That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  Mr Brown quietly gathered up his paper and crept out to the verandah, where his wife sat with the week’s mending.

  “William’s gone raving mad in the dining-room,” he said pleasantly, as he sat down. “Takes the form of a wild thirst for knowledge, and a babbling of a Miss Drawing, or Drew, or something. He’s best left alone.”

  Mrs Brown merely smiled placidly over the mending.

  Mr Brown had finished one leading article and begun another before William appeared again. He stood in the doorway frowning and stern.

  “Father, what’s the capital of Holland?”

  “Good Heavens!” said his father. “Buy him an encyclopedia. Anything, anything. What does he think I am? What –”

  “I’d better set apart a special room for his homework,” said Mrs Brown soothingly, “now that he’s beginning to take such an interest.”

  “A room!” echoed his father bitterly. “He wants a whole house.”

  Miss Drew was surprised and touched by William’s earnestness and attention the next day. At the end of the afternoon school he kindly offered to carry her books home for her. He waved aside all protests. He marched home by her side discoursing pleasantly, his small freckled face beaming devotion.

  “I like pirates, don’t you, Miss Drew? An’ robbers an’ things like that? Miss Drew, would you like to be married to a robber?”

  He was trying to reconcile his old beloved dream of his future estate with the new one of becoming Miss Drew’s husband.

  “No,” she said firmly.

  His heart sank.

  “Nor a pirate?” he said sadly.

  “No.”

  “They’re quite nice really – pirates,” he assured her.

  “I think not.”

  “Well,” he said resignedly, “we’ll jus’ have to go huntin’ wild animals and things. That’ll be all right.”

  “Who?” she said, bewildered.

  “Well – jus’ you wait,” he said darkly.

  Then: “Would you rather be married by the Archbishop of York or the Pope?”

  “The Archbishop, I think,” she said gravely.

  He nodded.

  “All right.”

  She was distinctly amused. She was less amused the next evening. Miss Drew had a male cousin – a very nice-looking male cousin, with whom she often went for walks in the evening. This evening, by chance, they passed William’s house, and William, who was in the garden, threw aside his temporary role of pirate and joined them. He trotted happily on the other side of Miss Drew. He entirely monopolised the conversation. The male cousin seemed to encourage him, and this annoyed Miss Drew. He refused to depart in spite of Miss Drew’s strong hints. He had various items of interest to impart, and he imparted them with the air of one assured of an appreciative hearing. He had found a dead rat the day before and given it to his dog, but his dog didn’t like ’em dead and neither did the ole cat, so he’d buried it. Did Miss Drew like all those flowers he’d got her the other day? He was afraid that he cudn’t bring any more like that jus’ yet. Were there pirates now? Well, what would folks do to one if there was one? He din’t see why there shun’t be pirates now. He thought he’d start it, anyway. He’d like to shoot a lion. He was goin’ to one day. He’d shoot a lion an’ a tiger. He’d bring the skin home to Miss Drew, if she liked. He grew recklessly generous. He’d bring home lots of skins of all sorts of animals for Miss Drew.

  “Don’t you think you ought to be going home, William?” said Miss Drew coldly.

  William hastened to reassure her.

  “Oh, no – not for ever so long yet,” he said.

  “Isn’t it your bedtime?”

  “Oh, no – not yet – not for ever so long.”

  The male cousin was giving William his whole attention.

  “What does Miss Drew teach you at school, William?” he said.

  “Oh, jus’ ornery things. Armadas an’ things. An’ ’bout lending a hundred pounds. That’s a norful soft thing. I unnerstand it,” he added hastily, fearing further explanation, “but it’s soft. My father thinks it is, too, an’ he oughter know. He’s bin abroad lots of times. He’s bin chased by a bull, my father has –”

  The shades of night were falling fast when William reached Miss Drew’s house still discoursing volubly. He was drunk with success. He interpreted his idol’s silence as the silence of rapt admiration.

