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Fall 2021

Understanding the Backgrounds of

British and American Literature

Selected Readings

Course Instructor: Derek McGovern

Division of English Language and Literature

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I Have a Rendezvous with Death

By Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ‘twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear...

But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

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War poet Alan Seeger and his rendezvous with death

By Michael G. Williams

It is difficult to say how familiar people are with him. Some may have heard his name; others

may have read his poems; and still others might recognize his face.

More than 100 years after his violent death, poet Alan Seeger’s spirit is very much alive, thanks

in large part to the efforts of author and historian Michael Hill.

“I’ve researched many impressive figures throughout my career, but Seeger’s untold story

really stood out to me,” says Hill. “He’s probably best known for his famous poem, ‘I Have a

Rendezvous With Death,’ but he also had an admirable passion for life and was a brave soldier.”

Free spirit

Born in New York in 1888, Seeger enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a highly intellectual

family. In 1906, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he edited and wrote for the Harvard

Monthly.

Following his graduation in 1910, he relocated to Greenwich Village and lived as a free-spirited

poet, keeping company with literary greats such as William Butler Yeats. But unable to find a

publisher for his work, he struck out for Paris in 1912 in hopes of meeting success in Europe.

Despite his continued failure to publish his poetry, Seeger fell in love with Paris. When war

broke out in 1914, he readily came to the defense of his adopted home, enlisting in the French

Foreign Legion.

“Seeger wanted to be part of something momentous,” explains Hill. “He reasoned that life

wasn’t worth living if you didn’t try to make your mark; he believed in what he was fighting

for.”

An avid diarist and letter writer, Seeger had an exquisite eye for detail. He was perceptive both

in his understanding of humanity and in his interpretation of his surroundings.

Beautiful and horrifying

World War I through his eyes was beautiful, horrifying, and all too real.

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Seeger’s war poems and diary entries offer portraits of the picturesque French countryside

intermingled with visceral descriptions of bombed-out villages; the stench of rotting corpses;

and the filth, grime, and pestilence of the soldier’s daily existence in the trenches of the Western

Front.

Seeger often scribbled verse to the staccato chatter of machine gun fire and the explosions of

artillery shells. His work was without pretense, untainted by ambitions of wealth and fame.

It was art in its purest form, produced under the most emotional of circumstances. That’s what

makes Seeger’s story important.

Like so many young men who went to war, Seeger rapidly came of age. He entered the fray

driven by romantic ideals of heroism and soon tasted the privations of combat.

His writing reflects this transition.

“As you read his diary, letters, and poems, you see him evolve,” says Hill. “His experience in

combat kindled an almost fatalistic spark wherein he was content to die for a cause he thought

worthwhile.”

Hill believes this is why “I Have a Rendezvous With Death” has resonated over the decades.

Published after Seeger’s death by a machine gun barrage during the Battle of the Somme (1916),

the poem highlights his premonition of a youthful and glorious end in combat.

“In my research, I found this poem used in funerals and memorial ceremonies from the Vietnam

War to the present-day conflicts in the Middle East,” he says. “Seeger was at peace with the

prospect of death because he considered it a sacrifice made for something bigger than himself.

“I think that speaks to the extraordinary man that he was.”

Authors Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald alluded to Seeger in their own writing; and

John F. Kennedy regularly recited verses of “Rendezvous”—a fitting anthem of the president’s

own death.

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The Last Laugh (1918) By Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

'Oh! Jesus Christ! I'm hit, ' he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,

The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain, vain!

Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut! Tut-tut!

And the Big Gun guffawed.

Another sighed,-'O Mother, -Mother, - Dad!'

Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.

And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud

Leisurely gestured,-Fool!

And the splinters spat, and tittered.

'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,

Till slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.

And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;

Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;

And the Gas hissed.

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The Wild Swans at Coole (1917)

By W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

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Extract from Testament of Youth (1933)

By Vera Brittain (1893-1970)

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Another Stranger

By Roland A. Leighton (1895-1915)

Hédauville. November 1915.

The sunshine on the long white road

That ribboned down the hill,

The velvet clematis that clung

Around your window-sill

Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break

In dimples at your feet,

And when the thrush sings in your wood,

Unknowing you may meet

Another stranger, Sweet.

And if he is not quite so old

As the boy you used to know,

And less proud, too, and worthier,

You may not let him go---

(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)

It will be better so.

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Ulysses (1922) By James Joyce (1882-1941)

Extract from the final chapter

He rests. He has travelled.

With?

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad

the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer

and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and

Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.

When?

Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed

of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.

Where?

YES BECAUSE HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE THAT before as ask to get his breakfast in bed

with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick

voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he

had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser

ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too

much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first

God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody

wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill

never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman

certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get

shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then

still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of

nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for

them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a

month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they

throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes because

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theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think

it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir

party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old

ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with her old

maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of her to never see thy face again though he

looked more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate

bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning

but if it was a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it not to give

all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off

his feed thinking of her so either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was really

and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I meet ah yes

I met do you remember Menton and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he not

long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked

out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done

to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a solicitor

only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in

with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before

yesterday he was scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room to show him Dignams

death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be

thinking about business so very probably that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him

because all men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is now so as to wheedle

any money she can out of him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide

it not that I care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way though Id like to find out

so long as I dont have the two of them under my nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in

Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of those painted

women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to come near me when I found the long

hair on his coat without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was drinking water 1 woman

is not enough for them it was all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat

at our table on Christmas day if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing my potatoes and

the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was sure

he had something on with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it

was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I thought of her suggesting

me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I found in her room

the Friday she was out that was enough for me a little bit too much her face swelled up on her with

temper when I gave her her weeks notice I saw to that better do without them altogether do out the

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rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow

either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced

liar and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and singing about the place in the W C too because

she knew she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it

somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a great

squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his like that

with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes beaming love because he has an idea

about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to the Gaiety though Im not going

to give him the satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to be always and ever

wearing the same old hat unless I paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young

boy would like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the new

ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys feel with that down on their

cheek doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this that

and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I told him about some dean or

bishop was sitting beside me in the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a

stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me out with statues

encouraging him making him worse than he is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking

of who is it tell me his name who tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of

him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought to give it up now at

this age of his life simply ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it till he

comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once and

for all with all the talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the

ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first

you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish

some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like

a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to

go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank

like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up

was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has

that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real

father what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm

moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I

wonder did he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never turn or

let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course must be terrible

when a man cries let alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense

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off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about

himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing

I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not a horse

or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming

am I in it who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or

stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those

richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I

tasted once with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father

he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after we took the port and

potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound

as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I

thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when I blessed myself and said a Hail

Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world was coming to an end and then they

come and tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing only

make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May

see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he

says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one

yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of

a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose

is not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming

and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters

I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size

of that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like

that with a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they

want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt

such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull out and do it on me considering how

big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in

me nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a

touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly nobody would believe cutting her

teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or

twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a smell of children off her the one they called

budgers or something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last time

