The Collected Stories

by Dylan Thomas

  The workers in the south and the north of the island, where death had fallen thinly, were provided with guns and shafts of steel [and little pinned grenades]. They cocked the guns and laughed up at the shadow above them[, pointing the barrels at the high men of the island. They slew the givers of arms. They looted the shops, and raped the widows, and burgled the hearts of the dead, finding the keys of hate in the opened pulses. There was love and hate in the island, out of the spirits of death a new, reeking life, out of the last hacked coals a new fire]. Street rose against street, and city against city. In the ruined cities, along the deserted streets where the dead on the pavements fell apart, the dying spoke women’s names, [and the vermin from the blown sewers gnawed at their chests,] the shadow moved. I saw two ghosts in the avenue by the broken park. They moved among the dead, prying into each shot face, [upon] [on] each [empty] hollow head, and under each folded eye.

  The ships were unloaded at the wharves, the engines cold in the stations, the printing presses silent, and the sentries before the island palace stiff [, split like cabbages,] in their boxes. In the parks the birds were singing, a new froth was on the trees, the wind blew the waste paper up the paths. [I remember] I walked all that morning, a ghost [in a springing world, a solid man in a world that was all a ghost]. Wherever I walked, in street or under arch, on the grass of the green parks, through alley and slum down to the edge of the corpsy water, I saw the two ghosts searching. They moved among the dead, questioning each dead eye, invisibly touching the hems of the dresses, the young, triangular breasts, the soft heart, [and] the hard loins.

  The guns grew quieter in the distance. The last of the first revolution died away in the splutter of fire from the east of the great city. [I pattered, silent in my leather like a living man locked and forgotten in a mortuary,] I walked in strange thoroughfares and through the unlit centre of the city, strange itself in its first blindness. As I journeyed through the first stages of the night, coming upon the two ghosts now at a dark corner, now in the shadow of a doorway, and bent forever over the riddled dead, I held my scarf to my face for the smell of the dead flowering Black plague would branch from these blacker plants that shot to heaven through the wounds of the unburied fallen. I made my image as I walked, and the hemlock and the upas sprouted for me from the gutter beds.

  It was a minute before midnight that I saw a lantern swinging at the end of a street. It was [a red rose] bright and sweet among the flowers that stank at my side, but, as I moved towards it, I felt the wind of the two ghosts as they drifted past me, and I followed them, calling them by name. There were men at the corner, dark-eyed behind their lantern.

  ‘Who goes there?’ they [said] cried.

  They swung the lantern before my face.

  ‘Let me pass’, I said.

  [Who are you, comrade?] they [said] cried again.

  Where are you going?

  [Let me pass]

  [Who are you, comrade? they said]

  [Of the wise men, I cried, let me pass]

  [Where are you going, comrade?]

  [Fools, fools, I cried, and] I waited no longer but knocked the lantern from their hands and plunged into the darkness after the windy ghosts. I ran on and on, with the noise of the revolvers behind me, [I ran on and on,] through a maze of alleys into a moonlit square.

  There stood the two ghosts. At their feet lay a dead woman, naked but for her shawl, with a bayonet wound in her breasts. Slowly I stepped towards her. [Her time had been well upon her when they cut her down.] [But] As I watched, [the] a miraculous life stirred in her belly, and the arms of the child in [the] her womb [of the dead mother] broke, lifted, through the flesh.

  The two ghosts bowed down.

  Gold, said [Gaspar] the first ghost, [holding] raising a golden shadow to the light of the moon.

  Frankincense, said [Melchior] the second ghost and his shadowy gift smoked from him.

  The noise of the guns grew nearer and still nearer.

  [Kneeling] I knelt where I stood[I] and felt the new joy of pain as a bullet drove into my [lung] breast. I fell upon the pavement near the two lifted arms, and [, bitter as myrrh,] my [bitter] blood streamed bitterly on to the [mother’s feet] emerging head.

  LIST OF SOURCES

  This list has been provided by Walford Davies, who also advised on the text of the stories.

  Abbreviations

  EPW

  Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings, ed. Walford Davies, London & New York, 1971.

  ML

  The Map of Love (poems and stories), London, 1939.

  Prospect

  A Prospect of the Sea and Other Short Stories and Prose Writings, ed. Daniel Jones, London, 1955.

  QEOM

  Quite Early One Morning, ed. Aneirin Talfan Davies, London, 1954. An enlarged American edition, also with other variations, appeared in the same year.

  ‘After the Fair’. Dated November 1933 in the ‘Red Notebook’. This Notebook, now at the Lockwood Memorial Library, the State University of New York at Buffalo, is the initial MS source also for the next eight stories. ‘After the Fair’ was first published in the New English Weekly, 15 March 1934; collected in Prospect.

  ‘The Tree’. Dated 28 December 1933 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in the Adelphi, December 1934; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘The True Story’. Entered under the title ‘Martha’ in the ‘Red Notebook’, 22 January 1934. First published in Yellowjacket, May 1939; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Enemies’. Dated 11 February 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in New Stories, June-July 1934; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘The Dress’. Dated March 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in Comment, 4 January 1936; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘The Visitor’. Dated April 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in The Criterion, January 1935; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘The Vest’. Dated 20 July 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in Yellowjacket, May 1939; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Burning Baby’. Dated September 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in Contemporary Poetry and Prose, May 1936; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Orchards’. Derived from ‘Anagram’, dated October 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in The Criterion, July 1936; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘The End of the River’. First published in the New English Weekly, 22 November 1934; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Lemon’. First published in Life and Letters Today, Spring 1936; collected in Prospect.

  ‘The Horse’s Ha’. First published in Janus, May 1936; collected in EPW.

