see you, too." An occasional note of formality had crept into our relationship since he'd been ill. It was difficult to know what to do about it. "How are you feeling?" I asked.

< 2 >
"Great," he said, with enthusiasm. "Really good. I'm bloody weak, still, but compared to last week I feel like Tarzan. And it's such a beautiful day. Look at that sky! The next person who tells me he's depressed, I'll say, try spending two weeks in hospital with gallons of nauseating crap pouring through your arms, and then go outside on a sunny day. It's great just to sit on a bench. It's absolutely amazing just to be here, instead of feeling like shit warmed up."
I believed him. His sincerity made me feel banal and ungrateful. He was, for the moment, galvanised, plugged into a higher current of life, like someone on LSD, or someone in free-fall. He'd left someone like me, who'd just done the shopping and had to be at work in an hour, way behind, on another, duller planet.
"Um... aren't you getting wet?" I asked. I knew he was, because I was sitting next to him, and I was getting wet. We were in range of the sprinkler, and every few seconds it feathered us pleasantly with a fine spray.
"Yes," John said. "Nice, isn't it? This magazine's getting ****ed, though."
This was true. The magazine in his hands was slowly turning soggy. "What is it?" I asked.
"Last week's Economist. I wasn't really reading it anyway. Reactionary rag."
"Listen, the nurses don't know you're down here. Are you sure it's okay?"
"I asked a doctor," said John. "The nurses always say no to everything. They just want you lying quietly in bed, not causing any trouble. So I asked Doctor Roberta, and she said yes, so I was out here like a flash. Well, not exactly a flash. More like twenty minutes, the way I move along these days."
"Oho," I said, "Doctor Roberta now, is it? That's the pretty one, I presume. On first name terms now, are we?"
"Well, sort of," John said, modestly. "They're all very friendly, though."
"Come off it. She fancies you. You can see it a mile off."

< 3 >
John smiled. "She does seem to sort of like me."
"Oh yeah. And how often does she come around and examine you, then?"
"Not often enough. And they don't really do much of that sort of examining, anyway. It's all just one bloody long blood sample and counting the corpuscles, with me."
"Hard luck. She's nice, though, isn't she, your Doctor Roberta."
"She's gorgeous."
We were both smiling. It seemed normal, to be joking about women. Doctor Roberta, however, had been the one I'd instigated to talk to John about his chances of remaining fertile. One of the other doctors, a man, had said something about this in passing, in fractured English, and John hadn't understood it. I'd therefore taken it upon myself to follow Doctor Roberta out into the corridor the next time she'd passed through John's room, to ask her what the score was. She'd promptly marched back to the foot of John's bed and told him, with me translating, that he mustn't attempt to make a baby while he was undergoing therapy, but that there was a high probability that his fertility would return to normal within a couple of years. She took off her mask while she told him this, possibly so that he could appreciate her reassuring smile. But John had seemed bemused, even irritated. He didn't have any plans to have children, as far as I knew, but I'd thought that it might be one of those virility things, and that it might be nice for him to be told not to worry about it. But perhaps I 'd been guilty of thinking in terms of an inappropriate time scale. Perhaps John wanted to kick the problem inside him first, before thinking about the next generation. Or perhaps I, and Doctor Roberta, had offended against some private placatory rites by being over-optimistic. It was tempting fate, perhaps, to pretend that John was going through something that would return him to normality pretty soon, as if the long-term risks were similar to, say, having an appendix removed. Whatever he'd thought, he'd never raised the subject again, and nor had I.

< 4 >
"How about an ice-cream?" I suggested.
"Ace," said John. "Just right."
The bar was about two hundred yards away, down the central viale of the hospital. I would've been quite happy to fetch ice-creams for both of us, but John wanted to come with me. We sauntered along slowly. Some of the people in the bar stared at him. John seemed to be oblivious to this, but as we left with our Cornettos, he said, "They think I've got AIDS. And they think they're going to catch it from breathing the same air as me. Bastards."
I said nothing. I suspected that John might have broken a hospital rule by walking into the hospital bar in his full sick man's kit of pyjamas, mask and bald head, but I wasn't about to say so. I remembered that after my first visit to John in hospital I'd gone straight home, stripped off my clothes, thrown them into the washing-machine, and then taken a shower. I knew perfectly well that there was nothing infectious about the illnesses on John's ward, and that the masks were to protect the patients from the visitors and not vice-versa, but I was surprised at the strength of my instinctive need to clean myself. I protected myself from embarrassment by generalising. Here in the West we think we're rational and resistant to superstition and unexplained taboos, most of us, but this is perhaps only because we live rational, predictable, trouble-free lives, most of the time. We don't actually know how we'd react to the unknown, or disaster, or terror, or violence. Or how we'll react to illness and death, our own or other people's, until they happen.
We sat down on a different bench and ate our ice-creams. We talked about John's work on the laptop. He was using it to make a statistical analysis of all British horse-races over the previous few years in an attempt to find a set of common factors which would enable him to make a profit out of betting. This project was kept secret from everyone except his closest friends, partly because he didn't want other people stealing the idea, and partly because the concept tended to evoke scepticism.

< 5 >
In fact I was very sceptical myself, and I'd thought of a new objection. "The bookies must have done their own research into this sort of thing," I pointed out. "If they knew about any sort of winning formula, they'd just change the odds to compensate for it, wouldn't they?"
"Not if it wasn't costing them much money," John said. "If only a few people in the whole country were consistently making money out of them, they wouldn't give a shit, as long as it didn't affect their overall profits. They have to let people win, sometimes, but they don't care whether it's the same person winning because of a system, or different people winning out of sheer random luck. The secret is simply to win more often than you lose. And you need to have enough money to invest in the project to be able to ride out a losing period, knowing that you'll win in the long term. Which is where the computer comes in, because you could never work out the permutations just with paper and pencil. I have to check all possible sets of all possible variables, including stuff like weight and age of the jockey, weather conditions, track record of the horse, size of the crowd, absolutely everything I can get my hands on, and the computer has to crunch the numbers until it shows me that a certain set of variables tends to throw up a winner with something slightly more than random probability. And then you start investing your money."
"How much money?"
"A lot. There'd be no point in doing it unless the profit you make at the end of the day is worth all the work you put into it."
"And how long would you do it for?"
"Five years, minimum. That's several thousand races. You have to think in those terms, because the pattern probably wouldn't show over just a few hundred. It's a big project."
"And how exactly are you planning to finance this?"
"I'd sell my house. And I might set up a group of investors. If I could find the right sort of people to come in with me." He looked at me.

< 6 >
I shook my head. "You crazy bastard," I said. "You're not going to convince me to invest my life savings betting on horse races, in the certain knowledge that I'm going to lose at least two thousand times out of five thousand."
He laughed. "You'll look pretty stupid if I end up a millionaire, though."
"And if the pattern changes?" I objected. "If in the next five years it just happens to shake out differently from the last five, for no particular reason?"
John shrugged. "Of course, there's an element of risk. But then, that's true of everything. And anyway it keeps me busy while I'm stuck in a hospital bed."
We finished our ice-creams and wandered back towards John's ward. He was walking more and more slowly. I considered offering him my arm to hold on to, but British reserve and fear of giving offence won the day, as usual. The sprinklers outside the clinic had been switched off.
"It's absolutely the wrong time of day to water plants, you know," John said, sitting down on the damp bench. "When the sun's shining, I mean. The water droplets act as magnifying glasses and damage the leaves. They don't know how to do anything right, around here."
I looked at my watch. "I have to get to work," I said. "Do you want to go back up?"
"No. I like it here. Thanks for coming. I must be a depressing old fart to have to talk to, these days."
"Not at all," I said, becoming formal. I wanted to tell him how brave I thought he was and how much I wanted him to get better, but I wasn't sure it would sound right. I didn't want to sound patronising, or sentimental, or to draw his attention once more to his illness. And so I said nothing, and another chance to express admiration, or friendship, or something, was lost. "I'll come again tomorrow," I said. "Do you need anything?"
"No, thanks. I've got everything I need. Except a better bloody blood count."