I was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed

to be healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I

risked having another not off him though still if he was married Im sure hed have a fine strong child but

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I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting Josie

Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what he likes

now if thatll do him any good I know they were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing

and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it

down my neck it was on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was why we had the standup

row over politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me

cry of course a woman is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in

only for I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so much I

couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot of mixedup things especially about the body and the

inside I often wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that family physician I could

always hear his voice talking when the room was crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a

coolness on with her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever he asked who

are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me the present of Byron's poems and the three

pairs of gloves so that finished that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how Id

even supposing he got in with her again and was going out to see her somewhere Id know if he refused

to eat the onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch him with

my veil and gloves on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning however alright well see then

let him go to her she of course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him that I

wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him and look her square in the eyes

she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind

of a manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him for

that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking me too

the night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I want to say to you only for I

put him off letting on I was in a temper with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out

too much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for

him she used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was there meaning him of course glauming

me over and when I said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me and did you wash possible

the women are always egging on to that putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly eye

blinking a bit putting on the indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what spoils

him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron

I said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got engaged afterwards

though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about

all my hairpins falling out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great humour

she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it meant because I used to tell her a good bit

of what went on between us not all but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault

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she didnt darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like now after living with

that dotty husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw

her she must have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment she was edging to draw

down a conversation about husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes

that sometimes he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just imagine

having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you any moment what a man well its not

the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyhow whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when

he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat when he

comes up in the street like then and now hes going about in his slippers to look for 10000 pounds for a

postcard Up up O sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to extinction actually

too stupid even to take his boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times

over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like me to put up with

him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and he knows that too at the bottom of his heart

take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man yes

it was found out on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course some

men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst word in the world what do they

ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to yes because they cant get on without us

white Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed

say its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have been madly in love with the

other fellow to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she

do besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they

theyre all so different

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Indian Camp (1924)

By Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.

Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them

got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the

camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.

The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oar-locks of the other boat quite a way

ahead of them in the mist.

The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his father's arm around him.

It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the

other boat moved farther ahead in the mist all the time.

“Where are we going, Dad?” Nick asked.

“Over to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.”

“Oh,” said Nick.

Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the

dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up on the beach. Uncle George gave both the

Indians cigars.

They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following

the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that

led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as

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the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and

they all walked on along the road.

They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties

where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them

back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old

woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.

Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for

two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the

road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick

and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower

bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her

husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe.

The room smelled very bad.

Nick's father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to

Nick.

“This lady is going to have a baby, Nick,” he said.

“I know,” said Nick.

“You don't know,” said his father. “Listen to me. What she is going through is called being in

labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get

the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.'

“I see,” Nick said.

Just then the woman cried out.

“Oh, Daddy, can't you give her something to make her stop screaming?” asked Nick.

“No. I haven't any anaesthetic,” his father said. “But her screams are not important. I don't hear

them because they are not important.”

The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.

The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nick's father went

into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the

water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.

“Those must boil,” he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake

of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his father's hands scrubbing each other

with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.

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“You see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first, but sometimes they're not. When

they're not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe I'll have to operate on this lady.

We'll know in a little while.”

When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.

“Pull back that quilt, will you, George?” he said. “I'd rather not touch it.”

Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She

bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, “Damn squaw bitch!” and the young

Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It

all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

“See, it's a boy, Nick,” he said. “How do you like being an interne?”

Nick said, “All right.” He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.

“There. That gets it,” said his father and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it.

“Now,” his father said, “there's some stitches to put in. You can watch this or not, Nick, just as

you like. I'm going to sew up the incision I made.”

Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

His father finished and stood up. Uncle George and the three Indian men stood up. Nick put

the basin out in the kitchen.

Uncle George looked at his arm. The young Indian smiled reminiscently.

“I'll put some peroxide on that, George,” the doctor said.

He bent over the Indian woman. She was quiet now and her eyes were closed. She looked very

pale. She did not know what had become of the baby or anything.

“I'll be back in the morning,” the doctor said, standing up. “The nurse should be here from St.

Ignace by noon and she'll bring everything we need.”

He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.

“That's one for the medical journal, George,” he said. “Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and

sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders.'

Uncle George was standing against the wall, looking at his arm.

34

“Oh, you're a great man, all right,” he said.

“Ought to have a look at the proud father. They're usually the worst sufferers in these little

affairs,” the doctor said. “I must say he took it all pretty quietly.”

He pulled back the blanket from the Indian's head. His hand came away wet. He mounted on

the edge of the lower bunk with the lamp in one hand and looked in. The Indian lay with his

face toward the wall. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into

a pool where his body sagged the bunk. His head rested on his left arm. The open razor lay,

edge up, in the blankets.

“Take Nick out of the shanty, George,” the doctor said.

There was no need of that. Nick, standing in the door of the kitchen, had a good view of the

upper bunk when his father, the lamp in one hand, tipped the Indian's head back.

It was just beginning to be daylight when they walked along the logging road back toward the

lake.

“I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie,” said his father, all his post-operative

exhilaration gone. “It was an awful mess to put you through.”

“Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?” Nick asked.

“No, that was very, very exceptional.”

“Why did he kill himself, Daddy?”

“I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess.”

“Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?”

“Not very many, Nick.”

“Do many women?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Don't they ever?”

“Oh, yes. They do sometimes.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Where did Uncle George go?”

35

“He'll turn up all right.”

“Is dying hard, Daddy?”

“No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends.”

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over

the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt

warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt

quite sure that he would never die.

36

Two extracts from The Great Gatsby (1925) By F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages,

where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at

West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller

in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating

in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the

frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and

turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had

emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his

hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his

leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that

it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local

heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do

for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he

was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious

way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily

I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute

and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for

Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

[Chapter One]

*************************

37

I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age

and a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable

laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne

and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and

profound.

At a lull in the entertainment the man looked at me and smiled.

“Your face is familiar,” he said, politely. “Weren’t you in the Third Division during

the war?”

“Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion.”

“I was in the Seventh Infantry until June 1918. I knew I'd seen you somewhere

before.”

We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he

lived in this vicinity for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane and was

going to try it out in the morning.

“Want to go with me, old sport? Just near the shore along the Sound.”

“What time?”

“Any time that suits you best.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask his name when Jordan looked around and smiled.

“Having a gay time now?” she inquired.

“Much better.” I turned again to my new acquaintance. “This is an unusual party for

me. I haven’t even seen the host. I live over there—" I waved my hand at the invisible

hedge in the distance, “and this man Gatsby sent over his chauffeur with an

invitation.”

For a moment he looked at me as if he failed to understand.

“I'm Gatsby,” he said suddenly.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

“I thought you knew, old sport. I'm afraid I'm not a very good host.”