  ‘The School for Witches’. First published in Contemporary Poetry and Prose, August-September 1936; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Mouse and the Woman’. First published in Transition, Fall 1936; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘A Prospect of the Sea’. First published in Life and Letters Today, Spring 1937; collected in Prospect.

  ‘The Holy Six’. First published in Contemporary Poetry and Prose, Spring 1937; collected in EPW.

  ‘Prologue to an Adventure’. First published in Wales, Summer 1937; collected in EPW.

  ‘The Map of Love’. First published in Wales, Autumn 1937; collected in ML and Prospect.

  ‘In the Direction of the Beginning’. First published in Wales, March 1938; collected in Prospect.

  ‘An Adventure from a Work in Progress’. First published in Seven, Spring 1939; collected in EPW.

  PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG

  Each story was finished close to its individual periodical printing, or as indicated.

  ‘The Peaches’. First published in Life and Letters Today, October 1938.

  ‘A Visit to Grandpa’s’. First published in the New English Weekly, 10 March 1938.

  ‘Patricia, Edith, and Arnold’. First published in Seven, Christmas 1939.

  ‘The Fight’. First published in Life and Letters Today, Dece
mber 1939.

  ‘Extraordinary Little Cough’. First published in Life and Letters Today, September 1939.

  ‘Just Like Little Dogs’. First published in Wales, October 1939.

  ‘Where Tawe Flows’. Completed by early December 1939.

  ‘Who Do You Wish Was With Us?’ Completed by early December 1939.

  ‘Old Garbo’. First published in Life and Letters Today, July 1939.

  ‘One Warm Saturday’. Completed by July 1938.

  First published together in 1940.

  ADVENTURES IN THE SKIN TRADE

  The work was mainly written May-June 1941. The three parts were separately published as follows.

  ‘A Fine Beginning’. First published in Folios of New Writing, Autumn 1941.

  ‘Plenty of Furniture’. First published in New World Writing, November 1952.

  ‘Four Lost Souls’. First published in New World Writing, May 1953.

  First published together posthumously in 1953.

  ‘Quite Early One Morning’. Recorded for BBC Wales, 14 December 1944 (broadcast 31 August 1945); published in Wales, Autumn 1946; collected in QEOM.

  ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’. Thomas wrote a script called ‘Memories of Christmas’ for BBC Wales Children’s Hour in the autumn of 1945 (broadcast 16 December 1945; published in The Listener, 20 December 1945, and Wales, Winter 1946; collected in the British edition of QEOM). He later wrote a piece on similar material in the form of a ‘Conversation about Christmas’ for Picture Post (27 December 1947). During his first visit to America he amalgamated the ‘Memories’ and the ‘Conversation’ for publication in Harper’s Bazaar (December 1950) as ‘A Child’s Memories of Christmas in Wales’. This text, the one used here, was also that used for the American edition of QEOM.

  ‘Holiday Memory’. BBC Wales Broadcast, 25 October 1946; published in The Listener, 7 November 1946; collected in QEOM. ‘The Crumbs of One Man’s Year’. BBC Home Service broadcast, 27 December 1946; published in The Listener, 2 January 1947; collected in QEOM.

  ‘Return Journey’. Written February 1947; recorded for BBC Home Service, 2 April 1947 (broadcast 9 May 1947); collected in QEOM. ‘The Followers’. First published in World Review, October 1952; collected in Prospect.

  ‘A Story’. Written for BBC television, 10 August 1953; published in The Listener, 17 September 1953; collected in QEOM (American edition) and Prospect.

  APPENDIX

  ‘Brember’. First published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine, vol. 28, no. 1 (April 1931); collected in EPW.

  ‘Jarley’s’. First published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine, vol. 30, no. 3 (December 1933). Signed ‘Old Boy’ and attributed to Thomas on the authority of George H. Gwynne, a former master at the school. Thomas had left the school in July 1931. Collected in EPW.

  ‘In the Garden’. First published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine, vol. 31, no. 2 (July 1934). Signed ‘Old Boy’; first attributed to Dylan Thomas, on internal evidence, by R. N. Maud. Collected in EPW.

  ‘Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar’. Dated 8 August 1934 in the ‘Red Notebook’. First published in EPW.

  * The title under which the following three stories were first printed together.

  * The title under which the following three stories were first printed together.

  * Square brackets denote deletions and italics indicate superior additions by Dylan Thomas. This draft of an unpublished story gives an interesting insight into Thomas’s method of revising a draft.

  Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1940, 1946, 1954, 1955, 1964, 1971 by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  Copyright 1952, 1953 by Dylan Thomas

  Copyright © 1984 by the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas

  Foreword Copyright © 1983 by Leslie Norris

  List of Sources Copyright © 1983 by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  First published clothbound by New Directions in 1984 and as New Directions Paperbook 626 in 1986.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Thomas, Dylan, 1914-1953.

  The collected stories.

  I. Title.

  PR6039.H52A15 1984 823’.912 84-6822

  ISBN 13: 978-0-8112-0998-4

  ISBN 10: 0-8112-0998-9

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corp.

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011.

  BY DYLAN THOMAS

  ADVENTURES IN THE SKIN TRADE

  and Other Stories

  A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES

  illustrated by Ellen Raskin

  A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES

  illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg

  COLLECTED POEMS

  THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS

  film and radio scripts

  EIGHT STORIES

  ON THE AIR WITH DYLAN THOMAS

  The Broadcasts

  THE POEMS OF DYLAN THOMAS

  PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG

  stories

  QUITE EARLY ONE MORNING

  and Other Stories

  REBECCA’S DAUGHTERS

  a film scenario

  SELECTED LETTERS

  UNDER MILK WOOD, A Play for Voices