< 7 >
I saw him again after that, several times, but never outside, in the sunshine. And towards the end I didn't see him at all, because he felt too ill, and he didn't want to see anyone except his girlfriend and his family, who came over from England in the last few days. The funeral was in England. I couldn't go.
John had been told about the risks involved in the therapy right at the start. A hundred to one, they'd told him. One person in a hundred reacted badly to the chemicals that they were going to put through him, and that person would die. As a betting man, he thought those were pretty good odds

[ریپورتر]

The Wicker Husband
Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl. She was short and dumpy, had one leg a bit shorter than the other, and her eyebrows met in the middle. The ugly girl gutted fish for a living, so her hands smelt funny and her dress was covered in scales. She had no mother or brother, no father, sister, or any friends. She lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of the village, and she never complained.
One by one, the village girls married the local lads, and up the path to the church they'd prance, smiling all the way. At the weddings, the ugly girl always stood at the back of the church, smelling slightly of brine. The village women gossiped about the ugly girl. They wondered what she did with the money she earnt. The ugly girl never bought a new frock, never made repairs to the house, and never drank in the village tavern.
Now, it so happened that outside the village, in a great damp swamp, lived an old basket-maker who was famed for the quality of his work. One day the old basket-maker heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, the ugly girl stood there. In her hand, she held six gold coins.
'I want you to make me a husband,' she said.
'Come back in a month,' he replied.
Well, the old basket-maker was greatly moved that the ugly girl had entrusted him with such an important task. He resolved to make her the best husband he could. He made the wicker husband broad of shoulder and long of leg, and all the other things women like. He made him strong of arm and elegant of neck, and his brows were wide and well-spaced. His hair was a fine dark brown, his eyes a greenish hazel.
When the day came, the ugly girl knocked on the basket-maker's door.
'He says today is too soon. He will be in the church tomorrow, at ten,' said the basket-maker. The ugly girl went away, and spent the day scraping scales from her dress.

< 2 >
Later that night, there was a knock on the door of the village tailor. When the tailor opened it, the wicker husband stood outside.
'Lend me a suit,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church naked.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the tailor, and ran out the back door.
The tailor's wife came out, wiping her hands. 'What's going on?' she said.
'Lend me a suit,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I cannot go to my wedding naked.'
The tailor's wife gave him a suit, and slammed the door in his face.
Next, there was a knock on the door of the village shoe-maker. When the shoe-maker opened it, the wicker husband stood there.
'Lend me some shoes,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church barefoot.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the shoe-maker, and he ran out the back door.
The shoe-maker's wife came out, her hands trembling.
'What do you want?' she said.
'Lend me some shoes,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to my wedding barefoot.'
The shoe-maker's wife gave him a pair of shoes, and slammed the door in his face. Next, the wicker husband went to the village inn.
'Give me a drink,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I wish to celebrate.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the inn-keeper and all his customers, and out they ran. The poor wicker husband went behind the bar, and poured himself a drink.
When the ugly girl got to church in the morning, she was mighty pleased to find her husband so handsome, and so well turned-out.

When the couple had enjoyed their first night of marriage, the wicker husband said to his wife: 'This bed is broken. Bring me a chisel: I will fix it.'

< 3 >
So like a good husband, he began to fix the bed. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she came back at the end of the day, the wicker husband looked at her, and said: 'I was made to be with you.'
When the couple had enjoyed their second night of marriage, the wicker husband said: 'This roof is leaky. Bring me a ladder: I will fix it.'
So, like a good husband, he climbed up and began to fix the thatch. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she returned in the evening, the wicker husband looked at his wife, and said: 'Without you, I should never have seen the sun on the water, or the clouds in the sky.'
When the couple had enjoyed their third night of marriage, the ugly girl got ready to out. 'The chimney needs cleaning,' she said, hopefully, 'And the fire could be laid...' But at this, the wicker husband - she was just beginning to learn his expressions - looked completely terrified. From this, the ugly girl came to understand that there are some things you cannot ask a man to do, even if he is very kind.
Over the weeks, the villagers began to notice a change in the ugly girl. If one of her legs was still shorter than the other, her hips moved with a swing that didn't please them. If she still smelt funny, she sang while she gutted the fish. She bought a new frock and wore flowers in her hair. Even her eyebrows no longer met in the middle: the wicker husband had pulled them out with his strong, withied fingers. When the villagers passed the ugly girl's house, they saw it had been painted anew, the windows sparkled, and the door no longer hung askew. You might think that all these changes pleased the villagers, but oh no. Instead, wives pointed out to husbands that their doors needed fixing, and why didn't they offer? The men retorted that maybe if their wives made an effort with new frocks and flowers in their hair, then maybe they'd feel like fixing the house, and everybody grumbled and cursed each other, but secretly, in their hearts, they blamed the ugly girl and her husband.

< 4 >
As to the ugly girl, she didn't notice all the jealousy. She was too busy growing accustomed to married life, and was finding that the advantages of a wicker husband outweighed his few shortcomings. The wicker husband didn't eat, and never complained that his dinner was late. He only drank water, the muddier the better. She was a little sad that she could not cook him dinner like an ordinary man, and watch him while he ate. In the cold nights, she hoped they would sit together close to the fire, but he preferred the darkness, far from the flames. The ugly girl got in the habit of calling across the room all the things she had to say to him. As winter turned to spring, and rain pelted down, the wicker husband became a little mouldy, and the ugly girl had to scrub him down with a brush and a bottle of vinegar. Spring turned to summer, and June was very dry. The wicker husband complained of stiffness in his joints, and spent the hottest hour of the day lying in the stream. The ugly girl took her fish-gutting, and sat on the bank, keeping him company.
Eventually the villagers were too ridden with curiosity to stand it any longer. There was a wedding in the village: the ugly girl and her husband were invited. At the wedding, there was music and dancing, and food and wine. As the musicians struck up, the wicker husband and the ugly girl went to dance. The villagers could not help staring: the wicker husband moved so fine. He lifted his dumpy wife like she was nought but a feather, and swung her round and round. He swayed and shimmered; he was elegant, he was graceful. As for the ugly girl: she was in heaven.
The women began to whisper behind their hands. Now, the blacksmith's wife was boldest, and she resolved to ask the wicker husband to dance. When the music paused she went towards the couple. The ugly girl was sitting in the wicker husband's lap, so he creaked a little. The blacksmith's wife was about to tap the wicker husband on the shoulder, but his arms were wrapped round the ugly girl.

< 5 >
'You are the only reason that I live and breathe,' the wicker husband said to his wife.
The blacksmith's wife heard what he said, and went off, sulking. The next day there were many frayed tempers in the village.
'You've got two left feet!' shouted the shoe-maker's wife at her husband.
'You never tell me anything nice!' yelled the blacksmith's wife.
'All you do is look at other women!' shouted the baker's wife, though how she knew was a mystery, as she'd done nothing but stare at the wicker husband all night. The husbands fled their homes and congregated in the tavern.
'T'aint right,' they muttered, 'T'isn't natural.'
'E's showing us up.'
'Painting doors.'
'Fixing thatch.'
'Murmuring sweet nothings.'
'Dancing!' muttered the blacksmith, and they all spat.
'He's not really a man,' muttered the baker. 'An abomination!'
'He don't eat.'
'He don't grumble.'
'He don't even fart,' added the tailor, gloomily.
The men shook their heads, and agreed that it couldn't go on.
Meanwhile the women congregated in each other's kitchens.
'It's not right,' they muttered. 'Why does she deserve him?'
'It's an enchantment,' they whispered. 'She bewitched him.'
'She'll be onto our husbands next, I expect,' said the baker's wife. 'We should be careful.'
'She needs to be brought down a peg or two.'
'Fancies that she's better than the rest of us, I reckon.'
'Flowers in her hair!!'
'Did you see her dancing?'
And they all agreed that it couldn't go on.
One day the wicker husband was on his way back from checking the fish-traps, when he was accosted by the baker.

< 6 >
'Hello,' said the baker. The wicker husband was a little surprised: the baker never bothered to speak to him. 'You made an impression the other night.'
'I did?' said the wicker husband.
'Oh yes,' continued the baker. 'The women are all aflutter. Don't you ever think - well...'
'What?' said the wicker husband, completely confused.
'Man like you,' said the baker. 'Could do well for himself. A lot of opportunities...' He leaned forward, so the wicker husband recoiled. The baker's breath smelt of dough, which he found unpleasant. 'Butcher's wife,' added the baker meaningfully. 'Very taken. I know for a fact that he's not at home. Gone to visit his brother in the city. Why don't you go round?'
'I can't,' said the wicker husband. 'My wife's waiting for me at home.' And he strode off, up the lane. The baker went home, annoyed.
Now the wicker husband, who was too trusting, thought less of this of this than he should, and did not warn his wife that trouble was brewing. About a week later, the ugly girl was picking berries in the hedgerow, when the tailor's wife sidled up. Her own basket was empty, which made the ugly girl suspicious.
'My dear!' cried the tailor's wife, fluttering her hands.
'What d'you want?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife wiped away a fake tear, and looked in both directions. 'My dear,' she whispered. 'I'm only here to warn you. Your husband - he's been seen with other women.'
'What other women?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife fluttered her hands. This wasn't going as she intended. 'My dear, you can't trust men. They're all the same. And you can't expect - a man like him, and a woman like you - frankly -'
The ugly girl was so angry that she hit the tailor's wife with her basket, and ran off, up the lane. The ugly girl went home, and - knowing more of cruelty than her husband did - thought on this too much and too long. But she did not want to upset her husband, so she said nothing.

