A Literary Christmas
by
illy Qolden editor

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS NEW YORK

Copyright 1992 by The Atlantic Monthly Press

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage
and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher,
except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A Literary Christmas: great contemporary Christmas stories / edited by
Lilly Golden.

ISBN 0-87113-S83-3 (pbk.)

Design by Laura Hough

The Atlantic Monthly Press 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

Lilly Qolden, Introduction

Frank O'Connor, CHRISTMAS MORNING

            Paul Auster, AUGGIE WREN'S CHRISTMAS STORY

Tobias Wolf, CHAMPAGNE

Mark Richard, THE BIRDS FOR CHRISTMAS

Ntozake Shange, CHRISTMAS FOR SASSAFRASS, CYPRESS & INDIGO

Ivan Klima, A CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY TALE

Sean O'Faolain, TWO OF A KIND

Michel TournieR< JESU, JOY OF MAN'S DESIRING

Paul Bowles, THE FROZEN FIELDS

Annie Dillard, THE WORLD IN A BOWL OF SOUP: A CHRISTMAS STORY

Thomas M. Disch, XMAS

Peter Matthiessen, THE CENTERPIECE

Italo Calvino, SANTA'S CHILDREN

Patricia Highsmith, A CLOCK TICKS AT CHRISTMAS

Harper Lee, CHRISTMAS

Qrace Paley, THE LOUDEST VOICE

Edna O'Brien, THE DOLL

Bobbie Ann Mason, DRAWING NAMES

Ann Beattie, WHERE YOU'LL FIND ME

Raymond CarveR< PUT YOURSELF IN MY SHOES

Leo Rosten, THE NIGHT OF THE MAGI

Hortense Calisher, A CHRISTMAS CARILLON

Jane Smiley, LONG DISTANCE

Toni Cade Bambara, CHRISTMAS EVE AT JOHNSON'S DRUGS N GOODS

Ray Bradbury, BLESS ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED

Ron Carlson, THE H STREET SLEDDING RECORD

Introduction By: Lilly Qolden

When we consider the notion of the literary Christmas story, writers
like Charles Dickens and O.  Henry, who have given us definitive
classics of the genre, immediately come to mind.  The paradigm of the
"Christmas story" as received from the old masters conjures up images of
dimly lit, snow-covered cobblestone streets, peopled with bonneted women
and top-hatted men scurrying home to warm their feet by a fire.
Meanwhile, we, the reader, sit ensconced in our living room and, if
we're lucky enough, nestled by our own hearth, holding on our lap a
leather-bound tome, sipping eggnog, basking in the Christmas spirit.
Outside, though, we hear not the clatter of horse-drawn carriages but
the roar of cars speeding down the freeway.  Indeed, Christmas in the
late twentieth century is a far cry from Yuletide in Mr.  Dickens's day,
but what about the Christmas story?  How has the literary form evolved
compared to its subject?

What type of Christmas vision would be inspired by some of the most
acclaimed writers of our time?  Skeptics may find it contradictory to
employ the contemporary short story set in the age of strip malls and
elevator music to articulate something as time-honored and baroque as
the Christmas spirit.  Or, conversely, it may seem incongruous to use
the highly developed and self-reflexive modern short story to depict the
commercialized farce that some feel the Christmas season has become.
Paul Auster begins his tale by voicing his misgivings when asked to
write a Christmas story:

"The very phrase 'Christmas story' had unpleasant associations

for me, evoking dreadful outpourings of hypocritical mush and treacle.
Even at their best, Christmas stories were no more than

wish-fulfillment dreams, fairy tales for adults, and I'd be damned if
I'd ever allowed myself to write something like that.  And yet, how
could anyone write an unsentimental Christmas story?  It was a
contradiction in terms, an impossibility, an out-and-out conundrum.  One
might just as well try to imagine a racehorse without legs, or a sparrow
without wings......

But, as you will see, Paul Auster and the others featured in this
anthology lay such doubt to rest.  In fact, the marriage between the
season and the literary form is as sound as it ever was.  For mistletoe
and ho-ho-ho aside, what is Christmas if not a time when the nuances of
our lives are magnified, when our worlds are illuminated and laid bare?
And what is a short story if not a revelation of some truth about
ourselves, some insight into the human heart?  At its best, the short
story will lead us to moments of clarity, to epiphany.  And Christmas at
its spiritual root is, after all, the celebration of a miracle.

Regardless of the manner in which Christmas is observed, ranging from
deep religious sentiment to overextended credit cards, a universal
aspect of the season is its emphasis on communion in a secular sense.
Christmas is a season of convergence.  People unite with friends and
family or, in contrast, feel their loneliness acutely.  It is a time
when people look about themselves, take stock of their lives, and feel
either grateful or denied, when joys are celebrated and the painful
truths of life become evident, when love seems sweeter and losses more
bitter.

It is for their wise and beautiful renderings of such confluences that
the stories in this collection were selected.  Gathered here are the
works of some of the best contemporary writers from all over the world.
Their stories are widely varied in setting, plot, character, culture,
and religion, and though they share the subject of Christmas, whether as
a central theme or as subtext, each explores the season and its
psychological and emotional (and even political) reverberations from its
unique perspective.  So settle back into your favorite chair and enjoy A
Literary Christmas's harvest from the modern masters of the art of
fiction.

You will find in each of these marvelous stories-some uplifting, some
deeply melancholy-a Christmas gem, a gift, a bit of magic and grace.

Christmas Morning By: Frank O'Connor,

I never really liked my brother, Sonny.  From the time he was a baby he
was always the mother's pet and always chasing her to tell her what
mischief I was up to.  Mind you, I was usually up to something.