  He was passing through the gate with his two companions with the air of one assured of welcome, when Miss Drew shut the gate upon him firmly.

  “You’d better go home now, William,” she said.

  William hesitated.

  “I don’t mind comin’ in a bit,” he said. “I’m not tired.”

  But Miss Drew and the male cousin were already halfway up the walk.

  William turned his steps homeward. He met Ethel near the gate.

  “William, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It’s hours past your bedtime.”

  “I was goin’ for a walk with Miss Drew.”

  “But you should have come home at your bedtime.”

  “I don’t think she wanted me to go,” he said with dignity. “I think it wun’t of bin p’lite.”

  William found that a new and serious element had entered his life. It was not without its disadvantages. Many had been the little diversions by which William had been wont to while away the hours of instruction. In spite of his devotion to Miss Drew, he missed the old days of carefree exuberance, but he kept his new seat in the front row, and clung to his role of earnest student. He was beginning to find also, that a conscientious performance of home lessons limited his activities after school hours, but at present he hugged his chains. Miss Drew, from her seat on the platform, found William’s soulful concentrated gaze somewhat embarrassing, and his questions even more so.

  As he went out of school he heard her talking to another mistress.

  “I’m very fond of syringa,” she was saying. “I’d love to have some.”

  William decided to bring her syringa, handfuls of syringa, armfuls of syringa.

  He went straight home to the gardener.

  “No, I ain’t got no syringa. Please step off my rosebed, Mister William. No, there ain’t any syringa in this ’ere garding. I dunno for why. Please leave my ’ose pipe alone, Mister William.”

  “Huh!” ejaculated William, scornfully turning away.

  He went round the garden. The gardener had been quite right. There were guelder roses everywhere, but no syringa.

  He climbed the fence and surveyed the next garden. There were guelder roses everywhere, but no syringa. It must have been some peculiarity in the soil.

  William strolled down the road, scanning the gardens as he went. All had guelder roses. None had syringa.

  Suddenly he stopped.

  On a table in the window of a small house at the bottom of the road was a vase of syringa. He did not know who lived there. He entered the garden cautiously. No one was about.

  He looked into the room. It was empty. The window was open at the bottom.

  He scrambled in, removing several layers of white paint from the windowsill as he did so. He was determined to have that syringa. He took it dripping from the vase, and was preparing to depart, when the door opened and a fat woman appeared upon the threshold. The scream that she emitted at sight of William curdled the very blood in his veins. She dashed to the window, and William, in self-defence, dodged round the table and out of the door. The back door was open, and William blindly fled by it. The fat woman did not pursue. She was leaning out of the window, and her shrieks rent the air.

  “Police! Help! Murder! Robbers!”

  The quiet little street rang with the raucous sounds.

  William felt cold shivers creeping up and down his spine. He was in a small back garden from which he could see no exit.

  Meanwhile the shrieks were redoubled.

  “Help! Help! Help!”

  Then came sounds of the front door open
ing and men’s voices.

  “Hello! Who is it? What is it?”

  William glared round wildly. There was a hen house in the corner of the garden, and into this he dashed, tearing open the door and plunging through a mass of flying feathers and angry, disturbed hens.

  William crouched in a corner of the dark hen house determinedly clutching his bunch of syringa.

  Distant voices were at first all he could hear. Then they came nearer, and he heard the fat lady’s voice loudly declaiming.

  “He was quite a small man, but with such an evil face. I just had one glimpse of him as he dashed past me. I’m sure he’d have murdered me if I hadn’t cried for help. Oh, the coward! And a poor defenceless woman! He was standing by the silver table. I disturbed him at his work of crime. I feel so upset. I shan’t sleep for nights. I shall see his evil, murderous face. And a poor unarmed woman!”

  “Can you give us no details, madam?” said a man’s voice. “Could you recognise him again?”

  “Anywhere!” she said firmly. “Such a criminal face. You’ve no idea how upset I am. I might have been a lifeless corpse now, if I hadn’t had the courage to cry for help.”