< 7 >
The tailor's wife came home fuming, with scratches all over her face. That night, the wives and husbands of the village all agreed - for once - that something drastic had to be done.

A few days later the old basket-maker heard a knocking at his door. When he opened it, the villagers stood outside. Right on cue, the tailor's wife began to weep, pitifully.
'What's the matter?' said the old basket-maker.
'She's childless,' said the baker's wife, sniffing.
'Not a son,' said the tailor, sadly.
'Or a daughter.'
'No-one to comfort them in their old age,' added the butcher.
'It's breaking their hearts,' went on the baker.
'So we've come to ask -'
'If you'll make us a baby. Out of wicker.'
And they held out a bag of gold.
'Very well,' said the old basket-maker. 'Come back in a month.'
Well, one dusky day in autumn, the ugly girl was sitting by the fire, when there came a knock at the door. The wicker husband opened it. Outside, stood the villagers. The tailor's wife bore a bundle in her arms, and the bundle began to whimper.
'What's that?' said the ugly girl.
'This is all your fault,' hissed the butcher, pointing at the wicker husband.
'Look what you've done!' shouted the baker.
'It's an abomination,' sneered the inn-keeper. 'Not even human!'
The tailor pulled away the blanket. The ugly girl saw that the baby was made of wicker. It had the same shaped nose, the same green eyes that her husband did.
'Tell me it's not true!' she cried.
But the wicker husband said nothing. He just stared at the baby. He had never seen one of his own kind before, and now - his heart filled up with tenderness. When the ugly girl saw this on his face, a great cloud of bitterness came upon her. She sank to the floor, moaning.

< 8 >
'Filthy, foul, creature!' cried the tailor. 'I should burn it!' He seized the baby, and made to fling it into the blaze. At this, the wicker husband let out a yell. Forward he leapt.
The ugly girl let out a terrible cry. She took the lamp, and flung it straight at her husband. The lamp burst in shards of glass. Oil went everywhere. Flames began to lick at the wicker husband's chest, up his neck, into his face. He tried to beat at the flames, but his fingers grew oily, and burst into fire. Out he ran, shrieking, and plunged into the river.
'Well, that worked well,' said the butcher, in a satisfied manner.
The villagers did not spare a second glance for the ugly girl, but went home again to their dinners. On the way, the tailor's wife threw the wicker baby in the ditch. She stamped on its face. 'Ugh,' she said. 'Horrible thing.'
The next day the ugly girl wandered the highways, weeping, her face smeared in ashes.
'Have you seen my husband?' she asked passing travellers, but they saw madness in her eyes, and spurred their horses on. Dusk fell. Stumbling home, scarce knowing where she was, the ugly girl heard a sound in the ditch. Kneeling, she found the wicker baby. It wailed and thrashed, and held up its hands. The ugly girl saw in its face her husband's eyes, and her husband's nose. She coddled it to her chest and took it home.
Now, the old basket maker knew nothing of all this. One day, the old man took it into his head to see how his creations were faring. He walked into town, and knocked on the tailor's door. The wife answered.
'How is the baby?' he said.
'Oh that,' she said. 'It died.' And she shut the door in his face. The old basket-maker walked on, till he came to the ugly girl's place. The door was closed, the garden untended, and dirt smeared the windows. The old basket-maker knocked on the door. No-one answered, though he waited a very long time.

< 9 >
The old-basket maker went home, disheartened. He was walking the long dark road into the swamp, when he heard something in the rushes. At first he was afraid: he wrapped his scarf closer round his face. But the thing seemed to follow him. From time to time, it groaned.
'Who's there?' called the old man.
Out onto the roadway staggered the most broken and bedraggled, the most pathetic and pitiful thing. The old basket-maker stared at what was left of the wicker husband: his hands consumed by fire, his face equally gone. Dark pits of scorched wood marred his chest. Where he had burnt, he had started to rot.
'What have they done to my children?' cried the old basket-maker.
The wicker husband said nothing: he had lost his tongue.
The old basket-maker took the wicker husband home. As daylight came, the old basket-maker sat down to repair him. But as he worked, his heart grew hot with anger.
'I made you, but I failed you,' he said. 'I will not send you there again.'
Eventually, the wicker husband looked as good as new, though the smell of burning still clung. But as the days passed, a damp black mould began to grow on him. The old basket-maker pulled out the rotting withies and replaced them. But it seemed useless: the wicker husband rotted from the inside, outwards.
At last, the old basket-maker saw there was nothing else to be done. He took up his travelling cloak, set out at night, and passed through the village. He came to the ugly girl's house. In the garden, wreathed in filth, stood the ugly girl, cuddling a child. She was singing the saddest lullaby he had ever heard. The old basket-maker saw that the child was the one he'd made, and his heart softened a little. He stepped out of the shadows.
'Why do you keep the baby,' he said, 'when you cast your husband from home?'
The ugly girl cried out, to hear someone speak to her.

< 10 >
'It is all I have left of my husband,' she said at last. 'Though it is proof he betrayed me, I could not leave it in the ditch to die.'
'You are a fool,' he said. 'It was I that made the child. Your husband is innocent.'
At this, the ugly girl let out a cry, and ran towards the river. But old basket-maker caught her arm. 'Wait - I have something to show you,' he said.
The ugly girl walked behind him, through the swamp where the water sucked and burbled, carrying the baby. As the sun rose, she saw that its features were only those of the old basket-maker, who, like any maker, had passed down his face to his creations.
When they came to the dwelling, the ugly girl opened the door, and saw her husband, sitting in darkness.
'It cannot be you,' she said. 'You are dead. I know: I killed you myself.'
'I was made for you alone,' said the wicker husband, 'But you threw me away.'
The ugly girl let out a cry so loud, birds surfaced from the marches for miles around, and threw herself at her husband's feet.

A few days later, the villagers were surprised to see the old basket-maker standing outside the church.
'I have something to say,' he said. 'Soon I will retire. But first, I am making my masterwork - a woman made of wicker. If you want her, you can have her. But you must bring me a gift for my retirement. Whoever brings me the best gift can have the wicker woman.'
Then he turned round and went back to the swamp.
Behind him, the villagers began to whisper. Hadn't the wicker husband been tall and graceful? Hadn't he been a hard worker? Hadn't he been handsome, and eager to please his wife?
Next day, the entire village denied any interest in the wicker lady, but secretly began to plan. Men eyed up prize cows; women sneaked open jewellery boxes.

< 11 >
'That wicker husband worked like a slave, and never even ate,' said the shoe-maker's wife to her husband. 'Get me the wicker woman as a servant, I'll live like a lady, never lift a finger.'
'That wicker husband never quarrelled with anyone, never even raised his voice. Not like you, you old fishwife,' the inn-keeper said to his wife.
'That wicker husband never tired, and never had a headache,' said the butcher to the baker. 'Imagine...!'
'Lend me a shilling, cousin,' said the shoe-maker's wife. 'I need a new petticoat.'
'I can't,' lied the blacksmith's wife. 'I spent it on medicine. The child was very sick.'
'I need that back-rent you owe me,' said the butcher, who owned the tailor's house.
'Been a very bad season in the tailoring trade,' muttered the tailor. 'You'll get it soon.'
The butcher went into town, hired a lawyer, and got the tailor evicted from his house. The tailor and his wife had to go and live in the shoe-maker's shed.
'But what are you going to do with the empty house?' asked the butcher's wife.
'Nothing,' said the butcher, who thought the place would do admirably to keep a mistress. The butcher's wife and the tailor's wife had a fight in the market, and went home with black eyes. In the tavern, no-one spoke, but only eyed each other, suspiciously. The lawyer was still in town. Rumour had it that the tailor's wife was suing for divorce: the inn-keeper's wife had her husband arrested after she found the stairs had been greased. In short, the fields went uncut, the cows went unmilked, ovens uncleaned: the village was obsessed.
When the day came, the old basket-maker came to town, and sat on the churchyard wall. The villagers brought their gifts. First the tailor, who'd made a luxurious coat. Next the miller, bringing twelve sacks of grain. The baker made the most extravagant cake; the carpenter brought a table and chairs, the carter a good strong horse. The blacksmith's wife staggered up with a cheese the size of a millwheel. Her cousin, the tailor's wife, arrived with a bag of gold.