Until I was nine or ten I was never much good at school, and I really
believe it was to spite me that he was so smart at his books.  He seemed
to know by instinct that this was what Mother had set her heart on, and
you might almost say he spelled himself into her favor.  "Mummy," he'd
say, "will I call Larry in to his tea?" or: "Mummy, the k-e-t-e-l is
boiling," and, of course, when he was wrong she'd correct him, and next
time he'd have it right and there would be no standing him.  "Mummy,"
he'd say, "aren't I a good speller?" Cripes, we could all be good
spellers if we went on like that!

Mind you, it wasn't that I was stupid.  Far from it.  I was just
restless and not able to fix my mind for long on any one thing.  I'd do
the lessons for the year before, or the lessons for the year after: what
I couldn't stand were the lessons we were supposed to be doing at the
time.  In the evenings I used to go out and play with the Doherty gang.
Not, again, that I was rough, but I liked the excitement, and for the
life of me I couldn't see what attracted Mother about education.

"Can't you do your lessons first and play after?" she'd say, getting
white with indignation.  "You ought to be ashamed of yourself that your
baby brother can read better than you."

She didn't seem to understand that I wasn't, because there didn't seem
to me to be anything particularly praiseworthy about reading, and it
struck me as an occupation better suited to a sissy kid like Sonny. "The
dear knows what will become of you," she'd say.

"If only you'd stick to your books you might be something good like a
clerk or an engineer."

"I'll be a clerk, Mummy," Sonny would say smugly.

"Who wants to be an old clerk?" I'd say, just to annoy him.  "I'm going
to be a soldier."

"The dear knows, I'm afraid that's all you'll ever be fit for," she
would add with a sigh.

I couldn't help feeling at times that she wasn't all there.  As if there
was anything better a fellow could be!

Coming on to Christmas, with the days getting shorter and the shopping
crowds bigger, I began to think of all the things I might get from Santa
Claus.  The Dohertys said there was no Santa Claus, only what your
father and mother gave you, but the Dohertys were a rough class of
children you wouldn't expect Santa to come to anyway.  I was rooting
round for whatever information I could pick up about him, but there
didn't seem to be much.  I was no hand with a pen, but if a letter would
do any good I was ready to chance writing to him.  I had plenty of
initiative and was always writing off for free samples and prospectuses.

"Ah, I don't know will he come at all this year," Mother said with a
worried air.  "He has enough to do looking after steady boys who mind
their lessons without bothering about the rest."

"He only comes to good spellers, Mummy," said Sonny.  "Isn't that
right?"

"He comes to any little boy who does his best, whether he's a good
speller or not," Mother said firmly.

Well, I did my best.  God knows I did!  It wasn't my fault if, four days
before the holidays, Flogger Dawley gave us sums we couldn't do, and
Peter Doherty and myself had to go on the lang.  It wasn't for love of
it, for, take it from me, December is no month for mitching, and we
spent most of our time sheltering from the rain in a store on the quays.
The only mistake we made was imagining we could keep it up till the
holidays without being spotted.  That showed real lack of foresight.

Of course, Flogger Dawley noticed and sent home word to know what was
keeping me.  When I came in on the third day the mother gave me a look
I'll never forget, and said: "Your dinner is there." She was too full to
talk.  When I tried to explain to her about Flogger Dawley and the sums
she brushed it aside and said: "You have no word." I saw then it wasn't
the ranging she minded but the lies, though I still didn't see how you
could lang without lying.  She didn't speak to me for days.  And even
then I couldn't make out what she saw in education, or why she wouldn't
let me grow up naturally like anyone else.

To make things worse, it stuffed Sonny up more than ever.  He had the
air of one saying: "I don't know what they'd do without me in this
blooming house." He stood at the front door, leaning against the jamb
with his hands in his trouser pockets, trying to make himself look like
Father, and shouted to the other kids so that he could be heard all over
the road.  "Larry isn't left go out.  He went on the lang with Peter
Doherty and me mother isn't talking to him."

And at night, when we were in bed, he kept it up.

"Santa Claus won't bring you anything this year, aha!"

"Of course he will," I said.

"How do you know?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Because you went on the lang with Doherty.  I wouldn't play with them
Doherty fellows."

"You wouldn't be left."

"I wouldn't play with them.  They're no class.  They had the bobbies up
at the house."

"And how would Santa know I was on the lang with Peter Doherty?" I
growled, losing patience with the little prig.

"Of course he'd know.  Mummy would tell him."

"And how could Mummy tell him and he up at the North Pole?  Poor
Ireland, she's rearing them yet!  'Tis easy seen you're only an old
baby."

"I'm not a baby, and I can spell better than you, and Santa won't bring
you anything."

"We'll see whether he will or not," I said sarcastically, doing the old
man on him.

But, to tell the God's truth, the old man was only bluff.  You could
never tell what powers these superhuman chaps would have of knowing what
you were up to.  And I had a bad conscience about the ranging because
I'd never before seen the mother like that.

That was the night I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to
see Santa myself and explain to him.  Being a man, he'd probably under,
stand.  In those days I was a good-looking kid and had a way with me
when I liked.  I had only to smile nicely at one old gent on the North
Mall to get a penny from him, and I felt if only I could get Santa by
himself I could do the same with him and maybe get something worthwhile
from him.  I wanted a model railway: I was sick of Ludo and
Snakes-and-Ladders.  I started to practice lying awake, counting five
hundred and then a thousand, and trying to hear first eleven, then
midnight, from Shandon.  I felt sure Santa would be round by midnight,
seeing that he'd be coming from the north, and would have the whole of
the South Side to do after-ward.

In some ways I was very farsighted.  The only trouble was the things I
was farsighted about.

