by Louise Welsh
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
V
The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men – some in their brushed Confederate uniforms – on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
THE HUNTER GRACCHUS
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was born into a prosperous German-speaking Jewish family in Prague; at that time an anti-Semitic city. His father was a self-made businessman, his mother from a wealthy family. Kafka qualified as a lawyer. He found a post which allowed him to finish work at 2pm, leaving the rest of the day to write. Nevertheless tension between the need to make a living and his artistic desires, coupled with pressure from his father to conform, led to suicidal thoughts. He died of tuberculosis.
Two boys were sitting on the harbor wall playing with dice. A man was reading a newspaper on the steps of the monument, resting in the shadow of a hero who was flourishing his sword on high. A girl was filling her bucket at the fountain. A fruit-seller was lying beside his wares, gazing at the lake. Through the vacant window and door openings of a café one could see two men quite at the back drinking their wine. The proprietor was sitting at a table in front and dozing. A bark was silently making for the little harbor, as if borne by invisible means over the water. A man in a blue blouse climbed ashore and drew the rope through a ring. Behind the boatman two other men in dark coats with silver buttons carried a bier, on which, beneath a great flower-patterned fringed silk cloth a man was apparently lying.
Nobody on the quay troubled about the newcomers; even when they lowered the bier to wait for the boatman, who was still occupied with his rope, nobody went nearer, nobody asked them a question, nobody accorded them an inquisitive glance.
The pilot was still further detained by a woman who, a child at her breast, now appeared with loosened hair on the deck of the boat. Then he advanced and indicated a yellowish two-storied house that rose abruptly on the left near the water; the bearers took up their burden and bore it to the low but gracefully pillared door. A little boy opened a window just in time to see the party vanishing into the house, then hastily shut the window again. The door too was now shut; it was of black oak, and very strongly made. A flock of doves which had been flying around the belfry alighted in the street before the house. As if their food were stored within, they assembled in front of the door. One of them flew up to the first story and pecked at the window-pane. They were bright-hued, well-tended, lively birds. The woman on the boat flung grain to them in a wide sweep; they ate it up and flew across to the woman.
A man in a top hat tied with a band of black crêpe now descended one of the narrow and very steep lanes that led to the harbor. He glanced around vigilantly, everything seemed to distress him, his mouth twisted at the sight of some offal in a corner. Fruit skins were lying on the steps of the monument; he swept them off in passing with his stick. He rapped at the house door, at the same time taking his top hat from his head with his black-gloved hand. The door was opened at once, and some fifty little boys appeared in two rows in the long entry hall, and bowed to him.
The boatman descended the stairs, greeted the gentleman in black, conducted him up to the first story, led him around the bright and elegant loggia which encircled the courtyard, and both of them entered, while the boys pressed after them at a respectful distance, a cool spacious room looking toward the back, from whose window no habitation, but only a bare, blackish-gray rocky wall was to be seen. The bearers were busied in setting up and lighting several long candles at the head of the bier, yet these did not give light, but only disturbed the shadows which had been immobile till then, and made them flicker over the walls. The cloth covering the bier had been thrown back. Lying on it was a man with wildly matted hair, who looked somewhat like a hunter. He lay without motion and, it seemed, without breathing, his eyes closed; yet only his trappings indicated that this man was probably dead.
The gentleman stepped up to the bier, laid his hand on the brow of the man lying upon it, then kneeled down and prayed. The boatman made a sign to the bearers to leave the room; they went out, drove away the boys who had gathered outside, and shut the door. But even that did not seem to satisfy the gentleman, he glanced at the boatman; the boatman understood, and vanished through a side door into the next room. At once the man on the bier opened his eyes, turned his face painfully toward the gentleman, and said: “Who are you?” Without any mark of surprise the gentleman rose from his kneeling posture and answered: “The Burgomaster of Riva.”
The man on the bier nodded, indicated a chair with a feeble movement of his arm, and said, after the Burgomaster had accepted his invitation: “I knew that, of course, Burgomaster, but in the first moments of returning consciousness I always forget, everything goes around before my eyes, and it is best to ask about anything even if I know. You too probably know that I am the Hunter Gracchus.”