38

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those

rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four

or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an

instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It

understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you

would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression

of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. [Chapter Three]

39

Old Man at the Bridge By Ernest Hemingway An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther. It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridgehead beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there. “Where do you come from?” I asked him. “From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled. That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled. “I was taking care of animals,” he explained.

“Oh,” I said, not quite understanding. “Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.” He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?” “Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.” I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there. “What animals were they?” I asked. “There were three animals altogether,” he explained. “There were two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.” “And you had to leave them?” I asked. “Yes. Because of the artillery. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.” “And you have no family?” I asked, watching the far end of the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the slope of the bank. “No,” he said, “only the animals I stated. The cat, of course, will be all right. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot think what will become of the others.” “What politics have you?” I asked. “I am without politics,” he said. “I am seventy-six years old. I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.”

“This is not a good place to stop,” I said. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.” “I will wait a while,” he said, “and then I will go. Where do the trucks go?” “Towards Barcelona,” I told him. “I know no one in that direction,” he said, “but thank you very much. Thank you again very much.” He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with some one, “The cat will be all right, I am sure. There is no need to be unquiet about

40

the cat. But the others. Now what do you think about the others?” “Why they’ll probably come through it all right.”

“You think so?” “Why not,” I said, watching the far bank where now there were no carts. “But what will they do under the artillery when I was told to leave because of the artillery?” “Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” I asked. “Yes.” “Then they’ll fly.” “Yes, certainly they’ll fly. But the others. It’s better not to think about the others,” he said. “If you are rested I would go,” I urged. “Get up and try to walk now.” “Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust. “I was taking care of animals,” he said dully, but no longer to me. “I was only taking care of animals.” There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have. [1938]

41

The Lotus Eater (1935)

by W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them,

and though some complain, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think

that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part

accept their lot with resignation. They are like tram–cars travelling forever on the same rails.

They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no

longer and then are sold as scrap–iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken

the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worthwhile having a good look at

him.

That was why I was curious to meet Thomas Wilson. It was an interesting and a bold thing he

had done. Of course the end was not yet, and until the experiment was concluded it was

impossible to call it successful. But from what I had heard it seemed he must be an odd sort of

fellow and I thought I should like to know him. I had been told he was reserved, but I had a

notion that with patience and tact I could persuade him to confide in me. I wanted to hear the

facts from his own lips. People exaggerate, they love to romanticize, and I was quite prepared

to discover that his story was not nearly so singular as I had been led to believe.

And this impression was confirmed when at last I made his acquaintance. It was on the Piazza

in Capri, where I was spending the month of August at a friend’s villa, and a little before sunset,

when most of the inhabitants, native and foreign, gather together to chat with their friends in

the cool of the evening. There is a terrace that overlooks the Bay of Naples, and when the sun

sinks slowly into the sea the island of Ischia is silhouetted against a blaze of splendour. It is

one of the loveliest sights in the world. I was standing there with my friend and host watching

42

it, when suddenly he said:

‘Look, there’s Wilson.’

‘Where?’

‘The man sitting on the parapet, with his back to us. He’s got a blue shirt on.’

I saw an undistinguished back and a small head of grey hair, short and rather thin.

‘I wish he’d turn round,’ I said.

‘He will presently.’

‘Ask him to come and have a drink with us at Morgano’s.’

‘All right.’

The instant of overwhelming beauty had passed and the sun, like the top of an orange, was

dipping into a wine–red sea. We turned round and leaning our backs against the parapet looked

at the people who were sauntering to and fro. They were all talking their heads off and the

cheerful noise was exhilarating. I was so intent on the scene that I had not noticed Wilson get

off the parapet and come towards us. As he passed us my friend stopped him.

‘Hullo, Wilson, I haven’t seen you bathing the last few days.’

‘I’ve been bathing on the other side for a change.’

My friend then introduced me. Wilson shook hands with me politely, but with indifference, for

a great many strangers come to Capri for a few days, or a few weeks, and I had no doubt he

was constantly meeting people who came and went. My friend asked him to have a drink with

us.

‘I was just going back to supper,’ he said.

‘Can’t it wait?’ I asked.

‘I suppose it can,’ he smiled.

Though his teeth were not very good, his smile was attractive. It was gentle and kindly. He was

dressed in a blue cotton shirt and a pair of grey trousers, much creased and none too clean, of

a thin canvas, and on his feet he wore a pair of very old espadrilles. The get–up was

picturesque, and very suitable to the place and the weather, but it did not at all go with his face.

It was a lined, long face, deeply sunburned, thin–lipped, with small grey eyes rather close

together and tight, neat features. The grey hair was carefully brushed. It was not a plain face;

indeed in his youth Wilson might have been good–looking. He wore the blue shirt, open at the

neck, and the grey canvas trousers, not as though they belonged to him, but as though,

shipwrecked in his pyjamas, he had been fitted out with odd garments by compassionate

43

strangers.

Moving off, we strolled across the Piazza and down the street till we came to Morgano’s. We

sat in the garden. Around us people were talking in Russian, German, Italian, and English. We

ordered drinks. We three gossiped for a while, for there is always a scandal of one sort or

another in Capri to make a topic of conversation, but nothing was said of particular interest and

in a little while Wilson got up and left us. Soon afterwards we strolled up to my friend’s villa

to dine. On the way he asked me what I had thought of Wilson.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe there’s a word of truth in your story.’

‘Why not?’

‘He isn’t the sort of man to do that sort of thing.’

‘How does anyone know what anyone is capable of?’

‘I should put him down as an absolutely normal man of business who’s retired on a comfortable

income. I think your story’s just the ordinary Capri tittle–tattle.’

‘Have it your own way,’ said my friend.

We were in the habit of bathing at a beach called the Baths of Tiberius. We took a fly down the

road to a certain point and then wandered through lemon groves and vineyards, noisy with

cicadas and heavy with the hot smell of the sun, till we came to the top of the cliff down which

a steep winding path led to the sea. A day or two later, just before we got down my friend said:

‘Oh, there’s Wilson back again.’

Wilson saw us and waved. He was standing up, a pipe in his mouth, and he wore nothing but a

pair of trunks. His body was dark brown, thin, but not emaciated, and, considering his wrinkled

face and grey hair, youthful. Hot from our walk, we undressed quickly and plunged at once

into the water. Six feet from the shore it was thirty feet deep, but so clear that you could see the

bottom. It was warm, yet invigorating.

When I got out Wilson was lying on his belly, with a towel under him, reading a book. I lit a

cigarette and went and sat down beside him.

‘Had a nice swim?’ he asked.

He put his pipe inside his book to mark the place and closing it put it down on the pebbles

beside him. He was evidently willing to talk.

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘It’s the best bathing in the world.’

I should remark here that this was in 1913. The world was an easy, comfortable place and no

one could have imagined that anything might happen seriously to disturb the serenity of

existence.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

44

‘Fifteen years.’ He gave the blue and placid sea a glance, and a strangely tender smile hovered

on his thin lips. ‘I fell in love with the place at first sight. You’ve heard, I daresay, of the

mythical German who came here on the Naples boat just for lunch and a look at the Blue Grotto

and stayed forty years; well, I can’t say I exactly did that, but it’s come to the same thing in the

end. Only it won’t be forty years in my case. Twenty–five. Still, that’s better than a poke in the

eye with a sharp stick.’