I was so wrapped up in my own calculations that I had little attention
to spare for Mother's difficulties.  Sonny and I used to go to town with
her, and while she was shopping we stood outside a toy shop in the North
Main Street, arguing about what we'd like for Christmas.

On Christmas Eve when Father came home from work and gave her the
housekeeping money, she stood looking at it doubtfully while her face
grew white.

"Well?" he snapped, getting angry.  "What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it?" she muttered.  "On Christmas Eve!"

"Well," he asked truculently, sticking his hands in his trouser pockets
as though to guard what was left, "do you think I get more because it's
Christmas?"

"Lord God," she muttered distractedly.  "And not a bit of cake in the
house, nor a candle, nor anything!"

"All right," he shouted, beginning to stamp.  "How much will the candle
be?"

"Ah, for pity's sake," she cried, "will you give me the money and not
argue like that before the children?  Do you think I'll leave them with
nothing on the one day of the year?"

"Bad luck to you and your children!" he snarled.  "Am I to be slaving
from one year's end to another for you to be throwing it away on toys?
Here," he added, tossing two half crowns on the table, "that's all
you're going to get, so make the most of it."

"I suppose the publicans will get the rest," she said bitterly.  Later
she went into town, but did not bring us with her, and returned with a
lot of parcels, including the Christmas candle.  We waited for Father to
come home to his tea, but he didn't, so we had our own tea and a slice
of Christmas cake each, and then Mother put Sonny on a chair with the
holy water stoup to sprinkle the candle, and when he lighted it she
said: "The light of Heaven to our souls." I could see she was upset
because Father wasn't in-it should be the oldest and youngest.  When we
hung up our stockings at bedtime he was still out.

Then began the hardest couple of hours I ever put in.  I was mad with
sleep but afraid of losing the model railway, so I lay for a while,
making up things to say to Santa when he came.  They varied in tone from
frivolous to grave, for some old gents like kids to be modest and
well-spoken, while others prefer them with spirit.  When I had rehearsed
them all I tried to wake Sonny to keep me company, but that kid slept
like the dead.  Eleven struck from Shandon, and soon after I heard the
latch, but it was only Father coming home.

"Hello, little girl," he said, letting on to be surprised at finding
Mother waiting up for him, and then broke into a selfconscious giggle.
"What have you up so late?"

"Do you want your supper?" she asked shortly.

"Ah, no, no," he replied.  "I had a bit of pig's cheek at Daneen's on my
way up." (Daneen was my uncle.)  "I'm very fond of a bit of pig's cheek.
...  My goodness, is it that late?" he exclaimed, letting on to be
astonished.  "If I knew that I'd have gone to the North Chapel for
midnight Mass.  I'd like to hear the Adeste again.

That's a hymn I'm very fond of-a most touching hymn."

Then he began to hum it falsetto.

"Adeste fideles

Solus domus dagus."

Father was very fond of Latin hymns, particularly when he had a drop in,
but as he had no notion of the words he made them up as he went along,
and this always drove Mother mad.

"Ah, you disgust me!" she said in a scalded voice, and closed the room
door behind her.  Father laughed as if he thought it a great joke; and
he struck a match to light his pipe and for a while puffed at it
noisily.  The light under the door dimmed and went out but he continued
to sing emotionally.

"Dixie medearo

Tutum tonum tantum

Venite adoremus."

He had it all wrong but the effect was the same on me.  To save my life
I couldn't keep awake.

Coming on to dawn, I woke with the feeling that something dreadful had
happened.  The whole house was quiet, and the little bedroom that looked
out on the foot and a half of backyard was pitch-dark.

It was only when I glanced at the window that I saw how all the silver
had drained out of the sky.  I jumped out of bed to feel my stocking,
well knowing that the worst had happened.  Santa had come while I was
asleep, and gone away with an entirely false impression of me, because
all he had left me was some sort of book, ' folded up, a pen and pencil,
and a tuppenny bag of sweets.  Not even Snakes-and-Ladders!  For a while
I was too stunned even to think.  A fellow who was able to drive over
rooftops and climb down chimneys without getting stuck-God, wouldn't you
think he'd know better?

Then I began to wonder what that foxy boy, Sonny, had.  I went to his
side of the bed and felt his stocking.  For all his spelling and sucking
up he hadn't done so much better, because, apart from a bag of sweets
like mine, all Santa had left him was a popgun, one that fired a cork on
a piece of string and which you could get in any huckster's shop for
sixpence.  All the same, the fact remained that it was a gun, and a gun
was better than a book any day of the week.  The Dohertys had a gang,
and the gang fought the Strawberry Lane kids who tried to play football
on our road.  That gun would be very useful to me in many ways, while it
would be lost on Sonny who wouldn't be let play with the gang, even if
he wanted to.

Then I got the inspiration, as it seemed to me, direct from Heaven.

Suppose I took the gun and gave Sonny the book!  Sonny would never be
any good in the gang: he was fond of spelling, and a studious child like
him could learn a lot of spellings from a book like mine.  As he hadn't
seen Santa any more than I had, what he hadn't seen wouldn't grieve him.
I was doing no harm to anyone; in fact, if Sonny only knew, I was doing
him a good turn which he might have cause to thank me for later.  That
was one thing I was always keen on; doing good turns.  Perhaps this was
Santa's intention the whole time and he had merely become confused
between us.  It was a mistake that might happen to anyone.  So I put the
book, the pencil, and the pen into Sonny's stocking and the popgun in my
own and returned to bed and slept again.  As I say, in those days I had
plenty of initiative.

It was Sonny who woke me, shaking me to tell me that Santa had come and
left me a gun.  I let on to be surprised and rather disappointed in the
gun, and to divert his mind from it made him show me his picture book,
and cracked it up to the skies.