“Certainly,” said the Burgomaster. “Your arrival was announced to me during the night. We had been asleep for a good while. Then toward midnight my wife cried: ‘Salvatore’ – that’s my name – ‘look at that dove at the window.’ It was really a dove, but as big as a cock. It flew over me and said in my ear: ‘Tomorrow the dead Hunter Gracchus is coming; receive him in the name of the city.’…”
The Hunter nodded and licked his lips with the tip of his tongue: “Yes, the doves flew here before me. But do you believe, Burgomaster, that I shall remain in Riva?”
“I cannot say that yet,” replied the Burgomaster. “Are you dead?”
“Yes,” said the Hunter, “as you see. Many years a
go, yes, it must be a great many years ago, I fell from a precipice in the Black Forest – that is in Germany – when I was hunting a chamois. Since then I have been dead.”
“But you are alive too.” said the Burgomaster.
“In a certain sense,” said the Hunter, “in a certain sense I am alive too. My death ship lost its way; a wrong turn of the wheel, a moment’s absence of mind on the pilot’s part, the distraction of my lovely native country, I cannot tell what it was; I only know this, that I remained on earth and that ever since my ship has sailed earthly waters. So I, who asked for nothing better than to live among my mountains, travel after my death through all the lands of the earth.”
“And you have no part in the other world?” asked the Burgomaster, knitting his brow.
“I am forever,” replied the Hunter, “on the great stair that leads up to it. On that infinitely wide and spacious stair I clamber about, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, always in motion. The Hunter has been turned into a butterfly. Do not laugh.”
“I am not laughing,” said the Burgomaster in self-defense.
“That is very good of you,” said the Hunter. “I am always in motion. But when I make a supreme flight and see the gate actually shining before me I awaken presently on my old ship, still stranded forlornly in some earthly sea or other. The fundamental error of my onetime death grins at me as I lie in my cabin. Julia, the wife of the pilot, knocks at the door and brings me on my bier the morning drink of the land whose coasts we chance to be passing. I lie on a wooden pallet, I wear – it cannot be a pleasure to look at me – a filthy winding sheet, my hair and beard, black tinged with gray, have grown together inextricably, my limbs are covered with a great flowered-patterned woman’s shawl with long fringes. A sacramental candle stands at my head and lights me. On the wall opposite me is a little picture, evidently of a bushman who is aiming his spear at me and taking cover as best he can behind a beautifully painted shield. On shipboard one often comes across silly pictures, but that is the silliest of them all. Otherwise my wooden cage is quite empty. Through a hole in the side the warm airs of the southern night come in, and I hear the water slapping against the old boat.
“I have lain here ever since the time when, as the Hunter Gracchus living in the Black Forest, I followed a chamois and fell from a precipice. Everything happened in good order. I pursued, I fell, bled to death in a ravine, died, and this ship should have conveyed me to the next world. I can still remember how gladly I stretched myself out on this pallet for the first time. Never did the mountains listen to such songs from me as these shadowy walls did then.
“I had been glad to live and I was glad to die. Before I stepped aboard, I joyfully flung away my wretched load of ammunition, my knapsack, my hunting rifle that I had always been proud to carry, and I slipped into my winding sheet like a girl into her marriage dress. I lay and waited. Then came the mishap.”
“A terrible fate,” said the Burgomaster, raising his hand defensively. “And you bear no blame for it?”
“None,” said the Hunter. “I was a hunter; was there any sin in that? I followed my calling as a hunter in the Black Forest, where there were still wolves in those days. I lay in ambush, shot, hit my mark, flayed the skins from my victims: was there any sin in that? My labors were blessed. ‘The Great Hunter of the Black Forest’ was the name I was given. Was there any sin in that?”
“I am not called upon to decide that,” said the Burgomaster, “but to me also there seems to be no sin in such things. But then, whose is the guilt?”
“The boatman’s,” said the Hunter. “Nobody will read what I say here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were commanded to help me, every door and window would remain shut, everybody would take to bed and draw the bedclothes over his head, the whole earth would become an inn for the night. And there is sense in that, for nobody knows of me, and if anyone knew he would not know where I could be found, and if he knew where I could be found, he would not know how to deal with me, he would not know how to help me. The thought of helping me is an illness that has to be cured by taking to one’s bed.
“I know that, and so I do not shout to summon help, even though at moments – when I lose control over myself, as I have done just now, for instance – I think seriously of it. But to drive out such thoughts I need only look around me and verify where I am, and – I can safely assert – have been for hundreds of years.”
“Extraordinary,” said the Burgomaster, “extraordinary. And now do you think of staying here in Riva with us?”