< 12 >
'Where d'you get that, wife?' said her husband, amazed.
'Never you mind,' she snapped.
The inn-keeper's wife wasn't there: she'd slipped while climbing the stairs.
Last to come was the butcher. He'd really outdone the others: two oxen, four cows, and a dozen sheep.
The old-basket maker looked around him. 'Well,' he said. 'I think the prize goes to... the butcher. I'll just take these and be back, with the wicker lady.'
The butcher was so pleased, spittle ran from his mouth.
'Can I have my grain back?' said the miller.
'No no,' said the old man. 'That wasn't the bargain.' And he began to load all the goods onto the horse. The villagers would have fallen on each other, fighting, but they were so desperate to see the wicker lady, they just stood there, to wait.
It was dusk by the time the basket-maker returned. The wicker woman was seated on the horse, shrouded in a cloak, veiled like a bride. From under the cloak, white flowers fell. As she passed the villagers, a most marvellous smell drifted down.
The butcher stood outside the tailor's old house. He'd locked his wife in the coal cellar in preparation.
The old basket-maker held out a hand, and helped the lady dismount. The butcher smelt her fragrance. From under the veil, he thought he saw her give him a saucy glance. He was so excited, he hopped from foot to foot.
The wicker lady lifted her veil: she took off her cloak. The butcher stared at her. The wicker lady was short of stature and twisted of limb, her face was dark and rough. But worse than that - from head to foot, she was covered in thorns.
'What have you done?' shrieked the butcher.
'Ah,' said the old basket-maker. 'The wicker husband was made of willow. Willow is the kindest of trees: tall, elegant, pliable, of much assistance in easing pain. But I saw that you did not like him. Therefore I made you the wicker lady from blackthorn. Blackthorn is cold, hard, and thorny - it will not be killed, either by fire or frost.'

< 13 >
The villagers would have fallen on the old basket-maker there and then, had not the wicker lady stepped forward. She seized hold of the butcher and reached up to kiss him. The butcher let out a howl. When he pulled his lips away, they were shredded and tattered: blood ran down his chin. Then, with a bang, the butcher's wife broke out of the coal cellar, and ran down the road. Seeing the wicker lady kissing her husband, she screamed, and fell on her. The two of them rolled in the gutter, howling and scratching.
Just then, the lawyer piped up. 'Didn't you check the details first?' he said. 'It's very important. You should always check the small print.'
The men of the village took their butcher's knives and pitchforks and tailoring shears, and chased the lawyer out of town. When they'd run out of breath, they stopped.
'That old fraud the basket-maker,' said the baker. 'He tricked us.'
So they turned round and began to go back in the other direction, on the road into the swamp. In the darkness they stumbled and squelched, lost their way and nearly drowned. It was light by the time they came to the old basket-maker's dwelling, but the old basket-maker, the wicker husband, the ugly girl and the baby, as well as all the villagers' goods, had already upped, and gone

[ریپورتر]

The Other Option
"Yes, children, three of them," Quince concluded, leaning back slightly and smiling his winning smile, "But they die very quickly, and you do it on account of all the virgins you think you'll get your hands on once you get to heaven."
Quince was a salesman, although he never went door-to-door. He never had the need. All his clients came straight to him, because there was simply nowhere else to go.
"I see," breathed the Poor Soul, "I suppose that makes it quite acceptable,"
It frowned slightly.
"But tell me," It went on softly, "What is a virgin?"
Quince levered his smile up a notch.
"My friend," he enunciated warmly, "If you take this life, then that question will never bother you again."

Quince was a salesman, but he'd never so much as held a vacuum cleaner or driven a car. What he sold was much more precious.
What he sold was life itself.
He sat in his office – which was both infinitely huge and immeasurably small, on account of the fact that it existed in a place outside of both space and time – and dealt out lives to the Poor Souls, who came to him ever and again. Technically, his realm was not quite the beginning of existence – but it was so close that he almost fancied he could see it on a clear day.
The only beings he ever came across – as far back as he could remember, at least, which was very far indeed, if not quite forever – the only beings he ever saw were these Poor Souls, these clients of his. Essentially, they were lifeless shells, waiting to be filled with whatever life Quince took it into his head to offer them. There was never a lack, either of clients or lives to give them.
Personally, Quince regarded existence as rather an obvious choice – a bit mainstream – and he was constantly surprised that his clients didn't look around more first and see what their other options were. But then, after all, why should he care?
As long as he had clients, that was all that mattered.

< 2 >

"No, I don't think you understand," said the scruffy-looking Soul, leaning back and regarding Quince with something that almost bordered on disdain, "I don't want that blasted life. I don't want any of your petty little lives, so just put them away and listen for a minute, won't you?"
Quince frowned darkly – he was unused to being addressed in such a tone – and shook his head woefully. But he liked to think of himself as a reasonable man – or at least, creature – so he put the life he had been offering the Soul away again, and cleared his throat wearily.
"And while we're at it, my name's not ‘hey, you,' either, it's muttermutter."
"What?" said Quince, who couldn't stand people who mumbled.
"I said, it's ‘Soul Dog'," repeated Soul Dog, at least having the grace to look abashed.
There was a pregnant silence.
"I see," said Quince at length. He paused, "Go on then, what is it you want?"
The scruffy-looking Soul looked surprised for a moment, as if it were expecting a little bit more of a fight. It recovered quickly, however.
"Right, yes," it began hurriedly, "Well, you've been here quite a while, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Quince coldly. "Forever,"
"Of course, of course," stammered the Soul. "Which is exactly why we thought we'd come to you first. Let you know, sort of thing. It was only the polite thing to do, we thought."
Something in the Soul's tone made Quince wary. He nodded slowly.
"And?" he asked, interested despite himself.
"To let you know, I mean." The Soul looked a little embarrassed now, "And, well, to see if you wanted on board. To be honest, we could do with having someone with your experience on the team"
Quince leant back.
"What exactly is it you are doing?" he asked suspiciously.
"Oh, that's easy!" exclaimed the Soul, "We're going into business."

After Quince had finished shouting and the Soul had left – seeming even more dishevelled than when it had arrived – he felt he needed a little break to calm himself down and regain his composure. He moved away from the endless queue of Poor Souls and wandered around aimlessly in his ephemeral realm.

< 3 >
What nerve. What nerve!
To even think of setting up a rival business! He shook his head ruefully. The quality of Poor Souls was certainly on the decline, if this was the sort of riff-raff the system was throwing up these days.
He wondered briefly how the fellow had ever managed to scrape together enough of a personality to exhibit such wanton arrogance. You could tell just by looking at the scruffy Soul that he had never enjoyed the weight of a proper life. Probably the wretched thing had simply spent some non-time bumming around the pathetic little nooks and crannies which littered the void this side of existence. More than likely he would call the whole thing a "valuable learning experience" or other such nonsense, and use it as a pretext in an application for some minor clerical position on The Other Side.
Quince sighed heavily.
How he hated students.

After rather a lot of non-time had elapsed, Quince began to feel a little more like his usual self, and decided to make his way back to the heart of his realm and get on with the serious business of distributing the various shades of human triumph and misery which formed the ubiquitous colouring of every life he handled. But when he had made himself ready to receive his first client, he found to his horror that a most singular thing had happened.
Instead of the endless queue of clients stretching away into infinity, which usually formed the backdrop of his world, there was only one rather small, sad-looking Soul waiting for him.
The feeling of unease, which had been brought on by the visit of the scruffy looking Soul, and which he had only just managed to shake, retuned to him in full vigour.
Trying to stay calm, Quince hurriedly beckoned the Poor Soul over.
"Existence, pleas…" began the Poor Soul, but Quince cut him off.
"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded sharply.
The Poor Soul looked slightly hurt.
"But I thought we weren't allowed to ask that," the Soul wheedled, pointing to a sign that floated in the middle of nowhere above Quince's desk.

< 4 >
The sign read:

We thank you for not:
-Shoving
-Smoking
-Questioning the meaning of existence

Quince shook his head irritably.
"No, no, I didn't mean…." he rolled his eyes and spluttered incoherently, "I mean, well, where are all the others?"
"There aren't any," replied the Poor Soul, looking more pitiful than ever, "I'm the only one,"
"But there were millions of you here a moment ago," Quince pontificated desperately, "Where have they all gone?"
"They chose the other option," the Soul bobbed about a little and tried to look ingratiating. "I thought they were being silly," it added quickly, "I think your deal looks much better."
Quince – who could always be bought with flattery – found himself warming a little to the Poor Soul almost against his will, and calmed down somewhat.
"Well, it is, it is," he said more softly. "But…what could they possibly be offering that's more enticing than life?"
"Oblivion," said the Poor Soul simply.
"Oblivion?" ejaculated Quince, outraged.
"Yes, oblivion. Nothing. Nada. Void. Forever."
"And what on Earth is so appealing about that?" Quince was leaning very close to the Poor Soul now, staring desperately at it, willing it to answer him.
The Soul seemed to consider the question for a moment.
"We-ell," it said at length, "you don't have to get up quite as early, I suppose."
"What?!"
"You don't have to get up at all, in fact."
"And they all chose that over life?" Quince almost spat the question, "They could have had it all – excitement , adventure, fine wine, great ***, loss, and friendship, and ice cream, and love – they could have had it all, and instead they chose…not having to get up so early?"
The Poor Soul shrugged.
"No one likes having to get up," it said.