As I knew, that kid was prepared to believe anything, and nothing would
do him then but to take the presents in to show Father and Mother.  This
was a bad moment for me.  After the way she had behaved about the
ranging, I distrusted Mother, though I had the consolation of believing
that the only person who could contradict me was now some-where up by
the North Pole.  That gave me a certain confidence, so Sonny and I burst
in with our presents, shouting: "Look what Santa Claus brought!  "

Father and Mother woke, and Mother smiled, but only for an instant.

As she looked at me her face changed.  I knew that look; I knew it only
too well.  It was the same she had worn the day I came home from
ranging, when she said I had no word.

"Larry," she said in a low voice, "where did you get the gun?"

"Santa left it in my stocking, Mummy," I said, trying to put on an
injured air, though it baffled me how she guessed that he hadn't.  "He
did, honest."

"You stole it from that poor child's stocking while he was asleep," she
said, her voice quivering with indignation.  "Larry, Larry, how could
you be so mean?"

"Now, now, now," Father said deprecatingly, " 'tis Christmas morning."

"Ah," she said with real passion, "it's easy it comes to you.  Do you
think I want my son to grow up a liar and a thief?"

"Ah, what thief, woman?" he said testily.  "Have sense, can't you?"

He was as cross if you interrupted him in his benevolent moods as if
they were of the other sort, and this one was probably exacerbated by a
feeling of guilt for his behavior of the night before.  "Here, Larry,"
he said, reaching out for the money on the bedside table, "here's
sixpence for you and one for Sonny.  Mind you don't lose it now!"

But I looked at Mother and saw what was in her eyes.  I burst out
crying, threw the popgun on the floor, and ran bawling out of the house
before anyone on the road was awake.  I rushed up the lane behind the
house and threw myself on the wet grass.

I understood it all, and it was almost more than I could bear; that
there was no Santa Claus, as the Dohertys said, only Mother trying to
scrape together a few coppers from the housekeeping; that Father was
mean and common and a drunkard, and that she had been relying on me to
raise her out of the misery of the life she was leading.

And I knew that the look in her eyes was the fear that, like my father,
I should turn out to be mean and common and a drunkard.

Auggie Wren's Christmas Story By:             Paul Auster,

I heard this story from Auggie Wren.  Since Auggie doesn't come off too
well in it, at least not as well as he'd like to, he's asked me not to
use his real name.  Other than that, the whole business about the lost
wallet and the blind woman and the Christmas dinner is just as he told
it to me.

Auggie and I have known each other for close to eleven years now.

He works behind the counter of a cigar store on Court Street in downtown
Brooklyn, and since it's the only store that carries the little Dutch
cigars I like to smoke, I go in there fairly often.

For a long time, I didn't give much thought to Auggie Wren.  He was the
strange little man who wore a hooded blue sweatshirt and sold me cigars
and magazines, the impish, wisecracking character who always had
something funny to say about the weather or the Mets or the politicians
in Washington, and that was the extent of it.

But then one day several years ago he happened to be looking through a
magazine in the store, and he stumbled across a review of one of my
books.  He knew it was me because a photograph accompanied the review,
and after that things changed between us.  I was no longer just another
customer to Auggie, I had become a distinguished person.  Most people
couldn't care less about books and writers, but it turned out that
Auggie considered himself an artist.  Now that he had cracked the secret
of who I was, he embraced me as an ally, a confidant, a brother-in-arms.
To tell the truth, I found it rather embarrassing.  Then, almost
inevitably, a moment came when he asked if I would be willing to look at
his photographs.  Given his enthusiasm and good will, there didn't seem
to be any way I could turn him down.

God knows what I was expecting.  At the very least, it wasn't what
Auggie showed me the next day.  In a small, windowless room at the back
of the store, he opened a cardboard box and pulled out twelve identical
black photo albums.  This was his life's work, he said, and it didn't
take him more than five minutes a day to do it.  Every morning for the
past twelve years, he had stood at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and
Clinton Street at precisely seven o'clock and had taken a single color
photograph of precisely the same view.  The project now ran to more than
four thousand photographs.  Each album represented a different year, and
all the pictures were laid out in sequence, from January 1 to December
31, with the dates care-fully recorded under each one.

As I flipped through the albums and began to study Auggie's work, I
didn't know what to think.  My first impression was that it was the
oddest, most bewildering thing I had ever seen.  All the pictures were
the same.  The whole project was a numbing onslaught of repetition, the
same street and the same buildings over and over again, an unrelenting
delirium of redundant images.  I couldn't think of anything to say to
Auggie, so I continued turning pages, nodding my head in feigned
appreciation.  Auggie himself seemed unperturbed, watching me with a
broad smile on his face, but after I'd been at it for several minutes,
he suddenly interrupted me and said, "You're going too fast.  You'll
never get it if you don't slow down." He was right, of course.  If you't
take the time to look, you'll never manage to see anything.  I
picked up another album and forced myself to go more deliberately.  I
paid closer attention to details, took note of shifts in the weather,
watched for the changing angles of light as the seasons advanced.

Eventually, I was able to detect subtle differences in the traffic flow,
to anticipate the rhythm of the different days (the commotion of workday
mornings, the relative stillness of weekends, the contrast between
Saturdays and Sundays).  And then, little by little, I began to
recognize the faces of the people in the background, the passersby on
their way to work, the same people in the same spot every morning,
living an instant of their lives in the field of Auggie's camera.