I waited for him to go on. For what he had just said looked indeed as though there might be

something after all in the singular story I had heard. But at that moment my friend came

dripping out of the water very proud of himself because he had swum a mile, and the

conversation turned to other things.

After that I met Wilson several times, either in the Piazza or on the beach. He was amiable and

polite. He was always pleased to have a talk and I found out that he not only knew every inch

of the island but also the adjacent mainland. He had read a great deal on all sorts of subjects,

but his speciality was the history of Rome and on this he was very well informed. He seemed

to have little imagination and to be of no more than average intelligence. He laughed a good

deal, but with restraint, and his sense of humour was tickled by simple jokes. A commonplace

man. I did not forget the odd remark he had made during the first short chat we had had by

ourselves, but he never so much as approached the topic again.

One day on our return from the beach, dismissing the cab at the Piazza, my friend and I told

the driver to be ready to take us up to Anacapri at five. We were going to climb Monte Solaro,

dine at a tavern we favoured, and walk down in the moonlight. For it was full moon and the

views by night were lovely. Wilson was standing by while we gave the cabman instructions,

for we had given him a lift to save him the hot dusty walk, and more from politeness than for

any other reason I asked him if he would care to join us.

‘It’s my party,’ I said.

‘I’ll come with pleasure,’ he answered.

But when the time came to set out my friend was not feeling well, he thought he had stayed too

long in the water, and would not face the long and tiring walk. So I went alone with Wilson.

We climbed the mountain, admired the spacious view, and got back to the inn as night was

falling, hot, hungry, and thirsty. We had ordered our dinner beforehand. The food was good,

for Antonio was an excellent cook, and the wine came from his own vineyard. It was so light

that you felt you could drink it like water and we finished the first bottle with our macaroni.

By the time we had finished the second we felt that there was nothing much wrong with life.

We sat in a little garden under a great vine laden with grapes. The air was exquisitely soft. The

night was still and we were alone. The maid brought us bel paese cheese and a plate of figs. I

ordered coffee and Strega, which is the best liqueur they make in Italy. Wilson would not have

a cigar, but lit his pipe.

‘We’ve got plenty of time before we need start,’ he said, ‘the moon won’t be over the hill for

another hour.’

‘Moon or no moon,’ I said briskly, ‘of course we’ve got plenty of time. That’s one of the

delights of Capri, that there’s never any hurry.’

45

‘Leisure,’ he said. ‘If people only knew! It’s the most priceless thing a man can have and they’re

such fools they don’t even know it’s something to aim at. Work? They work for work’s sake.

They haven’t got the brains to realize that the only object of work is to obtain leisure.’

Wine has the effect on some people of making them indulge in general reflections. These

remarks were true, but no one could have claimed that they were original. I did not say anything,

but struck a match to light my cigar.

‘It was full moon the first time I came to Capri,’ he went on reflectively. ‘It might be the same

moon as tonight.’

‘It was, you know,’ I smiled.

He grinned. The only light in the garden was what came from an oil lamp that hung over our

heads. It had been scanty to eat by, but it was good now for confidences.

‘I didn’t mean that. I mean, it might be yesterday. Fifteen years it is, and when I look back it

seems like a month. I’d never been to Italy before. I came for my summer holiday. I went to

Naples by boat from Marseilles and I had a look round, Pompeii, you know, and Paestum and

one or two places like that; then I came here for a week. I liked the look of the place right away,

from the sea, I mean, as I watched it come closer and closer; and then when we got into the

little boats from the steamer and landed at the quay, with all that crowd of jabbering people

who wanted to take your luggage, and the hotel touts, and the tumbledown houses on the

Marina and the walk up to the hotel, and dining on the terrace–well, it just got me. That’s the

truth. I didn’t know if I was standing on my head or my heels. I’d never drunk Capri wine

before, but I’d heard of it; I think I must have got a bit tight. I sat on that terrace after they’d

all gone to bed and watched the moon over the sea, and there was Vesuvius with a great red

plume of smoke rising up from it. But it wasn’t the wine that made me drunk, it was the shape

of the island and those jabbering people, the moon and the sea and the oleander in the hotel

garden. I’d never seen an oleander before.’

It was a long speech and it had made him thirsty. He took up his glass, but it was empty. I asked

him if he would have another Strega.

‘It’s sickly stuff. Let’s have a bottle of wine. That’s sound, that is, pure juice of the grape and

can’t hurt anyone.’

I ordered more wine, and when it came filled the glasses. He took a long drink and after a sigh

of pleasure went on.

‘Next day I wandered about the island. As luck would have it, there was a festa up at the Punta

di Timberio and I ran straight into the middle of it. A whole crowd of jolly, laughing, excited

people, a lot of them all dressed up. After that I went down one night to have a look at the

Faraglioni by moonlight. If the fates had wanted me to go on being a bank manager they

oughtn’t to have let me take that walk.’

‘You were a bank manager, were you?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I was manager of the Crawford Street branch of the York and City. It was convenient for

me because I lived up Hendon way. I could get from door to door in thirty–seven minutes.’

46

He puffed at his pipe and relit it.

‘That was my last night, that was. I’d got to be back at the bank on Monday morning. When I

looked at those two great rocks sticking out of the water, with the moon above them, and all

the little lights of the fishermen in their boats catching cuttlefish, all so peaceful and beautiful,

I said to myself, well, after all, why should I go back? It wasn’t as if I had anyone dependent

on me. My wife had died of bronchial pneumonia four years before and the kid went to live

with her grandmother, my wife’s mother. She was an old fool, she didn’t look after the kid

properly and she got blood–poisoning, they amputated her leg, but they couldn’t save her and

she died, poor little thing. I was quite cut up at the time.’

‘How terrible,’ I said. ‘But I suppose you’ve got other relations, haven’t you?’

‘None. I was an only child. My father had a brother, but he went to Australia before I was born.

I don’t think anyone could easily be more alone in the world than I am. There wasn’t any reason

I could see why I shouldn’t do exactly what I wanted. I was thirty–four at that time.’

He had told me he had been on the island for fifteen years. That would make him forty–nine.

Just about the age I should have given him.

‘I’d been working since I was seventeen. All I had to look forward to was doing the same old

thing day after day till I retired on my pension. I said to myself, is it worth it? What’s wrong

with chucking it all up and spending the rest of my life down here? It was the most beautiful

place I’d ever seen. But I’d had a business training, I was cautious by nature. “No,” I said, “I

won’t be carried away like this, I’ll go tomorrow like I said I would and think it over. Perhaps

when I get back to London I’ll think quite differently.” Damned fool, wasn’t I? I lost a whole

year that way.’

‘You didn’t change your mind, then?’

