‘Well, I tell you, I call it a shame.’
‘Well, I tell you, it makes me laugh… Look, let’s go down there: I see people down there.’ Isabella dug a bag of sweets out of her pocket and they sauntered on, both sucking, talking with cheeks blocked. ‘Supposing you got offered a fur coat, what kind would you go for, nutria or kolinsky?… If a boy that always went racing but that you were sweet on asked you to marry him, would you?… Supposing you were going with a boy, then found out he was a trunk murderer… ’
‘Oh, there’s such a sweet dog, such a sweet fellow. Come, then!’
‘My goodness,’ said Isabella, ‘it isn’t half getting dark.’
‘Well, what do you expect?’
‘No, but the sun’s gone in. And that’s not mist, now; that’s fog, that is.’
‘They’re starting two of those cars up.’
‘Mother’ll be starting to worry. Better be getting home.’
Yes, mist that had been the natural breath of the woods was thickening to fog, as though the not-distant city had sent out an infection. At dusk coming so suddenly and so early, the people felt a touch of animal fear – quickening their steps, they closed on each other in a disordered way, as though their instinct were to bolt underground. Wind or thunder, though more terrible in woods, do not hold this same threat of dissolution. The people packed back into their cars; the cars lurched on to the roads and started back to London in a solid stream. Down the rides, beginning to be deserted, the trees with their leaves still clinging looked despoiled and tattered. All day the woods had worn an heroic dying smile; now they were left alone to face death.
But this was still somebody’s moment. There was still some daylight. The small lake, or big pool, clearly reflected in its black mirror the birches and reeds. A tall girl, with a not quite young porcelain face, folding her black fur collar round her throat with both hands, stood posing against a birch, having her photograph taken across the water by two young men at the other side of the lake. Bob, busy over the camera on a portable tripod, was an ‘art’ photographer: he could photograph Nature in the most difficult light. Therefore he could go far in search of her strange moods. He felt, thought, loved, even in terms of the Lens. He sold his work to papers, where it appeared with lines of poetry underneath. This girl over the water in the fog-smudged woods was to be called ‘Autumn Evening’. Cecil, an old friend, behind Bob’s shoulder, looked across at the girl.
Without breaking her pose, a born model’s, she coughed, and shook under her fur coat. Cecil said cautiously: ‘She’s getting a bit cold, Bob.’
‘Tsssss!’ said Bob sharply. He had become his camera. His whole temperament crouched over his subject, like a lion over a bit of meat.
‘Won’t be long,’ Cecil called across the lake.
‘I’m all right,’ said the girl, coughing again.
‘Tell her not to grab her collar up,’ Bob muttered. ‘She’s not supposed to look cold. She’s got her coat all dragged up; it spoils the figure.’
‘He says, not to grab your collar,’ Cecil shouted.
‘Right-o.’ She let her collar fall open: Turning her head inside the fur corolla, she looked more obliquely across the lake. ‘Is that better?’
‘O.K… Ready!’ The slow exposure began.
People taking photographs in this half-light, this dream-light, made Carlotta and Henry stop to wonder. They stood back among the birches to be out of the way. Then the artistic tensity broke up; signals were exchanged across the water; the girl came round the lake to join the two young men. ‘What’s that floating?’ she said. But they were busy packing up the camera. ‘Should that be all right?’ she said, but no one answered. Bob handed Cecil the tripod, shouldered his camera and they walked away from the lake with Bob’s hand on his girl’s shoulder.
‘Do you think that photo will ever come out?’ said Carlotta.
‘I suppose he knows what he’s doing… I’d like to try with a camera… ’
‘I’d sooner paint,’ said Carlotta. They walked round the edge of the lake, looking across to where the girl had stood. ‘She was pretty,’ Carlotta said. She thought; ‘She’ll get her death. But I’d like to stand like that. I wish Henry had a camera. I wish I could give him one… Against the photographer’s shoulder-blade eternalized minutes were being carried away. Carlotta and Henry were both tired, what they saw seemed to belong in the past already. The light seemed to fade because of their own nerves. And still water in woods, in any part of the world, continues an everlasting terrible fairy tale, in which you are always lost, in which giants oppress. Now the people had gone, the lovers saw that this place was what they had been looking for all today. But they were so tired, each stood in an isolated dream.
‘What is that floating?’ she said.
Henry screwed up his eyes. ‘A thermos.’ He picked up a broken branch and, with an infinity of trouble, started to claw in, with the tip of the branch, the floating flask towards himself. Its cap was gone.
‘But we don’t want it, Henry.’
She might never have spoken – Henry’s face was intent; he recklessly stood with one toe in the water. The ribbed aluminium cylinder, twirling under the touches of the branch, rode reluctantly in. Henry reached it eagerly out of the water, shook it. Its shattered inner glass coating rattled about inside – this, the light hollowness, the feel of the ribs in his grasp made Henry smile with almost crazy pleasure. ‘Treasure!’ he said, with a checked, excited laugh.