Once I got to know them, I began to study their postures, the way they
carried themselves from one morning to the next, trying to discover
their moods from these surface indications, as if I could imagine
stories for them, as if I could penetrate the invisible dramas locked
inside their bodies.  I picked up another album.  I was no longer bored,
no longer puzzled as I had been at first.  Auggie was photographing
time, I realized, both natural time and human time, and he was doing it
by planting himself in one tiny corner of the world and willing it to be
his own, by standing guard in the space he had chosen for himself.  As
he watched me pore over his work, Auggie continued to smile with
pleasure.  Then, almost as if he had been reading my thoughts, he began
to recite a line from Shakespeare.  "Tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow," he muttered under his breath, "time creeps on its petty
pace." I understood then that he knew exactly what he was doing.

That was more than two thousand pictures ago.  Since that day, Auggie
and I have discussed his work many times, but it was only last week that
I learned how he acquired his camera and started taking pictures in the
first place.  That was the subject of the story he told me, and I'm
still struggling to make sense of it.

Earlier that same week, a man from the New York Times called me and
asked if I would be willing to write a short story that would appear in
the paper on Christmas morning.  My first impulse was to say no, but the
man was very charming and persistent, and by the end of the conversation
I told him I would give it a try.  The moment I hung up the phone,
however, I fell into a deep panic.  What did I know about Christmas?  I
asked myself.  What did I know about writing short stories on
commission?

I spent the next several days in despair, warring with the ghosts of
Dickens, 0.  Henry and other masters of the Yuletide spirit.  The very
phrase "Christmas story" had unpleasant associations for me, evoking
dreadful outpourings of hypocritical mush and treacle.  Even at their
best, Christmas stories were no more than wish-fulfillment dreams, fairy
tales for adults, and I'd be damned if I'd ever allowed myself to write
something like that.  And yet, how could anyone propose to write an
unsentimental Christmas story?  It was a contradiction in terms, an
impossibility, an out-and-out conundrum.

One might just as well try to imagine a racehorse without legs, or a
sparrow without wings.

I got nowhere.  On Thursday I went out for a long walk, hoping the air
would clear my head.  just past noon, I stopped in at the cigar store to
replenish my supply, and there was Auggie, standing behind the counter
as always.  He asked me how I was.  Without really meaning to, I found
myself unburdening my troubles to him.  "A Christmas story?" he said
after I had finished.  "Is that all?  If you buy me lunch, my friend,
I'll tell you the best Christmas story you ever heard.  And I guarantee
that every word of it is true."

We walked down the block to Jack's, a cramped and boisterous
delicatessen with good pastrami sandwiches and photographs of old Dodger
teams hanging on the walls.  We found a table at the back, ordered our
food, and then Auggie launched into his story.

"It was the summer of '72," he said.  "A kid came in one morning and
started stealing things from the store.  He must have been about
nineteen or twenty, and I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic
shoplifter in my life.  He's standing by the rack of paperbacks along
the far wall and stuffing books into the pockets of his raincoat.  It
was crowded around the counter just then, so I didn't see him at first.
But once I noticed what he was up to, I started to shout.  He took off
like a jackrabbit, and by the time I managed to get out from behind the
counter, he was already tearing down Atlantic Avenue.  I chased after
him for about half a block, and then I gave up.  He'd dropped something
along the way, and since I didn't feel like running anymore, I bent down
to see what it was.

"It turned out to be his wallet.  There wasn't any money inside, but his
driver's license was there along with three or four snapshots.

I suppose I could have called the cops and had him arrested.  I had his
name and address from the license, but I felt kind of sorry for him.  He
was just a measly little punk, and once I looked at those pictures in
his wallet, I couldn't bring myself to feel very angry at him.  Robert
Goodwin.  That was his name.  In one of the pictures, I remember, he was
standing with his arm around his mother or grandmother.  In another one,
he was sitting there at age nine or ten dressed in a baseball uniform
with a big smile on his face.  I just didn't have the heart.  He was
probably on dope now, I figured.

A poor kid from Brooklyn without much going for him, and who cared about
a couple of trashy paperbacks anyway?

"So I held onto the wallet.  Every once in a while I'd get a little urge
to send it back to him, but I kept delaying and never did anything about
it.  Then Christmas rolls around and I'm stuck with nothing to do.  The
boss usually invites me over to his house to spend the day, but that
year he and his family were down in Florida visiting relatives.  So I'm
sitting in my apartment that morning feeling a little sorry for myself,
and then I see Robert Goodwin's wallet lying on a shelf in the kitchen.
I figure what the hell, why not do something nice for once, and I put on
my coat and go out to return the wallet in person.

"The address was over in Boerum Hill, somewhere in the projects.  It was
freezing out that day, and I remember getting lost a few times trying to
find the right building.  Everything looks the same in that place, and
you keep going over the same ground thinking you're somewhere else.
Anyway, I finally get to the apartment I'm looking for and ring the
bell.  Nothing happens.  I assume no one's there, but I try again just
to make sure.  I wait a little longer, and just when I'm about to give
up, I hear someone shuffling to the door.  An old woman's voice asks
who's there, and I say I'm looking for Robert Goodwin.  'Is that you,
Robert?" the old woman says, and then she undoes about fifteen locks and
opens the door.

"She has to be at least eighty, maybe ninety years old, and the first
thing I notice about her is that she's blind.  'I knew you'd come,
Robert,' she says.  'I knew you wouldn't forget your Granny Ethel on
Christmas." And then she opens her arms as if she's about to hug me.

"I didn't have much time to think, you understand.  I had to say
something real fast, and before I knew what was happening, I could hear
the words coming out of my mouth.  'That's right, Granny Ethel,' I said.
'I came back to see you on Christmas." Don't ask me why I did it.  I
don't have any idea.  Maybe I didn't want to disappoint her or
something, I don't know.  It just came out that way, and then this old
woman was suddenly hugging me there in front of the door, and I was
hugging her back.