“I think not,” said the Hunter with a smile, and, to excuse himself, he laid his hand on the Burgomaster’s knee. “I am here, more than that I do not know, further than that I cannot go. My ship has no rudder, and it is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”
HIGH WALKER AND BLOODY BONES
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was one of the first African-American women to graduate from Barnard College in 1928. A talented novelist, short story writer, playwright and folklorist, Hurston studied anthropology at Columbia. Her use of idiomatic speech in her writing has attracted both praise and criticism. She suffered financial difficulties in later life and her remains lay in an unmarked grave in Florida until 1973, when it was located by the novelist Alice Walker, who erected a gravestone inscribed, ‘A Genius of the South’.
This wuz uh man. His name was High Walker. He walked into a boneyard with skull-heads and other bones. So he would call them, “Rise up bloody bones and shake Yo’self.” And de bones would rise up and come together, and shake theirselves and part and lay back down. Then he would say to hisself, “High Walker,” and de bones would say “Be walkin’.”
When he’d git off a little way he’d look back over his shoulder and shake hisself and say, “High Walker and bloody bones,” and de bones would shake theirselves. Therefore he knowed he had power.
So uh man sold hisself to de high chief devil. He give ’im his whole soul and body tuh do ez he pleased wid it. He went out in uh drift uh woods and laid down flat on his back beyond all dese skull heads and bloody bones and said, “Go ’way Lawd, and come here Devil and do as you please wid me. Cause Ah want tuh do everything in de world dats wrong and never do nothing right.”
And he dried up and died away on doin’ wrong. His meat all left his bones and de bones all wuz separated.
And at dat time High Walker walked upon his skull head and kicked and kicked it on ahead of him a many and a many times and said tuh it, “Rise up and shake yo’self. High Walker is here.”
Ole skull head wouldn’t say nothin’. He looked back over his shoulder cause he heard some noises behind him and said, “Bloody bones you won’t say nothin’ yet. Rise tuh de power in de flesh.”
Den de skull head said, “My mouf brought me here and if you don’t mind, you’n will bring you here.”
High Walker went on back to his white folks and told de white man dat a dry skull head wuz talkin’ in de drift today. White man say he didn’t believe it.
“Well, if you don’t believe it, come go wid me and Ah’ll prove it. And if it don’t speak, you kin chop mah head off right where it at.”
So de white man and High Walker went back in de drift tuh find dis ole skull head. So when he walked up tuh it, he begin tuh kick and kick de ole skull head, but it wouldn’t say nothin’. High Walker looked at de white man and seen ’im whettin’ his knife. Whettin’ it hard and de sound of it said rick-de-rick, rick-de-rick, rick-de-rick! So High Walker kicked and kicked dat ole skull head and called it many and many uh time, but it never said nothin’. So de white man cut off High Walker’s head.
And de ole dry skull head said, “See dat now! Ah told you dat mouf brought me here and if you didn’t mind out it’d bring you here.”
So de bloody bones riz up and shook they selves seben times and de white man got skeered and said, “What you mean by dis?”
> De bloody bones say, “We got High Walker and we all bloody bones now in de drift together.”
THE VEST
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) was born in Swansea. He attended Swansea Grammar School, where his father was a teacher. Thomas knew from an early age that he wanted to become a poet. He moved to London in 1934, the year his first collection was published. There he embraced the bohemian scene and met his future wife Caitlin Macnamara. Thomas’s talent was recognised in his lifetime, but he was beset by financial difficulties, exacerbated by alcoholism. He died in New York while on a reading tour.
He rang the bell. There was no answer. She was out. He turned the key.
The hall in the late afternoon light was full of shadows. They made one almost solid shape. He took off his hat and coat, looking sideways, so that he might not see the shape, at the light through the sitting-room door.
“Is anybody in?”
The shadows bewildered him. She would have swept them up as she swept the invading dust.
In the drawing-room the fire was low. He crossed over to it and sat down. His hands were cold. He needed the flames of the fire to light up the corners of the room. On the way home he had seen a dog run over by a motorcar. The sight of the blood had confused him. He had wanted to go down on his knees and finger the blood that made a round pool in the middle of the road. Someone had plucked at his sleeve, asking him if he was ill. He remembered that the sound and strength of his voice had drowned the first desire. He had walked away from the blood, with the stained wheels of the car and the soaking blackness under the bonnet going round and round before his eyes. He needed the warmth. The wind outside had cut between his fingers and thumbs.