Carlotta smiled, but she felt her throat tighten. She saw Henry’s life curve off from hers, like one railway line from another, curve off to an utterly different, and far-off destination. When she trusted herself to speak, she said as gently as possible: ‘We’ll have to be starting back soon. You know it’s some way. The bus—’
‘No, we won’t miss that,’ said Henry, rattling the flask and smiling.
Sentiment
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) was an American critic, satirical poet, and short story writer. Best known for her wit and eye for 20th-century foibles, Parker wrote book reviews, poetry and short fiction for the fledgling magazine The New Yorker. She wrote the screenplay for the Hitchcock film Saboteur, but her involvement with Communism led to her being blacklisted in Hollywood.
Oh, anywhere, driver, anywhere – it doesn’t matter. Just keep driving.
It’s better here in this taxi than it was walking. It’s no good my trying to walk. There is always a glimpse through the crowd of someone who looks like him – someone with his swing of the shoulders, his slant of the hat. And I think it’s he. I think he’s come back. And my heart goes to scalding water and the buildings away and bend above me. No, it’s better to be here. But I wish the driver would go fast, so fast that people walking by would be a long gray blur, and I could see no swinging shoulders, no slanted hat. It’s bad stopping still in the traffic like this. People pass too slowly, too clearly, and always the next one might be – No, of course it couldn’t be. I know that. Of course I know it. But it might be, it might.
And people can look in and see me, here. They can see if I cry. Oh, let them – it doesn’t matter. Let them look and be damned to them.
Yes, you look at me. Look and look and look, you poor, queer tired woman. It’s a pretty hat, isn’t it? It’s meant to be looked at. That’s why it’s so big and red and new, that’s why it has these great soft poppies on it. Your poor hat is all weary and done with. It looks like a dead cat, a cat that was run over and pushed out of the way against the curbstone. Don’t you wish you were I and could have a new hat whenever you pleased? You could walk fast, couldn’t you, and hold your head high and raise your feet from the pavement if you were on your way to a new hat, a beautiful hat, a hat that cost more than ever you had? Only I hope you wouldn’t choose one like mine. For red is mourning, you know. Scarlet red for a love that’s dead. Didn’t you know that?
She’s gone now. The taxi is moving and she’s left behind forever. I wonder w
hat she thought when our eyes and our lives met. I wonder did she envy me, so sleek and safe and young. Or did she realize how quick I’d be to fling away all I have if I could bear in my breast the still, dead heart that she carries in hers. She doesn’t feel. She doesn’t even wish. She is done with hoping and burning, if ever she burned and she hoped. Oh, that’s quite nice, it has a real lilt. She is done with hoping and burning, if ever she – Yes, it’s pretty. Well – I wonder if she’s gone her slow way a little happier, or, perhaps, a little sadder for knowing that there is one worse off than herself.
This is the sort of thing he hated so in me. I know what he would say. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he would say. “Can’t you stop that fool sentimentalizing? Why do you have to do it? Why do you want to do it? Just because you see an old charwoman on the street, there’s no need to get sobbing about her. She’s all right. She’s fine. ‘When your eyes and your lives met’ – oh, come on now. Why, she never even saw you. And her ‘still, dead heart,’ nothing! She’s probably on her way to get a bottle of bad gin and have a roaring time. You don’t have to dramatize everything. You don’t have to insist that everybody’s sad. Why are you always so sentimental? Don’t do it Rosalie.” That’s what he would say. I know.
But he won’t say that or anything else to me, any more. Never anything else, sweet or bitter. He’s gone away and he isn’t coming back. “Oh, of course I’m coming back!” he said. “No, I don’t know just when – I told you that. Ah, Rosalie, don’t go making a national tragedy of it. It’ll be a few months, maybe – and if ever two people needed a holiday from each other! It’s nothing to cry about. I’ll be back. I’m not going to stay away from New York forever.”
But I knew. I knew. I knew because he had been far away from me long before he went. He’s gone away and he won’t come back. He’s gone away and he won’t come back, he’s gone away and he’ll never come back. Listen to the wheels saying it on and on and on. That’s sentimental, I suppose. Wheels don’t say anything Wheels can’t speak. But I hear them.
I wonder why it’s wrong to be sentimental. People are so contemptuous of feeling. “You wouldn’t catch me sitting alone and mooning,” they say. “Moon” is what they say when they mean remember, and they are so proud of not remembering. It’s strange, how they pride themselves upon their lacks. “I never take anything seriously,” they say. “I simply couldn’t imagine,” they say, “letting myself care so much that I could be hurt.” They say. “No one person could be that important to me.” And why, why do they think they’re right?
Oh, who’s right and who’s wrong and who decides? Perhaps it was I who was right about that charwoman. Perhaps she was weary and still-hearted, and perhaps, for just that moment, she knew all about me. She needn’t have been all right and fine and on her way for gin, just because he said so. Oh. Oh, I forgot. He didn’t say so. He wasn’t here; he isn’t here. It was I, imagining what he would say. And I thought I heard him. He’s always with me, he and all his beauty and his cruelty. But he mustn’t be any more. I mustn’t think of him. That’s it, don’t think of him. Yes. Don’t breathe, either. Don’t hear. Don’t see. Stop the blood in your veins.