"I didn't exactly say that I was her grandson.  Not in so many words, at
least, but that was the implication.  I wasn't trying to trick her,
though.  It was like a game we'd both decided to playwithout having to
discuss the rules.  I mean, that woman knew I wasn't her grandson
Robert.  She was old and dotty, but she wasn't so far gone that she
couldn't tell the difference between a stranger and her own flesh and
blood.  But it made her happy to pretend, and since I had nothing better
to do anyway, I was happy to go along with her.

"So we went into the apartment and spent the day together.  The place
was a real dump, I might add, but what else can you expect from a blind
woman who does her own housekeeping?  Every time she asked me a question
about how I was, I would lie to her.  I told her I'd found a good job
working in a cigar store, I told her I was about to get married, I told
her a hundred pretty stories, and she made like she believed every one
of them.  'That's fine, Robert,' she would say, nodding her head and
smiling.  'I always knew things would work out for you."

"After a while, I started getting pretty hungry.  There didn't seem to
be much food in the house, so I went out to a store in the neighborhood
and brought back a mess of stuff.  A precooked chicken, vegetable soup,
a bucket of potato salad, a chocolate cake, all kinds of things.  Ethel
had a couple of bottles of wine stashed in her bedroom, and so between
us we managed to put together a fairly decent Christmas dinner.  We both
got a little tipsy from the wine, I remember, and after the meal was
over we went out to sit in the living room, where the chairs were more
comfortable.  I had to take a pee, so I excused myself and went to the
bathroom down the hall.

That's where things took yet another turn.  It was ditsy enough doing my
little jig as Ethel's grandson, but what I did next was positively
crazy, and I've never forgiven myself for it.

"I go into the bathroom, and stacked up against the wall next to the
shower, I see a pile of six or seven cameras.  Brand-new
thirty-five-millimeter cameras, still in their boxes, top-quality
merchandise.  I figure this is the work of the real Robert, a storage
place for one of his recent hauls.  I've never taken a picture in my
life, and I've certainly never stolen anything, but the moment I see
those cameras sitting in the bathroom, I decide I want one of them for
myself.  just like that.  And without even stopping to think about it, I
tuck one of the boxes under my arm and go back to the living room.  "I
couldn't have been gone for more than three minutes, but in that time
Granny Ethel had fallen asleep in her chair.  Too much Chianti, I
suppose.  I went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and she slept on
through the whole racket, snoring like a baby.  There didn't seem to be
any point in disturbing her, so I decided to leave.  I couldn't even
write a note to say good-bye, seeing that she was blind and all, and so
I just left.  I put her grandson's wallet on the table, picked up the
camera again, and walked out of the apartment.  And that's the end of
the story."

"Did you ever go back to see her?" I asked.

"Once," he said.  "About three or four months later.  I felt so bad
about stealing the camera, I hadn't even used it yet.  I finally made up
my mind to return it, but Ethel wasn't there anymore.  I don't know what
happened to her, but someone else had moved into the apartment, and he
couldn't tell me where she was."

"She probably died."

"Yeah, probably."

"Which means that she spent her last Christmas with you."

"I guess so.  I never thought of it that way."

"It was a good deed, Auggie.  It was a nice thing you did for her."

"I lied to her, and then I stole from her.  I don't see how you can call
that a good deed."

"You made her happy.  And the camera was stolen anyway.  It's not as if
the person you took it from really owned it."

"Anything for art, eh Paul?"

"I wouldn't say that.  But at least you've put the camera to good use."

"And now you've got your Christmas story, don't you?"

"Yes," I said.  "I suppose I do."

I paused for a moment, studying Auggie as a wicked grin spread across
his face.  I couldn't be sure, but the look in his eyes at that moment
was so mysterious, so fraught with the glow of some inner delight, that
it suddenly occurred to me that he had made the whole thing up.  I was
about to ask him if he'd been putting me on, but then I realized he
would never tell.  I had been tricked into believing him, and that was
the only thing that mattered.  As long as there's one person to believe
it, there's no story that can't be true.  "You're an ace, Auggie," I
said.  "Thanks for being so helpful."

"Any time," he answered, still looking at me with that maniacal light in
his eyes.  "After all, if you can't share your secrets with your
friends, what kind of a friend are you?"

"I guess I owe you one."

"No you don't.  just put it down the way I told it to you, and you don't
owe me a thing."

"Except the lunch."

"That's right.  Except the lunch."

I returned Auggie's smile with a smile of my own, and then I called out
to the waiter and asked for the check.

Champagne By: Tobias Wolf,

My stepfather Dwight said that he had once seen Lawrence Welkin the
dining car of a train.  Dwight said that he'd walked right up to him and
told him that he was his favorite conductor, and he probably did, for it
was true that he loved the champagne music of Lawrence Welk better than
any other music.  Dwight had a large collection of Lawrence Welk
records.  When "The Lawrence Welk Show" came on TV we were expected to
watch it with him, and be quiet, and get up only during commercials.
Dwight pulled his chair up close to the set.  He leaned forward as the
bubbles rose over the Champagne Orchestra and Lawrence Welk came on
stage salaaming in every direction, crying out declarations of humility
in his unctuous, brain-scalding Swedish kazoo of a voice.  Dwight's eyes
widened at the virtuosity of Big Tiny Little Junior, who played ragtime
piano while looking over his shoulder at the camera.  He gazed with
chaste ardor at the Lovely Champagne Lady Alice Lon, who smiled the same
tremulous smile through every note of every song until she got canned
and replaced by the Lovely Champagne Lady Norma Zimmer.  He gloated over
the Lovely Little Lennon Sisters as if they were his own daughters, and
laughed out loud at the cruel jokes Lawrence Welk made at the expense of
his slobbering Irish tenor, Joe Feeney.