‘You bet I didn’t. All the time I was working I kept thinking of the bathing here and the

vineyards and the walks over the hills and the moon and the sea, and the Piazza in the evening

when everyone walks about for a bit of a chat after the day’s work is over. There was only one

thing that bothered me: I wasn’t sure if I was justified in not working like everybody else did.

Then I read a sort of history book, by a man called Marion Crawford it was, and there was a

story about Sybaris and Crotona. There were two cities; and in Sybaris they just enjoyed life

and had a good time, and in Crotona they were hardy and industrious and all that. And one day

the men of Crotona came over and wiped Sybaris out, and then after a while a lot of other

fellows came over from somewhere else and wiped Crotona out. Nothing remains of Sybaris,

not a stone, and all that’s left of Crotona is just one column. That settled the matter for me.’

‘Oh?’

‘It came to the same in the end, didn’t it? And when you look back now, who were the mugs?’

I did not reply and he went on.

‘The money was rather a bother. The bank didn’t pension one off till after thirty years’ service,

but if you retired before that they gave you a gratuity. With that and what I’d got for the sale of

my house and the little I’d managed to save, I just hadn’t enough to buy an annuity to last the

47

rest of my life. It would have been silly to sacrifice everything so as to lead a pleasant life and

not have a sufficient income to make it pleasant. I wanted to have a little place of my own, a

servant to look after me, enough to buy tobacco, decent food, books now and then, and

something over for emergencies. I knew pretty well how much I needed. I found I had just

enough to buy an annuity for twenty–five years.’

‘You were thirty–five at the time?’

‘Yes. It would carry me on till I was sixty. After all, no one can be certain of living longer than

that, a lot of men die in their fifties, and by the time a man’s sixty he’s had the best of life.’

‘On the other hand, no one can be sure of dying at sixty,’ I said.

‘Well, I don’t know. It depends on himself, doesn’t it?’

‘In your place I should have stayed on at the bank till I was entitled to my pension.’

‘I should have been forty–seven then. I shouldn’t have been too old to enjoy my life here, I’m

older than that now and I enjoy it as much as I ever did, but I should have been too old to

experience the particular pleasure of a young man. You know, you can have just as good a time

at fifty as you can at thirty, but it’s not the same sort of good time. I wanted to live the perfect

life while I still had the energy and the spirit to make the most of it. Twenty–five years seemed

a long time to me, and twenty–five years of happiness seemed worth paying something pretty

substantial for. I’d made up my mind to wait a year and I waited a year. Then I sent in my

resignation and as soon as they paid me my gratuity I bought the annuity and came on here.’

‘An annuity for twenty–five years?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Have you never regretted?’

‘Never. I’ve had my money’s worth already. And I’ve got ten years more. Don’t you think after

twenty–five years of perfect happiness one ought to be satisfied to call it a day?’

‘Perhaps.’

He did not say in so many words what he would do then, but his intention was clear. It was

pretty much the story my friend had told me, but it sounded different when I heard it from his

own lips. I stole a glance at him. There was nothing about him that was not ordinary. No one,

looking at that neat, prim face, could have thought him capable of an unconventional action. I

did not blame him. It was his own life that he had arranged in this strange manner, and I did

not see why he should not do what he liked with it. Still, I could not prevent the little shiver

that ran down my spine.

‘Getting chilly?’ he smiled. ‘We might as well start walking down. The moon’ll be up by now.’

Before we parted Wilson asked me if I would like to go and see his house one day; and two or

three days later, finding out where he lived, I strolled up to see him. It was a peasant’s cottage,

well away from the town, in a vineyard, with a view of the sea. By the side of the door grew a

48

great oleander in full flower. There were only two small rooms, a tiny kitchen, and a place in

which firewood could be kept. The bedroom was furnished like a monk’s cell, but the sitting–

room, smelling agreeably of tobacco, was comfortable enough, with two large arm–chairs that

he had brought from England, a large roll–top desk, a cottage piano, and crowded bookshelves.

Wilson told me that the house belonged to the owner of the vineyard who lived in another

cottage higher up the hill, and his wife came in every day to do the rooms and the cooking. He

had found the place on his first visit to Capri, and taking it on his return for good had been

there ever since. Seeing the piano and music open on it, I asked him if he would play.

‘I’m no good, you know, but I’ve always been fond of music and I get a lot of fun out of

strumming.’

He sat down at the piano and played one of the movements from a Beethoven sonata. He did

not play very well. I looked at his music, Schumann and Schubert, Beethoven, Bach, and

Chopin. On the table on which he had his meals was a greasy pack of cards. I asked him if he

played patience.

‘A lot.’

From what I saw of him then and from what I heard from other people I made for myself what

I think must have been a fairly accurate picture of the life he had led for the last fifteen years.

It was certainly a very harmless one. He bathed; he walked a great deal, and he seemed never

to lose his sense of the beauty of the island which he knew so intimately; he played the piano

and he played patience; he read. When he was asked to a party he went and, though a trifle dull,

was agreeable. He was not affronted if he was neglected. He liked people, but with an aloofness

that prevented intimacy. He lived thriftily, but with sufficient comfort. He never owed a penny.

I imagine he had never been a man whom sex had greatly troubled, and if in his younger days

he had had now and then a passing affair with a visitor to the island whose head was turned by

the atmosphere, his emotion, while it lasted, remained, I am pretty sure, well under his control.

I think he was determined that nothing should interfere with his independence of spirit. His

only passion was for the beauty of nature, and he sought felicity in the simple and natural things

that life offers to everyone.

You may say that it was a grossly selfish existence. It was. He was of no use to anybody, but

on the other hand he did nobody any harm. His only object was his own happiness, and it

looked as though he had attained it. Very few people know where to look for happiness; fewer

still find it. I don’t know whether he was a fool or a wise man. He was certainly a man who

knew his own mind. The odd thing about him to me was that he was so immensely

commonplace. I should never have given him a second thought but for what I knew, that on a

certain day, ten years from then, unless a chance illness cut the thread before, he must

deliberately take leave of the world he loved so well. I wondered whether it was the thought of

this, never quite absent from his mind, that gave him the peculiar zest with which he enjoyed

every moment of the day.

My visit drew to a close and I left the island. The year after, war broke out. A number of things

happened to me, so that the course of my life was greatly altered, and it was thirteen years

before I went to Capri again. My friend had been back some time, and one night we dined

together. During dinner I asked him where exactly his house was.

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‘You know it,’ he answered. ‘It’s the little place Wilson had. I’ve built on a room and made it

quite nice.’

With so many other things to occupy my mind I had not given Wilson a thought for years; but

now, with a little shock, I remembered. The ten years he had before him when I made his

acquaintance must have elapsed long ago.

‘Did he commit suicide as he said he would?’

‘It’s rather a grim story.’