I can’t go on like this. I can’t, I can’t. I cannot stand this frantic misery. If I knew it would be over in a day or a year or two months, I could endure it. Even if it grew duller sometimes and wilder sometimes, it could be borne. But it is always the same and there is no end.
“Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain –
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane.
Neither stop nor start.”
Oh, let’s see – how does the next verse go? Something, something, something, something, something to rhyme with “wear.” Anyway, it ends:
“All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.”
Yes, that’s the way it goes. And it’s right, it’s so right. What is it to me what I wear? Go and buy yourself a big red hat with poppies on it – that ought to cheer you up. Yes – go buy it and loathe it. How am I to go on, sitting and staring and buying big red hats and hating them, and then sitting and staring again – day upon day upon day upon day? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. How am I to drag through them like this?
But what else is there for me? “Go out and see your friends and have a good time,” they say. “Don’t sit alone and dramatize yourself.” Dramatize yourself! If it be drama to feel a steady – no, a ceaseless rain beating upon my heart, then I do dramatize myself. The shallow people, the little people, how can they know what suffering is, how could their thick hearts be torn? Don’t they know, the empty fools, that I could not see again the friends we saw together, could not go back to the places where he and I have been? For he’s gone, and it’s ended. It’s ended, it’s ended. And when it ends, only those places where you have known sorrow are kindly to you. If you revisit the scenes of your happiness, your heart must burst of its agony.
And that’s sentimental, I suppose. It’s sentimental to know that you cannot bear to see the places where once all was well with you, that you cannot bear reminders of a dead loveliness. Sorrow is tranquillity, remembered in emotion. It – oh, I think that’s quite good. “Remembered in emotion” – that’s a really nice reversal. I wish I could say it to him. But I won’t say anything to him, ever again, ever, ever again. He’s gone, and it’s over, and I dare not think of the dead days. All my thoughts must be slow and brown, and I must—
Oh, no, no, no! Oh, the driver shouldn’t go through this street! This was our street, this is the place of our love and our laughter. I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t. I will crouch down here, and hold my hands tight, tight oyer my eyes, so that I cannot look. I must keep my poor heart still, and I must be like the little, mean, dry-souled people who are proud not to remember.
But oh, I see it, I see it, even though my eyes are blinded. Though I had no eyes, my heart would tell me this street, out of all streets. I know it as I know my hands, as I know his face. Oh, why can’t I be let to die as we pass through?
We must be at the florist’s shop on the corner now. That’s where he used to stop to buy me primroses, little yellow primroses massed tight together with a circle of their silver-backed leaves about them, clean and cool and gentle. He always said that orchids and camellias were none of my affair. So when there were no spring and no primroses, he would give me lilies-of-the-valley and little, gay rosebuds and mignonette and bright blue cornflowers. He said he couldn’t stand the thought of me without flowers – it would be all wrong; I cannot bear flowers near me, now. And the little gray florist was so interested and so glad – and there was the day he called me “madam”! Ah, I can’t, I can’t.
And now we must be at the big apartment house with the big gold doorman. And the evening the doorman was holding the darling puppy on a big, long leash, and we stopped to talk to it, and he took it up in his arms and cuddled it, and that was the only time we ever saw the doorman smile! And next is the house with the baby, and he always would take off his hat and bow very solemnly to her, and sometimes she would give him her little starfish of a hand. And then is the tree with the rusty iron bars around it, where he would stop to turn and wave to me, as I leaned out the window to watch him. And people would look at him, because people always had to look at him, but he never noticed. It was our tree, he said; it wouldn’t dream of belonging to anybody else. And very few city people had their own personal tree, he said. Did I realize that, he said.
And then there’s the doctor’s house, and the three thin gray houses and then – oh, God, we must be at our house now! Our house, though we had only the top floor. And I loved the long, dark stairs, because he climbed them every evening. And our little prim pink curtains at the windows, and the boxes of pink geraniums that always grew for me. And t
he little stiff entry and the funny mail-box, and his ring at the bell. And I waiting for him in the dusk, thinking he would never come; and yet the waiting was lovely, too. And then when I opened the door to him – Oh, no, no, no! Oh, no one could bear this. No one, no one.
Ah, why, why, why must I be driven through here? What torture could there be so terrible as this? It will be better if I uncover my eyes and look. I will see our tree and our house again, and then my heart will burst and I will be dead. I will look, I will look.
But where’s the tree? Can they have cut down our tree – our tree? And where’s the apartment house? And where’s the florist’s shop? And where – oh, where’s our house, where’s—
Driver, what street is this? Sixty-Fifth? Oh. No. Nothing, thank you. I – I thought it was Sixty-Third…
The Lottery
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) was an American author best known for her story, ‘The Lottery’. A prolific short story writer, Jackson also wrote six novels, one of which, The Haunting of Hill House, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1960. The Shirley Jackson Award was established in 2007 to recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic.
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a fun-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher; of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix – the villagers pronounced this name “Deflacroy” – eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys, and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 49