Joe Feeney was the latest addition to the Champagne Ensemble and
obviously felt himself on pretty shaky ground, especially after the
Lovely Champagne Lady Alice Lon was sent packing and then the Ragtime
Piano Virtuoso Big Tiny Little junior got replaced by the Ragtime Piano
Virtuoso Jo Ann Castle, who pummeled the keys like a butcher tenderizing
meat.  When Joe Feeney sang he held nothing back.  He worked himself up
to the point of tears, and flecks of saliva flew off his wet lips.  You
had the feeling that Joe Feeney was singing for his life.

About halfway through the show, Dwight would take out his old Conn
saxophone and finger the stops in time to the music.  Sometimes, when he
got really carried away, he would forget himself and blow on it, and a
squawk would come out.

After Dwight's daughter Norma graduated from Concrete High she moved
down to Seattle.  She worked in an office where she met a man named
Kenneth who took her for long drives in his Austin Healey sports car and
tried to talk her into getting married.  Norma called my mother all the
time and asked for advice.  What should she do?

She still loved Bobby Crow, but Bobby wasn't going anywhere.  He didn't
even have a job.  Kenneth was ambitious.  On the other hand, nobody
liked him.  He had very strong opinions about everything and was also a
Seventh-Day Adventist.  But that wasn't it, exactly.

Kenneth just didn't have a very good personality.  Then Norma called up
and said she'd decided to marry Kenneth.  She refused to explain her
decision, but insisted it was final.  Naturally, she wanted to invite
Kenneth to Chinook to meet the family, and it was finally settled that
he should come up during Christmas, when her brother Skipper would also
be home.

Dwight got the spirit that year.  He made a wreath for the door and hung
pine boughs all over the living room.  A couple of weeks before
Christmas he and I drove up into the mountains to get a tree.  It was
early afternoon, a cold light rain falling.  Dwight drank from a pint
bottle as we scouted the woods.  We found a fine blue spruce growing all
by itself in the middle of a clearing, and Dwight let me cut it down
while he took nips off his bottle and squinted up at the misty peaks all
around us.  Once I got the tree down we started wrestling it through the
dense growth, back toward the fire road where we'd left the car.  We had
walked a good distance and the going was rough.  I could hear Dwight
laboring for breath and muttering when he stumbled.  I kept waiting for
him to bark at me, but he never did.  He was that pleased about Norma
coming home.

After dinner that night Dwight went into the living room with a can of
spray paint and began to shake it.  He was very thorough when it came to
painting, and if he was using spray paint he always followed the
directions to the letter and shook the can well.  The agitator rattled
loudly as he swung the can back and forth.  Pearl, my other stepsister,
and I were doing our homework at the dining room table.  We pretended
not to watch.  My mother was out somewhere or else she would've asked
him what he thought he was doing, and possibly even stopped him.

When he finished shaking the can, Dwight pulled the tree into the middle
of the living room and walked around it two or three times.

Then, starting at the top and working his way down, he proceeded to
spray it with white paint.  I thought he meant to put a few splashes
here and there to suggest snow, but he sprayed the whole thingtrunk and
all.  The needles drank up the paint and turned faintly blue again.
Dwight put on another coat.  It took him three cans before he was done,
but the tree stayed white.  By the next day, when we decorated the tree,
the needles had already begun to drop off.  Every time you touched a
limb it set off a little cascade of them.  No one said anything.  My
mother hung a few balls, then sat down and stared at the tree.

The needles kept falling, pattering softly down on the white crepe paper
spread around the trunk.  By the time Norma and Skipper arrived the tree
was half-bare.  They had driven up together from Seattle; Kenneth had to
work, but he was all set to join us the following day.

Norma must have told Bobby Crow she was coming.  He showed up just after
dinner that night, restless and grim, silent when Skipper tried to
banter with him.  He took Norma somewhere, then drove her back a couple
of hours later.  But she didn't get out of the car.

The rest of us sat around in the living room, and watched the lights
blink on the tree, and talked about anything but the fact that Norma.was
still outside with Bobby Crow.  The lights didn't blink at different
times like twinkling stars but all at once, flashing on and off like a
neon sign outside a roadhouse.

I was in bed when Norma finally came inside and ran to her room, giving
long ululating cries that appalled me and made me cringe in.  I heard
Pearl try to soothe her, then my mother joined
them and I heard her voice too, lower than Pearl's, the two of them
speaking sometimes in turn and sometimes together so that their voices
formed one murmurous braid of sound.  Skipper shifted in his bed but
slept on, and in time, as Norma's keening subsided, I lay back and went
to sleep myself.

Kenneth pulled up the next afternoon and by dinnertime we all hated him.
He knew it, and relished it, even sought it out.  As soon as he stepped
out of his Austin Healey, he started complaining about the remoteness of
the camp and the discomfort of the drive and the imprecision of the
directions Norma had left behind for him.  He had a fussy, aggrieved
voice and thin disappointed lips.  He wore a golf cap and perforated
leather gloves that snapped across the wrist.  He removed one of his
gloves as he complained, tugging delicately at each finger, then going
on to the next until the glove came free.  He took off the other just as
slowly and carefully, then turned to Norma.  "Don't I get a kiss?"

She bent forward to peck him on the cheek but he seized her face between
his hands and kissed her long and full on the lips.  It was obvious that
he was French-kissing her.  We stood watching this and smiling the same
foolish smiles we had brought outside to welcome him with.  After
Kenneth had wolfed down a sandwich, Dwight made the mistake of offering
him a drink.  "Oh, boy," Kenneth said.

"I guess you don't know much about me." He said that he believed he had
a duty to lay his cards on the table, and so he did.

"I don't know," Dwight said.  "I don't see the harm in a drink now and
then."

"I'm sure you don't," Kenneth said.  "I'm sure the drug fiend doesn't
see the harm in a needle now and then."