Quince marched resolutely through the vast expanses of nothing that composed his realm, the Poor Soul tagging along forlornly behind him.
He'd show them! Oh, yes, they wouldn't get away with this, not when Quince was around!

< 5 >
Oblivion, indeed!
"I don't mean to be a nuisance," the Poor Soul said at length, "But would you mind telling me where we're going?"
"To stop this nonsense," replied Quince, grimly, "We're going to find the competition and make it very clear to them that they are simply not wanted. I mean, after all, how popular can oblivion actually…oh!"
At that moment they topped one of the strange crests of non-space, and Quince fell silent at the sight before him.
Stretching away into the deep distance they streamed, millions and millions and millions of them: Poor Souls, shuffling and silent and empty, floating from the blinding, unassailable light of the Beginning towards…what?
He could not make out where they were heading at first. Quince squinted; then he frowned; then he snarled – his quarry had been found.
He plunged into the queuing souls, bumping them aside with scientifically executed ill-humour, and made his way to the Establishment of his rivals.
"Excuse me, if you don't mind, thank you so very much," he muttered as he shoved the souls out of his way.
Floating in the nothingness, there it stood: a cheap, chipped desk, in front of a panel of three battered-looking chairs; behind the chairs, a wall hung silently, its sole reason for existence apparently to provide a place for the posters to go. Quince did not recognise the posters, though they looked vaguely familiar and filled him with a sense of instinctive contempt. The first showed a green leaf from a plant that some of the people involved in Life seemed to find quite symbolic of some thing or another; it certainly seemed to be something that many people thought quite important. The second showed nine pictures of the same bearded and behatted man, identical except that each image was reproduced in a different horribly garish colour. The final poster showed an idiotic looking fat yellow man clutching an item Quince vaguely recognised as being something sweet and decidedly bad for you. He loathed all three of them on sight; but not so much as he instantly loathed the three souls seated on the chairs behind the desk.
One was sucking on a nasty-looking little hand rolled cigarette. Another was sporting a pair of designer jeans ostentatiously complemented with designer tears. But it was the third soul that caught Quince's attention. It was wearing a fluffy little beanie hat (Quince found it intrinsically annoying, and would have done so were he not already thoroughly annoyed with its wearer anyway) and a ridiculous pair of cheap plastic sunglasses. It was the soul who had pestered him earlier about the setting up of this rival business. It was Soul Dog.

< 6 >
Even as he watched, Quince saw Soul Dog finish talking in a bored-looking way to one of the Poor Souls and lazily indicate which way the client should go. The Poor Soul floated around the back of the desk and into what Quince recognised with a sudden burst of complete non-surprise as a toilet bowl.
There was a thin, ersatz flushing sound and the Poor Soul promptly vanished into nothingness.
"Hahaha," said Soul Dog.
"Awesome!" exclaimed Jeans. "That was, like, well funny, Soul Dog!"
"Yeah man!" added Roll-Up. "Classic!"
Slowly, the laughter died away. Quince was not laughing in a very prominent way.
"What," he said.
"Is," he said.
"The meaning," he said.
"Of this?"
"Um," said Jeans, looking at Roll-Up.
"Um," added Roll-Up, looking at Soul Dog.
"Um, yes," said Soul Dog, looking suddenly a little sheepish.
"You think this is funny, don't you?"
Silence.
"You think this is clever?"
Silence.
"You think you can just waltz in here and mess up a system that has been perfected over what is technically forever?"
Silence.
"You think…" began Quince, who was almost starting to enjoy himself by now.
"…your mum," muttered Soul Dog.
There was a horrified pause.
Then Jeans and Roll-Up collapsed into balls of helpless laughter.
"You think…" Quince tried to rally, but was drowned out by the catcalls of the two cackling Souls.
"Oh, you burned him, man!" shouted Roll-Up.
"Your mum thinks!" exclaimed Soul Dog, somewhat encouraged.
The other two collapsed once more at this masterly display of wit.
Feeling disturbed and suddenly out of his depth, Quince decided to change his tack.
"And look, what's with all this Lifey rubbish anyway?" he tried desperately, indicating the posters and the desk and Soul Dog's almost unbearably annoying hat, "I mean, if you lot are hawking Oblivion, why have all these cheap bits of Life stuff knocking around?"
The three Souls stopped laughing for just long enough to exchange a disbelieving look, before bursting once more into a derisive cacophony.

< 7 >
"Er, duh!" shouted Roll-Up.
"He's so dense, man!" Jeans chimed in.
"Yeah, it's ironic, dude," Soul Dog rolled his eyes.
"But…" tried Quince, who felt things slipping away.
"Move with the times, granddad!"
"But…" he said again.
"Life is so last paradigm,"
"Yeah, man, nothing is the new everything."
"But…" he tried, one last time.
"Your mum's butt," said Soul Dog.
And that was that.

Some non-time later, after the laughter had died down (or at least after he had gotten far enough away that he could no longer hear it) Quince realised he was not alone. A Poor Soul floated nearby, apparently trying to be unobtrusive and slightly comforting at the same time.
"There, there," it said to him, vaguely.
Quince stared at it sharply.
"What is it now?" he demanded, "Oh, have we decided I do have a use after all? Oblivion not your cup of tea now, is it?"
"No, I told you earlier, I wanted existence, please."
"Oh, yes, right," moaned Quince, suddenly remembering the Poor Soul he had met earlier, his last customer, "Well, I'm afraid existence is closed. Until further notice," he added grumpily.
Non-time passed.
"What's your name?" Quince asked at length, mainly because there was little else to do.
"I don't know," replied the Soul.
"Very well. I shall name you…" Quince paused, "Bob."
"That's a shame," said Bob at length.
"No it's not, Bob's a very nice name!" exclaimed Quince, rather scandalised.
"I mean, it's a shame about existence. I was quite looking forward to it. Bob's a good name."
"Oh," said Quince, mollified. "Is it? Doesn't seem that many of you people are missing it much."
And just at that moment, there was a blinding flash of light, out of which stepped a short man in a faintly shabby grey two-piece suite.
"I'm afraid, Mr Quince, that you are rather wrong about that," said the man. "People are, in fact, missing it a great deal."
"Ah," said Quince, looking suddenly nervous, "I was afraid this might happen."

< 8 >
"Well," said the man. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"
Quince sighed.
"Yes, I suppose. This is Bob." He turned to the Poor Soul.
"Bob," he said. "This is God."

"What do you mean, ‘revoke my charter'?" Quince exploded, "That's divine bloody law, that is! I mean, just who the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm God," said God, simply.
"A God, yes, of course, no question." Quince was trying desperately to keep his temper, "But don't get carried away with yourself, now!"
"There is only one God," said God. "We just have lots of little bits, that's all."
"Yes, and some of those bits are very little, I see," muttered Quince. "But, look, it's not my fault, OK? I mean, they were the ones who started the new business; I haven't done anything, have I?"
"Exactly," said God. "You haven't done anything. Some rivals move in, the whole of Existence going to rot and ruin, and what exactly have you done? Nothing, that's what!"
"Well," conceded Quince. "To be honest, I thought the whole thing would blow over in a couple of eons,"
"That's hardly the point." God pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back up his face; Quince noted without surprise that one of the arms was broken and held together with sticky tape. "The point is, down in Existence, not a child, not one child has been born since this nonsense started. You know why? I'll tell you why! No souls to fill the bodies! And that's just what's happening to Existence! Imagine the disturbances this is causing on The Other Side, and on Level Two!"
God rolled his eyes and made a little sniffing noise.
"When all's said and done, the whole thing's a ghastly mess. And that's why," concluded God, "I have been sent back here, back to the Beginning. To give you a little prod, as it were. Get the Souls flowing into Existence again, or your charter is officially revoked,"
"But," began Quince.
"No buts," said God sternly, "You're living on borrowed time, sunshine! Just you watch it, right?"
There was an implosion of light, and God was gone.

< 9 >
Quince was rolling his eyes, when God reappeared.
"Nice to meet you, Bob," said God affably, and vanished again.
Quince gave Bob a dirty look.
"Bugger," he said.