  “We’re measuring the footprints, madam. You say he went out by the front door?”

  “I’m convinced he did. I’m convinced he’s hiding in the bushes by the gate. Such a low face. My nerves are absolutely jarred.”

  “We’ll search the bushes again, madam,” said the other voice wearily, “but I expect he has escaped by now.”

  “The brute!” said the fat lady. “Oh, the brute! And that face. If I hadn’t had the courage to cry out –”

  The voices died away and William was left alone in a corner of the hen house.

  A white hen appeared in the little doorway, squawked at him angrily, and retired, cackling indignation. Visions of lifelong penal servitude or hanging passed before William’s eyes. He’d rather be executed, really. He hoped they’d execute him.

  Then he heard the fat lady bidding goodbye to the policeman. Then she came to the back garden evidently with a friend, and continued to pour forth her troubles.

  “And he dashed past me, dear. Quite a small man, but with such an evil face.”

  A black hen appeared in the little doorway, and with an angry squawk at William, returned to the back garden.

  “I think you’re splendid, dear,” said the invisible friend. “How you had the courage.”

  The white hen gave a sardonic scream.

  “You’d better come in and rest, darling,” said the friend.

  “I’d better,” said the fat lady in a plaintive, suffering voice. “I do feel very … shaken… . ”

  Their voices ceased, the door was closed, and all was still.

  Cautiously, very cautiously, a much dishevelled William crept from the hen house and round the side of the house. Here he found a locked side-gate over which he climbed, and very quietly he glided down to the front gate and to the road.

  “Where’s William this evening?” said Mrs Brown. “I do hope he won’t stay out after his bedtime.”

  “Oh, I’ve just met him,” said Ethel. “He was going up to his bedroom. He was covered with hen feathers and holding a bunch of syringa.”

  “Mad!” sighed his father. “Mad! Mad! Mad!”

  The next morning William laid a bunch of syringa upon Miss Drew’s desk. He performed the offering with an air of quiet, manly pride. Miss Drew recoiled.

  “Not syringa, William. I simply can’t bear the smell!”

  William gazed at her in silent astonishment for a few moments.

  Then: “But you said … you said … you said you were fond of syringa an’ that you’d like to have them.”

  “Did I say syringa?” said Miss Drew vaguely. “I meant guelder roses.”

  William’s gaze was one of stony contempt.

  He went slowly back to his old seat at the back of the room.

  That evening he made a bonfire with several choice friends, and played Red Indians in the garden. There was a certain thrill in returning to the old life.

  “Hello!” said his father, encountering William creeping on all fours among the bushes. “I thought you did home lessons now?”

  William arose to an upright position.

  “I’m not goin’ to take much bother over ’em now,” said William. “Miss Drew, she can’t talk straight. She dunno what she means.”

  “That’s always the trouble with women,” agreed his father. “William says his idol has feet of clay,” he said to his wife, who had approached.

  “I dunno as she’s got feet of clay,” said William, the literal. “All I say is she can’t talk straight. I took no end of trouble an’ she dunno what she means. I think her feet’s all right. She walks all right. ’Sides, when they make folks false feet, they make ’em of wood, not clay.”

  MY FIRST FEE

  Isaac Babel

  Isaac Babel (1894–1940) was a journalist, playwright and author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Tales, as well as stories of his youth. The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel were published in 2002. Born near Odessa, he moved to Petrograd, met Maxim Gorky and began making a living as a writer. He was shot, having been made to confess to being a Trotskyite spy, aged forty-five, a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge on account of his love for the wife of an NKVD chief. Babel’s last words were “I am innocent … I am asking for only one thing – let me finish my work.” He was exonerated under Krushchev in 1954.