Wilson’s plan was all right. There was only one flaw in it and this, I suppose, he could not have

foreseen. It had never occurred to him that after twenty–five years of complete happiness, in

this quiet backwater, with nothing in the world to disturb his serenity, his character would

gradually lose its strength. The will needs obstacles in order to exercise its power; when it is

never thwarted, when no effort is needed to achieve one’s desires, because one has placed one’s

desires only in the things that can be obtained by stretching out one’s hand, the will grows

impotent. If you walk on a level all the time the muscles you need to climb a mountain will

atrophy. These observations are trite, but there they are.

When Wilson’s annuity expired, he had no longer the resolution to make the end which was

the price he had agreed to pay for that long period of happy tranquility. I do not think, as far as

I could gather, both from what my friend told me and afterwards from others, that he wanted

courage. It was just that he couldn’t make up his mind. He put it off from day to day. He had

lived on the island for so long and had always settled his accounts so punctually that it was

easy for him to get credit; never having borrowed money before, he found a number of people

who were willing to lend him small sums when now he asked for them. He had paid his rent

regularly for so many years that his landlord, whose wife Assunta still acted as his servant, was

content to let things slide for several months. Everyone believed him when he said that a

relative had died and that he was temporarily embarrassed because owing to legal formalities

he could not for some time get the money that was due to him. He managed to hang on after

this fashion for something over a year. Then he could get no more credit from the local

tradesmen, and there was no one to lend him any more money. His landlord gave him notice to

leave the house unless he paid up arrears of rent before a certain date.

The day before this he went into his tiny bedroom, closed the door and the window, drew the

curtain, and lit a brazier of charcoal. Next morning when Assunta came to make his breakfast

she found him insensible but still alive. The room was draughty, and though he had done this

and that to keep out the fresh air he had not done it very thoroughly. Wilson was taken to the

hospital, and though very ill for some time he at last recovered. But as a result either of the

charcoal poisoning or of the shock he was no longer in complete possession of his faculties.

He was not insane, at all events not insane enough to be put in an asylum, but he was quite

obviously no longer in his right mind.

‘I went to see him,’ said my friend. ‘I tried to get him to talk, but he kept looking at me in a

funny sort of way, as though he couldn’t quite make out where he’d seen me before. He looked

rather awful lying there in bed, with a week’s growth of grey beard on his chin; but except for

that funny look in his eyes he seemed quite normal.’

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‘What funny look in his eyes?’

‘I don’t know exactly how to describe it. Puzzled. It’s an absurd comparison, but suppose you

threw a stone up into the air and it didn’t come down but just stayed there.’

‘It would be rather bewildering,’ I smiled.

‘Well, that’s the sort of look he had.’

It was difficult to know what to do with him. He had no money and no means of getting any.

His effects were sold, but for too little to pay what he owed. He was English, and the Italian

authorities did not wish to make themselves responsible for him. The British Consul in Naples

had no funds to deal with the case. He could of course be sent back to England, but no one

seemed to know what could be done with him when he got there. Then Assunta, the servant,

said that he had been a good master and a good tenant, and as long as he had the money had

paid his way; he could sleep in the woodshed in the cottage in which she and her husband lived,

and he could share their meals.

This was suggested to him. It was difficult to know whether he understood or not. When

Assunta came to take him from the hospital he went with her without remark. He seemed to

have no longer a will of his own. She had been keeping him now for two years.

‘It’s not very comfortable, you know,’ said my friend. ‘They’ve rigged him up a ramshackle

bed and given him a couple of blankets, but there’s no window, and it’s icy cold in winter and

like an oven in summer. And the food’s pretty rough. You know how these peasants eat:

macaroni on Sundays and meat once in a blue moon.’

‘What does he do with himself all the time?’

‘He wanders about the hills. I’ve tried to see him two or three times, but it’s no good; when he

sees you coming he runs like a hare. Assunta comes down to have a chat with me now and then

and I give her a bit of money so that she can buy him tobacco, but God knows if he ever gets

it.’

‘Do they treat him all right?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure Assunta’s kind enough. She treats him like a child. I’m afraid her husband’s not very

nice to him. He grudges the cost of his keep. I don’t believe he’s cruel or anything like that, but

I think he’s a bit sharp with him. He makes him fetch water and clean the cow–shed and that

sort of thing.’

‘It sounds pretty rotten,’ I said.

‘He brought it on himself. After all, he’s only got what he deserved.’

‘I think on the whole we all get what we deserve,’ I said. ‘But that doesn’t prevent its being

rather horrible.’

Two or three days later my friend and I were taking a walk. We were strolling along a narrow

path through an olive grove.

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‘There’s Wilson,’ said my friend suddenly. ‘Don’t look, you’ll only frighten him. Go straight

on.’

I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw a man hiding behind

an olive tree. He did not move as we approached, but I felt that he was watching us. As soon

as we had passed I heard a scamper. Wilson, like a hunted animal, had made for safety. That

was the last I ever saw of him.

He died last year. He had endured that life for six years. He was found one morning on the

mountainside lying quite peacefully as though he had died in his sleep. From where he lay, he

had been able to see those two great rocks called the Faraglioni which stand out of the sea. It

was full moon and he must have gone to see them by moonlight. Perhaps he died of the beauty

of that night.

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What Is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism is a 20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism

that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism includes skeptical

interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics,

architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with the terms

deconstruction and post-structuralism. Many people regard postmodernism as

beginning after the end of World War II (1945), although there is no absolute

agreement about when it started. It also doesn’t have a finishing date yet—some

people think it has now ended, and that we are actually living today in a post-

postmodern age; others think that we are still living in a postmodern society.

The term postmodernism has been applied to many movements, including art,

music, and literature.

Postmodern Architecture

The idea of Postmodernism in architecture began as a response to the perceived

blandness and failed Utopianism of the Modern movement. Modern Architecture,

as established and developed by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, was focused

on the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection, and attempted harmony of form and

function and dismissal of “frivolous ornament.” Critics of modernism argued that

the attributes of perfection and minimalism themselves were subjective, and

pointed out anachronisms in modern thought and questioned the benefits of its

philosophy.

Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is associated with the phrase “less is more”;

in contrast, the postmodernist Venturi famously said, “Less is a bore.”

Postmodernist architecture was one of the first aesthetic movements to openly

challenge Modernism.

Postmodern architecture began as an international style in the 1950s. It replaces

the functional and formalized shapes and spaces of modernism with diverse

aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and it includes new

ways of viewing familiar styles and space. Architects also rediscovered the

expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had

evolved through centuries of building which had been abandoned by the modern

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style.

Postmodern Music

Postmodern music is either simply music of the postmodern period, or music that

follows aesthetic and philosophical trends of postmodernism. These aesthetic

trends may include: mixing so-called “high” and “low” styles of music, mixing

classical style with modern style, and not following traditional and/or modernist

ideas of structure.

Postmodern Art

Postmodern art is sometimes called “contemporary art,” and represents a variety

of art movements that challenge some aspects of modernism. Examples of

postmodern art are Intermedia, Installation Art, Collage, Performance Art,

Conceptual Art, and Multimedia. In general, postmodern art recycles past styles

and themes in a modern way, and does not distinguish between “fine” and

“high” art and so-called “low” art.