"This is so humiliating," muttered Quince, as they topped the rise and

[ریپورتر]

Matthew Grigg
Professor Panini
Before my many years' service in a restaurant, I attended a top science university. The year was 2023 and I was finishing the project that would win me my professorship. In the end, it resulted in my becoming a kitchen employee.
My forty-second birthday had made a lonely visit the week before, and I was once again by myself in the flat. Like countless other mornings, I ordered a bagel from the toaster. 'Yes, sir!' it replied with robotic relish, and I began the day's work on the project. It was a magnificent machine, the thing I was making - capable of transferring the minds of any two beings into each other's bodies.
As the toaster began serving my bagel on to a plate, I realised the project was in fact ready for testing. I retrieved the duck and the cat - which I had bought for this purpose ñ from their containers, and set about calibrating the machine in their direction. Once ready, I leant against the table, holding the bagel I was too excited to eat, and initiated the transfer sequence. As expected, the machine whirred and hummed into action, my nerves tingling at its synthetic sounds.
The machine hushed, extraction and injection nozzles poised, scrutinizing its targets. The cat, though, was suddenly gripped by terrible alarm. The brute leapt into the air, flinging itself onto the machine. I watched in horror as the nozzles swung towards me; and, with a terrible, psychedelic whirl of colours, felt my mind wrenched from its sockets.
When I awoke, moments later, I noticed first that I was two feet shorter. Then, I realised the lack of my limbs, and finally it occurred to me that I was a toaster. I saw immediately the solution to the situation - the machine could easily reverse the transfer - but was then struck by my utter inability to carry this out.
After some consideration, using what I supposed must be the toaster's onboard computer, I devised a strategy for rescue. I began to familiarise myself with my new body: the grill, the bread bin, the speaker and the spring mechanism. Through the device's rudimentary eye - with which it served its creations - I could see the internal telephone on the wall. Aiming carefully, I began propelling slices of bread at it. The toaster was fed by a large stock of the stuff, yet as more and more bounced lamely off the phone, I began to fear its exhaustion.

< 2 >

*

Toasting the bread before launch proved a wiser tactic. A slice of crusty wholemeal knocked the receiver off its cradle, and the immovable voice of the reception clerk answered. Resisting the urge to exclaim my unlikely predicament, I called from the table: 'I'm having a bit of trouble up here, Room 91. Could you lend a hand?'
'Certainly, sir. There's a burst water pipe on the floor above, I suppose I'll kill two birds with one stone and sort you out on the way,'
The clerk arrived promptly, leaving his 'caution, wet floor' sign in the corridor. He came in, surveying the room in his usual dry, disapproving fashion. I spoke immediately, saying I was on the intercom, and requested that he simply press the large button on the machine before him. 'This one, sir?' he asked, and before I could correct him, the room was filled with a terrible, whirling light, and he fell to the ground.
A minute later he stood up again, uncertainly, and began moving in a manner that can only be described as a waddle. The duck, meanwhile, was scrutinising the flat with an air of wearied distaste. I gazed at the scene with dismay. Suddenly an idea struck the clerk, and with avian glee he tottered towards the window. I spluttered a horrified warning to no avail. He leapt triumphantly from the balcony, spread his 'wings' and disappeared. I would have wept, but managed only to eject a few crumbs.

*

Hours of melancholy calculation and terrible guilt gave no progress, and left me with a woeful regret for the day's events. Determined not to give up hope, I began to burn clumsy messages into slices of bread, and slung these desperate distress calls through the window. I sought not only my own salvation, but also to account for the bizarre demise of the clerk, who must no doubt have been discovered on the street below. I soon found my bread bin to be empty, and sank again into a morose meditation.
A large movement shocked me from my morbid contemplation. Before me, having clambered up from the floor, stood my own body. It regarded me with dim cheer.

< 3 >
'I have been upgraded,' it announced in monotone. The room was silent as I struggled to cope with this information. Then:
'Would you like some toast?'
The truth dawned on me, and I wasted no time in seeing the utility of this revelation. I informed the toaster, which was now in control of my body, that I wished it to fetch help. It regarded me warily, then asked if I would like that buttered. Maintaining patience, I explained the instruction more thoroughly. I watched with surreal anticipation as my body of forty-two years jerked its way out of the flat. It rounded the corner, and there was a hope-dashing crash. It had tripped up on the 'caution: wet floor' sign. To my joyous relief, however, I heard the thing continue on its way down the corridor.
Minutes passed, then hours. I entertained myself flicking wheat-based projectiles at the cat. On the dawn of the third day, I concluded that the toaster had failed in its piloting of my body, and that help was not on its way. Gripped by the despair of one who must solve the puzzle of toaster suicide, I resigned myself to my fate.
Pushed on by a grim fervour, I began igniting the entire stock of bread. As the smoke poured from my casing, and the first hints of deadly flame flickered in my mechanisms, I began the solemn disclosure of my own eulogy.
Suddenly the fire alarm leapt into action, hurling thick jets of water across the flat, desperate to save its occupants. A piercing wail erupted from all sides, and a squabbling mixture of annoyance, relief and curiosity filtered into my mind.

*

Once the firemen had visited and deactivated the alarm, I was identified as the fault, unplugged and hauled away to a repair shop. The staff there, finding nothing to remove but a faulty speech chip, apparently put me up for sale. I only know this because, on being reconnected to the mains, I found myself in a shiny, spacious kitchen. Missing my electronic voice, I could only listen to the conversation of the staff, discussing the odd conduct of their new cook. The end of their hurried discussion heralded his arrival. I gazed at the door in silent surrender, as my body stepped proudly on to the premises, displaying its newly designed menu. At the top of the list I could discern 'Buttered bagel'.

[ریپورتر]

The Wicker Husband
Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl. She was short and dumpy, had one leg a bit shorter than the other, and her eyebrows met in the middle. The ugly girl gutted fish for a living, so her hands smelt funny and her dress was covered in scales. She had no mother or brother, no father, sister, or any friends. She lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of the village, and she never complained.
One by one, the village girls married the local lads, and up the path to the church they'd prance, smiling all the way. At the weddings, the ugly girl always stood at the back of the church, smelling slightly of brine. The village women gossiped about the ugly girl. They wondered what she did with the money she earnt. The ugly girl never bought a new frock, never made repairs to the house, and never drank in the village tavern.
Now, it so happened that outside the village, in a great damp swamp, lived an old basket-maker who was famed for the quality of his work. One day the old basket-maker heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, the ugly girl stood there. In her hand, she held six gold coins.
'I want you to make me a husband,' she said.
'Come back in a month,' he replied.
Well, the old basket-maker was greatly moved that the ugly girl had entrusted him with such an important task. He resolved to make her the best husband he could. He made the wicker husband broad of shoulder and long of leg, and all the other things women like. He made him strong of arm and elegant of neck, and his brows were wide and well-spaced. His hair was a fine dark brown, his eyes a greenish hazel.
When the day came, the ugly girl knocked on the basket-maker's door.
'He says today is too soon. He will be in the church tomorrow, at ten,' said the basket-maker. The ugly girl went away, and spent the day scraping scales from her dress.

< 2 >
Later that night, there was a knock on the door of the village tailor. When the tailor opened it, the wicker husband stood outside.
'Lend me a suit,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church naked.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the tailor, and ran out the back door.
The tailor's wife came out, wiping her hands. 'What's going on?' she said.
'Lend me a suit,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I cannot go to my wedding naked.'
The tailor's wife gave him a suit, and slammed the door in his face.
Next, there was a knock on the door of the village shoe-maker. When the shoe-maker opened it, the wicker husband stood there.
'Lend me some shoes,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church barefoot.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the shoe-maker, and he ran out the back door.
The shoe-maker's wife came out, her hands trembling.
'What do you want?' she said.
'Lend me some shoes,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to my wedding barefoot.'
The shoe-maker's wife gave him a pair of shoes, and slammed the door in his face. Next, the wicker husband went to the village inn.
'Give me a drink,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I wish to celebrate.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the inn-keeper and all his customers, and out they ran. The poor wicker husband went behind the bar, and poured himself a drink.
When the ugly girl got to church in the morning, she was mighty pleased to find her husband so handsome, and so well turned-out.

When the couple had enjoyed their first night of marriage, the wicker husband said to his wife: 'This bed is broken. Bring me a chisel: I will fix it.'