  To be in Tiflis in spring, to be twenty years old, and not to be loved – that is a misfortune. Such a misfortune befell me. I was working as a proofreader for the printing press of the Caucasus Military District. The Kura River bubbled beneath the windows of my attic. The sun in the morning, rising from behind the mountains, lit up the river’s murky knots. I was renting a room in the attic from a newlywed Georgian couple. My landlord was a butcher at the Eastern Bazaar. In the room next door, the butcher and his wife, in the grip of love, thrashed about like two large fish trapped in a jar. The tails of these crazed fish thumped against the partition, rocking the whole attic, which was blackened by the piercing sun, ripping it from its rafters and whisking it off to eternity. They could not part their teeth, clenched in the obstinate fury of passion. In the mornings, Milyet, the young bride, went out to get bread. She was so weak that she had to hold on to the banister. Her delicate little foot searched for each step, and there was a vague blind smile on her lips, like that of a woman recovering from a long illness. Laying her palm on her small breasts, she bowed to everyone she met in the street – the Assyrian grown green with age, the kerosene seller, and the market shrews with faces gashed by fiery wrinkles, who were selling hanks of sheep’s wool. At night the thumping and babbling of my neighbors was followed by a silence as piercing as the whistle of a cannonball.

  To be twenty years old, to live in Tiflis, and to listen at night to the tempests of other people’s silence – that is a misfortune. To escape it, I ran out of the house and down to the Kura River, where I was over-powered by the bathhouse steam of Tiflis springtime. It swept over me, sapping my strength. I roamed through the hunchbacked streets, my throat parched. A fog of springtime sultriness chased me back to my attic, to that forest of blackened stumps lit by the moon. I had no choice but to look for love. Needless to say, I found it. For better or worse, the woman I chose turned out to be a prostitute. Her name was Vera. Every evening I went creeping after her along Golovinsky Boulevard, unable to work up the courage to talk to her. I had neither money for her nor words – those dull and ceaselessly burrowing words of love. Since childhood, I had invested every drop of my strength in creating tales, plays, and thousands of stories. They lay on my heart like a toad on a stone. Possessed by demonic pride, I did not want to write them down too soon. I felt that it was pointless to write worse than Tolstoy. My stories were destined to survive oblivion. Dauntless thought and grueling passion are only worth the effort spent on them when they are draped in beautiful raiment. But how does one
sew such raiment?

  A man who is caught in the noose of an idea and lulled by its serpentine gaze finds it difficult to bubble over with meaningless, burrowing words of love. Such a man is ashamed of shedding tears of sadness. He is not quick-witted enough to be able to laugh with happiness. I was a dreamer, and did not have the knack for the thoughtless art of happiness. Therefore I was going to have to give Vera ten rubles of my meager earnings.

  I made up my mind and went to stand watch outside the doors of the Simpatia tavern. Georgian princes in blue Circassian jackets and soft leather boots sauntered past in casual parade. They picked their teeth with silver toothpicks and eyed the carmine-painted Georgian women with large feet and slim hips. There was a shimmer of turquoise in the twilight. The blossoming acacias howled along the streets in their petal-shedding bass voices. Waves of officials in white coats rolled along the boulevard. Balsamic streams of air came flowing toward them from the Karzbek Mountains.

  Vera came later, as darkness was falling. Tall, her face a radiant white, she hovered before the apish crowd, as the Mother of God hovers before the prow of a fishing boat. She came up to the doors of the Simpatia. I hesitated, then followed her.

  “Off to Palestine?”

  Vera’s wide, pink back was moving in front of me. She turned around.

  “What?”

  She frowned, but her eyes were laughing.

  “Where does your path take you?”

  The words crackled in my mouth like dry firewood. Vera came over and walked in step with me.

  “A tenner – would that be fine with you?”

  I agreed so quickly that she became suspicious.

  “You sure you have ten rubles?”

  We went through the gates and I handed her my wallet. She opened it and counted twenty-one rubles, narrowing her gray eyes and moving her lips. She rearranged the coins, sorting gold with gold and silver with silver.