Postmodern Cinema

Postmodernist film typically subverts modernist conventions of narrative and

structure, using such techniques as the unreliable or questionable narrator (see

below) and a non-linear narrative (sometimes called “temporal distortion”).

Postmodernist films may also mix “low” and “high” art, mixing genres and

challenging conventional expectations of such elements as gender, race, and class.

These aspects of postmodern cinema are also features of postmodern literature.

Postmodern Literature

Postmodern literature rejects the style, themes, and beliefs of the Enlightenment

(1650-1799) and Modernist (1900-1945) periods, and uses such techniques as

paradox and questionable narrators. A postmodern literary work tends not to

conclude with the neatly tied-up ending, as is often found in modernist literature,

and instead often parodies it. Another characteristic of postmodern literature is

the deliberate mixing of high and low culture and/or the questioning of the

validity of distinguishing between these concepts.

Here are some of the terms that are commonly associated with postmodernist

literature:

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Metafiction is a literary device that forces readers to be aware that they are

reading a fictional work. For example, it may include:

• A story about a writer who creates a story

• A story containing another work of fiction within itself

• A book in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader

• A story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story

Paradox: a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true.

Paradox also refers to statements that are unexpected, such as "the paradox that

standing is more tiring than walking".

Questionable Narrators: a narrator who may not be telling the reader the truth, or

at least the whole truth.

Magic Realism: This means telling stories from the point of view of people who

live in our world but who experience a different reality than the one we call

objective reality. For example, ghosts may appear in magic realism as if they are

an everyday part of actual life. In other words, a ghost in a story of magic realism

is not a fantasy element, but an indication of the reality of people who believe in

and have “real” experiences of ghosts. The ghost (or witch, or any other type of

fantasy element) is presented in a realistic fashion so that the reader may finish

the book with the understanding that this world of ghosts, etc, is one that people

really live in and the feeling that maybe this view is correct.

Pastiche: mixing together different genres (for example, detective fiction with

science fiction)

Deconstructionism: a theory developed by French theorist Jacques Derrida (1930-

2004). Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, for

example, a book or a poem. It involves breaking that book or poem into smaller

parts.

Sometimes deconstruction looks at how an author can imply things that he or she

did not actually mean. Deconstruction states that because words are not precise,

we can never know what an author meant. It also analyzes how opposites work.

(It calls them "binary oppositions.") It says that two opposites like "good" and

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"bad" are not really different things. "Good" only makes sense when someone

compares it to "bad," and "bad" only makes sense when someone compares it to

"good." And so even when someone talks about "good," they are still talking

about "bad."

Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never

just mean what we think they mean at first. Other meanings are always there too,

and the book or poem works because all of those meanings work together. The

closer we look at the writing, the more we find about how it works.

56

Lamb to the Slaughter (1953)

By Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit. On the cupboard

behind her there were two glasses and some drinks. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband

to come home from work.

Now and again she glanced at the clock, but without anxiety: she merely wanted to satisfy

herself that each minute that went by made it nearer the time when he would come home. As

she bent over her sewing, she was curiously peaceful. This was her sixth month expecting a

child. Her mouth and her eyes, with their new calm look, seemed larger and darker than before.

When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later,

punctually as always, she heard the car tires on the stones outside, the car door closing,

footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She stood up and went forward to

kiss him as he entered.

"Hello, darling," she said.

"Hello," he answered.

She took his coat and hung it up. Then she made the drinks, a strong one for him and a weak

one for herself; and soon she was back again in her chair with the sewing, and he was in the

other chair, holding the tall glass, rolling it gently so that the ice knocked musically against the

side of the glass.

For her, this was always a wonderful time of day. She knew he didn't want to speak much until

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the first drink was finished, and she was satisfied to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the

long hours alone in the house. She loved the warmth that came out of him when they were

alone together. She loved the shape of his mouth, and she especially liked the way he didn't

complain about being tired.

“Tired, darling?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “I’m thoroughly exhausted.” And as he spoke, he did an unusual thing. He

lifted his glass and drank it down in one swallow, although there was still half of it left. He got

up and went slowly to get himself another drink.

"I'll get it!" she cried, jumping up.

"Sit down," he said.

When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was a very strong one. She watched him

as he began to drink.

"I think it's a shame," she said, "that when someone's been a policeman as long as you have, he

still has to walk around all day long." He didn't answer. "Darling," she said, "If you're too tired

to eat out tonight, as we had planned, I can fix you something. There's plenty of meat and stuff

in the freezer." Her eyes waited for an answer, a smile, a nod, but he made no sign.

"Anyway," she went on. "I'll get you some bread and cheese."

"I don't want it," he said.

She moved uneasily in her chair. "But you have to have supper. I can easily fix you something.

I'd like to do it. We can have lamb. Anything you want. Everything's in the freezer."

"Forget it," he said.

"But, darling, you have to eat! I'll do it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like."

She stood up and placed her sewing on the table by the lamp. "Sit down," he said. "Just for a

minute, sit down." It wasn't until then that she began to get frightened.

"Go on," he said. "Sit down."

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She lowered herself into the chair, watching him all the time with large, puzzled eyes. He had

finished his second drink and was staring into the glass. "Listen," he said. "I've got something

to tell you."

"What is it, darling? What's the matter?"

He became absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down.

"This is going to be a big shock to you, I'm afraid," he said. "But I've thought about it a good

deal and I've decided that the only thing to do is to tell you immediately." And he told her. It

didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat still through it all, watching him with

puzzled horror.

"So there it is," he added. "And I know it's a tough time to be telling you this, but there simply

wasn't any other way. Of course, I'll give you money and see that you're taken care of. But there

really shouldn't be any problem. I hope not, in any case. It wouldn't be very good for my job."

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it. She thought that perhaps she'd imagined the whole

thing. Perhaps, if she acted as though she had not heard him, she would find out that none of it

had ever happened.

"I'll fix some supper," she whispered. When she walked across the room, she couldn't feel her

feet touching the floor. She couldn't feel anything except a slight sickness. She did everything

without thinking. She went downstairs to the freezer and took hold of the first object she found.

She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked

at it again: a leg of lamb.

All right, then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, held the thin end with

both her hands. She went into the living room, saw him standing by the window with his back

to her, and stopped.

"I've already told you," he said. "Don't make supper for me. I'm going out."

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause, she swung

the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back

of his head. She might as well have hit him with a steel bar.

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She stepped back, waiting, and the strange thing was that he remained standing there for at

least four or five seconds. Then he crashed onto the carpet.

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped to bring her out of the

shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a few minutes,

looking at the body, still holding the piece of meat tightly with both hands.

All right, she told herself. So I've killed him.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very

fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew what the punishment would be. It made no difference

to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the baby? What were the laws

about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both—mother and child? Did they

wait until the baby was born? What did they do? Mary Maloney didn't know and she wasn't

prepared to take a chance.