< 3 >
So like a good husband, he began to fix the bed. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she came back at the end of the day, the wicker husband looked at her, and said: 'I was made to be with you.'
When the couple had enjoyed their second night of marriage, the wicker husband said: 'This roof is leaky. Bring me a ladder: I will fix it.'
So, like a good husband, he climbed up and began to fix the thatch. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she returned in the evening, the wicker husband looked at his wife, and said: 'Without you, I should never have seen the sun on the water, or the clouds in the sky.'
When the couple had enjoyed their third night of marriage, the ugly girl got ready to out. 'The chimney needs cleaning,' she said, hopefully, 'And the fire could be laid...' But at this, the wicker husband - she was just beginning to learn his expressions - looked completely terrified. From this, the ugly girl came to understand that there are some things you cannot ask a man to do, even if he is very kind.
Over the weeks, the villagers began to notice a change in the ugly girl. If one of her legs was still shorter than the other, her hips moved with a swing that didn't please them. If she still smelt funny, she sang while she gutted the fish. She bought a new frock and wore flowers in her hair. Even her eyebrows no longer met in the middle: the wicker husband had pulled them out with his strong, withied fingers. When the villagers passed the ugly girl's house, they saw it had been painted anew, the windows sparkled, and the door no longer hung askew. You might think that all these changes pleased the villagers, but oh no. Instead, wives pointed out to husbands that their doors needed fixing, and why didn't they offer? The men retorted that maybe if their wives made an effort with new frocks and flowers in their hair, then maybe they'd feel like fixing the house, and everybody grumbled and cursed each other, but secretly, in their hearts, they blamed the ugly girl and her husband.

< 4 >
As to the ugly girl, she didn't notice all the jealousy. She was too busy growing accustomed to married life, and was finding that the advantages of a wicker husband outweighed his few shortcomings. The wicker husband didn't eat, and never complained that his dinner was late. He only drank water, the muddier the better. She was a little sad that she could not cook him dinner like an ordinary man, and watch him while he ate. In the cold nights, she hoped they would sit together close to the fire, but he preferred the darkness, far from the flames. The ugly girl got in the habit of calling across the room all the things she had to say to him. As winter turned to spring, and rain pelted down, the wicker husband became a little mouldy, and the ugly girl had to scrub him down with a brush and a bottle of vinegar. Spring turned to summer, and June was very dry. The wicker husband complained of stiffness in his joints, and spent the hottest hour of the day lying in the stream. The ugly girl took her fish-gutting, and sat on the bank, keeping him company.
Eventually the villagers were too ridden with curiosity to stand it any longer. There was a wedding in the village: the ugly girl and her husband were invited. At the wedding, there was music and dancing, and food and wine. As the musicians struck up, the wicker husband and the ugly girl went to dance. The villagers could not help staring: the wicker husband moved so fine. He lifted his dumpy wife like she was nought but a feather, and swung her round and round. He swayed and shimmered; he was elegant, he was graceful. As for the ugly girl: she was in heaven.
The women began to whisper behind their hands. Now, the blacksmith's wife was boldest, and she resolved to ask the wicker husband to dance. When the music paused she went towards the couple. The ugly girl was sitting in the wicker husband's lap, so he creaked a little. The blacksmith's wife was about to tap the wicker husband on the shoulder, but his arms were wrapped round the ugly girl.

< 5 >
'You are the only reason that I live and breathe,' the wicker husband said to his wife.
The blacksmith's wife heard what he said, and went off, sulking. The next day there were many frayed tempers in the village.
'You've got two left feet!' shouted the shoe-maker's wife at her husband.
'You never tell me anything nice!' yelled the blacksmith's wife.
'All you do is look at other women!' shouted the baker's wife, though how she knew was a mystery, as she'd done nothing but stare at the wicker husband all night. The husbands fled their homes and congregated in the tavern.
'T'aint right,' they muttered, 'T'isn't natural.'
'E's showing us up.'
'Painting doors.'
'Fixing thatch.'
'Murmuring sweet nothings.'
'Dancing!' muttered the blacksmith, and they all spat.
'He's not really a man,' muttered the baker. 'An abomination!'
'He don't eat.'
'He don't grumble.'
'He don't even fart,' added the tailor, gloomily.
The men shook their heads, and agreed that it couldn't go on.
Meanwhile the women congregated in each other's kitchens.
'It's not right,' they muttered. 'Why does she deserve him?'
'It's an enchantment,' they whispered. 'She bewitched him.'
'She'll be onto our husbands next, I expect,' said the baker's wife. 'We should be careful.'
'She needs to be brought down a peg or two.'
'Fancies that she's better than the rest of us, I reckon.'
'Flowers in her hair!!'
'Did you see her dancing?'
And they all agreed that it couldn't go on.
One day the wicker husband was on his way back from checking the fish-traps, when he was accosted by the baker.

< 6 >
'Hello,' said the baker. The wicker husband was a little surprised: the baker never bothered to speak to him. 'You made an impression the other night.'
'I did?' said the wicker husband.
'Oh yes,' continued the baker. 'The women are all aflutter. Don't you ever think - well...'
'What?' said the wicker husband, completely confused.
'Man like you,' said the baker. 'Could do well for himself. A lot of opportunities...' He leaned forward, so the wicker husband recoiled. The baker's breath smelt of dough, which he found unpleasant. 'Butcher's wife,' added the baker meaningfully. 'Very taken. I know for a fact that he's not at home. Gone to visit his brother in the city. Why don't you go round?'
'I can't,' said the wicker husband. 'My wife's waiting for me at home.' And he strode off, up the lane. The baker went home, annoyed.
Now the wicker husband, who was too trusting, thought less of this of this than he should, and did not warn his wife that trouble was brewing. About a week later, the ugly girl was picking berries in the hedgerow, when the tailor's wife sidled up. Her own basket was empty, which made the ugly girl suspicious.
'My dear!' cried the tailor's wife, fluttering her hands.
'What d'you want?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife wiped away a fake tear, and looked in both directions. 'My dear,' she whispered. 'I'm only here to warn you. Your husband - he's been seen with other women.'
'What other women?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife fluttered her hands. This wasn't going as she intended. 'My dear, you can't trust men. They're all the same. And you can't expect - a man like him, and a woman like you - frankly -'
The ugly girl was so angry that she hit the tailor's wife with her basket, and ran off, up the lane. The ugly girl went home, and - knowing more of cruelty than her husband did - thought on this too much and too long. But she did not want to upset her husband, so she said nothing.

< 7 >
The tailor's wife came home fuming, with scratches all over her face. That night, the wives and husbands of the village all agreed - for once - that something drastic had to be done.

A few days later the old basket-maker heard a knocking at his door. When he opened it, the villagers stood outside. Right on cue, the tailor's wife began to weep, pitifully.
'What's the matter?' said the old basket-maker.
'She's childless,' said the baker's wife, sniffing.
'Not a son,' said the tailor, sadly.
'Or a daughter.'
'No-one to comfort them in their old age,' added the butcher.
'It's breaking their hearts,' went on the baker.
'So we've come to ask -'
'If you'll make us a baby. Out of wicker.'
And they held out a bag of gold.
'Very well,' said the old basket-maker. 'Come back in a month.'
Well, one dusky day in autumn, the ugly girl was sitting by the fire, when there came a knock at the door. The wicker husband opened it. Outside, stood the villagers. The tailor's wife bore a bundle in her arms, and the bundle began to whimper.
'What's that?' said the ugly girl.
'This is all your fault,' hissed the butcher, pointing at the wicker husband.
'Look what you've done!' shouted the baker.
'It's an abomination,' sneered the inn-keeper. 'Not even human!'
The tailor pulled away the blanket. The ugly girl saw that the baby was made of wicker. It had the same shaped nose, the same green eyes that her husband did.
'Tell me it's not true!' she cried.
But the wicker husband said nothing. He just stared at the baby. He had never seen one of his own kind before, and now - his heart filled up with tenderness. When the ugly girl saw this on his face, a great cloud of bitterness came upon her. She sank to the floor, moaning.

< 8 >
'Filthy, foul, creature!' cried the tailor. 'I should burn it!' He seized the baby, and made to fling it into the blaze. At this, the wicker husband let out a yell. Forward he leapt.
The ugly girl let out a terrible cry. She took the lamp, and flung it straight at her husband. The lamp burst in shards of glass. Oil went everywhere. Flames began to lick at the wicker husband's chest, up his neck, into his face. He tried to beat at the flames, but his fingers grew oily, and burst into fire. Out he ran, shrieking, and plunged into the river.
'Well, that worked well,' said the butcher, in a satisfied manner.
The villagers did not spare a second glance for the ugly girl, but went home again to their dinners. On the way, the tailor's wife threw the wicker baby in the ditch. She stamped on its face. 'Ugh,' she said. 'Horrible thing.'
The next day the ugly girl wandered the highways, weeping, her face smeared in ashes.
'Have you seen my husband?' she asked passing travellers, but they saw madness in her eyes, and spurred their horses on. Dusk fell. Stumbling home, scarce knowing where she was, the ugly girl heard a sound in the ditch. Kneeling, she found the wicker baby. It wailed and thrashed, and held up its hands. The ugly girl saw in its face her husband's eyes, and her husband's nose. She coddled it to her chest and took it home.
Now, the old basket maker knew nothing of all this. One day, the old man took it into his head to see how his creations were faring. He walked into town, and knocked on the tailor's door. The wife answered.
'How is the baby?' he said.
'Oh that,' she said. 'It died.' And she shut the door in his face. The old basket-maker walked on, till he came to the ugly girl's place. The door was closed, the garden untended, and dirt smeared the windows. The old basket-maker knocked on the door. No-one answered, though he waited a very long time.

< 9 >
The old-basket maker went home, disheartened. He was walking the long dark road into the swamp, when he heard something in the rushes. At first he was afraid: he wrapped his scarf closer round his face. But the thing seemed to follow him. From time to time, it groaned.
'Who's there?' called the old man.
Out onto the roadway staggered the most broken and bedraggled, the most pathetic and pitiful thing. The old basket-maker stared at what was left of the wicker husband: his hands consumed by fire, his face equally gone. Dark pits of scorched wood marred his chest. Where he had burnt, he had started to rot.
'What have they done to my children?' cried the old basket-maker.
The wicker husband said nothing: he had lost his tongue.
The old basket-maker took the wicker husband home. As daylight came, the old basket-maker sat down to repair him. But as he worked, his heart grew hot with anger.
'I made you, but I failed you,' he said. 'I will not send you there again.'
Eventually, the wicker husband looked as good as new, though the smell of burning still clung. But as the days passed, a damp black mould began to grow on him. The old basket-maker pulled out the rotting withies and replaced them. But it seemed useless: the wicker husband rotted from the inside, outwards.
At last, the old basket-maker saw there was nothing else to be done. He took up his travelling cloak, set out at night, and passed through the village. He came to the ugly girl's house. In the garden, wreathed in filth, stood the ugly girl, cuddling a child. She was singing the saddest lullaby he had ever heard. The old basket-maker saw that the child was the one he'd made, and his heart softened a little. He stepped out of the shadows.
'Why do you keep the baby,' he said, 'when you cast your husband from home?'
The ugly girl cried out, to hear someone speak to her.

< 10 >
'It is all I have left of my husband,' she said at last. 'Though it is proof he betrayed me, I could not leave it in the ditch to die.'
'You are a fool,' he said. 'It was I that made the child. Your husband is innocent.'
At this, the ugly girl let out a cry, and ran towards the river. But old basket-maker caught her arm. 'Wait - I have something to show you,' he said.
The ugly girl walked behind him, through the swamp where the water sucked and burbled, carrying the baby. As the sun rose, she saw that its features were only those of the old basket-maker, who, like any maker, had passed down his face to his creations.
When they came to the dwelling, the ugly girl opened the door, and saw her husband, sitting in darkness.
'It cannot be you,' she said. 'You are dead. I know: I killed you myself.'
'I was made for you alone,' said the wicker husband, 'But you threw me away.'
The ugly girl let out a cry so loud, birds surfaced from the marches for miles around, and threw herself at her husband's feet.

A few days later, the villagers were surprised to see the old basket-maker standing outside the church.
'I have something to say,' he said. 'Soon I will retire. But first, I am making my masterwork - a woman made of wicker. If you want her, you can have her. But you must bring me a gift for my retirement. Whoever brings me the best gift can have the wicker woman.'
Then he turned round and went back to the swamp.
Behind him, the villagers began to whisper. Hadn't the wicker husband been tall and graceful? Hadn't he been a hard worker? Hadn't he been handsome, and eager to please his wife?
Next day, the entire village denied any interest in the wicker lady, but secretly began to plan. Men eyed up prize cows; women sneaked open jewellery boxes.

< 11 >
'That wicker husband worked like a slave, and never even ate,' said the shoe-maker's wife to her husband. 'Get me the wicker woman as a servant, I'll live like a lady, never lift a finger.'
'That wicker husband never quarrelled with anyone, never even raised his voice. Not like you, you old fishwife,' the inn-keeper said to his wife.
'That wicker husband never tired, and never had a headache,' said the butcher to the baker. 'Imagine...!'
'Lend me a shilling, cousin,' said the shoe-maker's wife. 'I need a new petticoat.'
'I can't,' lied the blacksmith's wife. 'I spent it on medicine. The child was very sick.'
'I need that back-rent you owe me,' said the butcher, who owned the tailor's house.
'Been a very bad season in the tailoring trade,' muttered the tailor. 'You'll get it soon.'
The butcher went into town, hired a lawyer, and got the tailor evicted from his house. The tailor and his wife had to go and live in the shoe-maker's shed.
'But what are you going to do with the empty house?' asked the butcher's wife.
'Nothing,' said the butcher, who thought the place would do admirably to keep a mistress. The butcher's wife and the tailor's wife had a fight in the market, and went home with black eyes. In the tavern, no-one spoke, but only eyed each other, suspiciously. The lawyer was still in town. Rumour had it that the tailor's wife was suing for divorce: the inn-keeper's wife had her husband arrested after she found the stairs had been greased. In short, the fields went uncut, the cows went unmilked, ovens uncleaned: the village was obsessed.
When the day came, the old basket-maker came to town, and sat on the churchyard wall. The villagers brought their gifts. First the tailor, who'd made a luxurious coat. Next the miller, bringing twelve sacks of grain. The baker made the most extravagant cake; the carpenter brought a table and chairs, the carter a good strong horse. The blacksmith's wife staggered up with a cheese the size of a millwheel. Her cousin, the tailor's wife, arrived with a bag of gold.

< 12 >
'Where d'you get that, wife?' said her husband, amazed.
'Never you mind,' she snapped.
The inn-keeper's wife wasn't there: she'd slipped while climbing the stairs.
Last to come was the butcher. He'd really outdone the others: two oxen, four cows, and a dozen sheep.
The old-basket maker looked around him. 'Well,' he said. 'I think the prize goes to... the butcher. I'll just take these and be back, with the wicker lady.'
The butcher was so pleased, spittle ran from his mouth.
'Can I have my grain back?' said the miller.
'No no,' said the old man. 'That wasn't the bargain.' And he began to load all the goods onto the horse. The villagers would have fallen on each other, fighting, but they were so desperate to see the wicker lady, they just stood there, to wait.
It was dusk by the time the basket-maker returned. The wicker woman was seated on the horse, shrouded in a cloak, veiled like a bride. From under the cloak, white flowers fell. As she passed the villagers, a most marvellous smell drifted down.
The butcher stood outside the tailor's old house. He'd locked his wife in the coal cellar in preparation.
The old basket-maker held out a hand, and helped the lady dismount. The butcher smelt her fragrance. From under the veil, he thought he saw her give him a saucy glance. He was so excited, he hopped from foot to foot.
The wicker lady lifted her veil: she took off her cloak. The butcher stared at her. The wicker lady was short of stature and twisted of limb, her face was dark and rough. But worse than that - from head to foot, she was covered in thorns.
'What have you done?' shrieked the butcher.
'Ah,' said the old basket-maker. 'The wicker husband was made of willow. Willow is the kindest of trees: tall, elegant, pliable, of much assistance in easing pain. But I saw that you did not like him. Therefore I made you the wicker lady from blackthorn. Blackthorn is cold, hard, and thorny - it will not be killed, either by fire or frost.'

< 13 >
The villagers would have fallen on the old basket-maker there and then, had not the wicker lady stepped forward. She seized hold of the butcher and reached up to kiss him. The butcher let out a howl. When he pulled his lips away, they were shredded and tattered: blood ran down his chin. Then, with a bang, the butcher's wife broke out of the coal cellar, and ran down the road. Seeing the wicker lady kissing her husband, she screamed, and fell on her. The two of them rolled in the gutter, howling and scratching.
Just then, the lawyer piped up. 'Didn't you check the details first?' he said. 'It's very important. You should always check the small print.'
The men of the village took their butcher's knives and pitchforks and tailoring shears, and chased the lawyer out of town. When they'd run out of breath, they stopped.
'That old fraud the basket-maker,' said the baker. 'He tricked us.'
So they turned round and began to go back in the other direction, on the road into the swamp. In the darkness they stumbled and squelched, lost their way and nearly drowned. It was light by the time they came to the old basket-maker's dwelling, but the old basket-maker, the wicker husband, the ugly girl and the baby, as well as all the villagers' goods, had already upped, and gone