She carried the meat into the kitchen, put it into a pan, turned on the oven, and put the pan

inside. Then she washed her hands, ran upstairs, sat down in front of the mirror, fixed her

makeup, and tried to smile.

The smile was rather peculiar. She tried again. "Hello, Sam," she said brightly, aloud. The voice

sounded peculiar, too. "I want some potatoes, Sam. Yes, and perhaps a can of beans." That was

better. Both the smile and the voice sounded better now. She practiced them several times more.

Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, and went out the back door, through the garden into the

street.

It wasn't six o'clock yet and the lights were still on in the neighborhood grocery. "Hello, Sam,"

she said brightly, smiling at the man in the shop. "Good evening, Mrs. Maloney. How are you?"

"I want some potatoes, please, Sam. Yes, and perhaps a can of beans, too. Patrick's decided he's

tired and he doesn't want to eat out tonight," she told him. "We usually go out on Thursdays,

you know, and now I don't have any vegetables in the house."

"Then how about some meat, Mrs. Maloney?" asked the grocer.

"No, I've got meat, thanks, I've got a nice leg of lamb, from the freezer."

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"Do you want these potatoes, Mrs. Maloney?

"Oh, yes, they'll be fine. Two pounds, please."

"Anything else?" The grocer turned his head to one side, looking at her. "How about dessert?

What are you going to give him for dessert? How about a nice piece of cake? I know he likes

cake."

"Perfect," she said. "He loves it."

And when she had bought and paid for everything, she gave her brightest smile and said,

"Thank you, Sam. Good night."

And now, she told herself as she hurried back home, she was returning to her husband and he

was waiting for his supper. She had to cook it well and make it taste as good as possible,

because the poor man was tired; and if she found anything unusual or terrible when she got

home, then it would be a shock and she would have to react with grief and horror. Of course,

she was not expecting to find anything unusual at home. She was just going home with the

vegetables on Thursday evening to cook dinner for her husband.

That's the way, she told herself. Do everything normally. Keep things absolutely natural and

there'll be no need for acting at all. As she entered the kitchen by the back door, she was quietly

singing to herself.

"Patrick!" she called. "How are you, darling?"

She put the package on the table and went into the living room; and when she saw him lying

there on the floor, it really was a shock. All the old love for him came back to her, and she ran

over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry hard. It was easy. No acting was necessary.

A few minutes later, she got up and went to the phone. She knew the number of the police

station, and when the man at the other end answered, she cried to him. "Quick! Come quickly!

Patrick's dead."

"Who's speaking?"

"Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Patrick Maloney."

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"Do you mean that Patrick's dead?"

"I think so!" she cried. "He's lying on the floor and I think he's dead."

"We'll be there immediately," the man said.

The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policemen walked in. She

knew them both. She knew nearly all the men at the police station. She fell into Jack Noonan's

arms, crying uncontrollably. He put her gently into a chair.

"Is he dead?" she cried.

"I'm afraid he is. What happened?"

In a few words she told her story about going to the grocer and coming back, when she found

him on the floor. While she was crying and talking, Noonan found some dried blood on the

dead man's head. He hurried to the phone.

Some other men began to arrive—a doctor, two detectives, a police photographer, and a man

who knew about fingerprints. The detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. They always

treated her kindly. She told them how she'd put the meat into the oven—"it's there now"—and

how she had gone to the grocer's for vegetables and how she came back to find him lying on

the floor.

The two detectives were exceptionally nice to her. They searched the house. Sometimes Jack

Noonan spoke to her gently. He told her that her husband had been killed by a blow to the back

of the head. They were looking for the weapon. The murderer might have taken it with him,

but he might have thrown it away or hidden it. "It's the old story," he said. "Get the weapon,

and you've got the murderer."

Later, one of the detectives sat down beside her. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the

house that could have been used as a weapon? Would she look around to see if anything was

missing?

The search went on. It began to get late—it was nearly nine o'clock. The men searching the

rooms were getting tired. "Jack," she said, "Would you like a drink? You must be extremely

tired."

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"Well," he answered. "It's not allowed by police rules, but since you're a friend."

They stood around with drinks in their hands. The detectives were uncomfortable with her and

they tried to say cheering things to her. Jack Noonan walked into the kitchen, came out quickly,

and said, "Look, Mrs. Maloney. Did you know that your oven is still on, and the meat is still

inside?"

"Oh," she said. "So it is! I'd better turn it off." She returned with tearful eyes. "Would you do

me a favor? Here you all are, all good friends of Patrick's, and you're helping to catch the man

who killed him. You must be very hungry by now because it's long past your supper time, and

I know that Patrick would never forgive me if I let you stay in the house without offering you

anything to eat. Why don't you eat up the lamb in the oven?"

"I wouldn't dream of it," Noonan said.

"Please," she begged. "Personally, I couldn't eat a thing, but it'd be a favor to me if you ate it

up. Then you can go on with your work."

The detectives hesitated, but they were hungry, and in the end, they went into the kitchen and

helped themselves to supper. The woman stayed where she was and listened to them through

the open door. She could hear them speaking among themselves, and their voices were thick

because their mouths were full of meat.

"Have some more, Charlie."

"No, we'd better not finish it."

"She wants us to finish it. She said we ought to eat it up."

"That's a big bar the murderer must have used to hit poor Patrick. The doctor says the back of

his head was broken to pieces.

"That's why the weapon should be easy to find."

"Exactly what I say."

"Whoever did it, he can't carry a weapon that big around with him."

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"Personally, I think the weapon is somewhere near the house."

"It's probably right under our noses. What do you think, Jack?"

And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to laugh.

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From the play Almost, Maine (2004)

By John Cariani (born 1969)

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By Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

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Happiness (1985)

By Raymond Carver

So early it’s still almost dark out.

I’m near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other’s arm.

It’s early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

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Nowhere Further from Belgium (2008)

By Vincent O’Sullivan (1937 - )

My grandmother used to say

‘Just do your best now’

when a drawing came out smudgy,

a list of words for spelling

crossed out here and there.

I thought of that this morning

when the sea at Orepuki

banged like a hundred bibles

angrily shut, a place

no more this morning

than its few dead shops, a pub,

a maimed main street, a cemetery

on a dirt road and a white

blunt column among local

graves; a boy it remembers,

someone’s boy in his early

twenties, dead somewhere

in Belgium, where bits

of the distant boy were gathered,

one hopes, by mates.

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One thinks of him here, ‘signed up’,

his spruce regimental number

in the street where so much happened,

a uniform doing wonders

whatever the wind, the sea,

the sand graining the text

on the marble plinth, his telling

the girls, ‘Yeah, try to do

my best’, his cobbers’ pissed

shiyacking, ‘Glamorous bugger!’

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Chapter Three

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Chapter Eight (extracts)

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Chapter Ten (extract)

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Chapter Eleven

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