This led to an exchange of words.  My mother stepped in and acted jolly
and moved us from the kitchen into the living room, where she must have
hoped that the presence of the tree and the gifts would remind us why we
were together, and call us to our better selves.

But Kenneth started laying more cards on the table.  There truly was no
end of them.  Skipper finally said, "Look, Kenneth ...  why don't you
lay off?"

"What are you afraid of, Skipper?"

"Afraid?" Skipper's eyelids fluttered as if he were trying to confirm
some improbable image.

"I only tell you this because I love you," Kenneth said, "but you are
very frightened people.  Very frightened.  But hey, there's no need to
be-the news is good!"

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" Dwight said.  Kenneth smiled.
"Go on.  I can take it."

Norma tried to change the subject but Kenneth could take any comment and
find something in it to deplore.  Argument was the only kind of sound he
knew how to make.  And if you didn't give in to him he smirked and
offered you his pity for being so ignorant and misled.  He wasn't
reluctant to get personal.  Soon enough Dwight and Skipper got personal
back, and then Pearl and I put our oars in.

Insulting this man was a profound pleasure, and a pleasure not only for
us; a flush of excitement came into his pallid face as the words got
meaner and harder to take back.  He kept our blood up by saying, "If you
think that bothers me, you're sadly mistaken," and "Sorry, try again,"
and "I've had worse than that."

This went on for some time.  As we baited him Kenneth smiled in a
secretive way and sucked on an empty Yellow-Bole pipe with which, he
later told me, he strengthened his willpower by tempting himself to
smoke.  Norma was mute.  She sat next to Kenneth on the sofa and stared
at the floor while he absently rubbed his hand up and down her back.
Every time he touched her I felt despair.  At last my mother came in
from the kitchen and suggested that Norma take Kenneth out and show him
around Chinook.  Norma nodded and stood up, but Kenneth said he didn't
want to leave now, just when things were getting interesting.

Norma implored him with her eyes.

Finally he left with her.  In the wake of his going we exchanged looks
of exultation and shame.  A fidgety silence came upon us.  One by one we
drifted away to other parts of the house.

But at dinner it started up again.  Kenneth couldn't stop himself.

Even when he was quiet you could feel him preparing his next charge. The
only thing that could shut him up was the TV.  When the TV came on
Kenneth went silent, staring and still as an owl in a tree.

Over the next couple of days my mother talked each of us into spending
some time alone with him so we could get to know one another as
individuals.  This proved a mistake.  Some people are better left
unknown.  Our walks and drives with Kenneth ended early and culminated
in shouts and slamming doors.  Years later my mother told me he'd made a
pass at her.

We could all see that Norma didn't love Kenneth.  But she stayed next to
him, and submitted to his demonstrations of passion, and refused to say
a word against him.  She even, in the end, married him.  But not before
Dwight had nearly killed himself trying to stop her.  He drove down to
Seattle almost every weekend, sometimes bringing us along, more often by
himself, always with some new scheme for luring her away from Kenneth.
Nothing worked.  He returned late Sunday night or early Monday morning,
eyes bloodshot from the long drive, too tired and baffled even to
quarrel.

Norma married Kenneth, and had their baby, and they moved into a duplex
near Bothell.  When we came down for visits she acted happy and never
complained about anything.  But she was pale and angular, all her lazy
lushness gone.  Her green eyes blazed in the starkness of her face.  She
had taken up smoking-out on their little patio where Kenneth wouldn't
smell it when he got home-and she continuously excused herself during
our visits to go outside and puff greedily on a cigarette, tapping her
feet and looking up at the sky, now and then glancing back at us through
the sliding glass door.

I saw Bobby Crow in Concrete a year or so later, just after I'd started
high school there.  He was standing beside a truck with some other men,
most of them Indians.  Bobby still had a measure of renown for his
gridiron magic, and I thought I would impress the two boys I was with by
a show of familiarity.  As we walked past the truck I said, "Hey, Bobo,
how's it going?" The men fell quiet and looked over at us.  Bobby fixed
me with a stare.  "Who the hell are you talking to?" he said.  His eyes
were full of murder.

We watched TV most of Christmas Eve.  When it got dark, Dwight left the
house lights off so we could get the full effect of the lights on the
tree.  We broke to eat, then went back to the set.  By the time "The
Lawrence Welk Christmas Special" came on we were glassyeyed and
slack-jawed, stunned with viewing.  The Champagne Orchestra played a
medley of Christmas favorites, the sacred and profane mixed
effervescently together, and then someone wearing knee breeches and a
tricornered hat acted the part of Franz Gruber while Lawrence Welk
intoned the narrative: "It was Christmas Eve in the little town of
Oberndorf, and snow was falling as the organist Franz Gruber made his
weary way to the little church that was soon to become famous throughout
the world.  .  .  .  " The Gruber character paused on the church steps,
looked up suddenly with the fire of inspiration in his eyes, then dashed
inside and plunked out "Silent Night." He had to change a couple of
notes here and there, but after he got it right the orchestra segued in
and subsumed it into their own champagne arrangement, with Joe Feeney
sobbing out a verse a cappella at the very end.

The scene shifted.  We found ourselves in an elegant room where, under a
shimmering tree, the Lovely Little Lennon Sisters began to sing a medley
of their own.  Firelight gleamed on their faces.  Snow fell slowly past
the window behind them, a glockenspiel chimed in accompaniment.  They
were singing "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" when Dwight nudged me
and motioned me to follow him.  He looked pleased with himself.  "It's
about time we got some use out of those chestnuts," he said.  The
chestnuts.  Almost two years had passed since I'd shucked them and
stored them away.  In all that time no one had said a word about them.
They'd been forgotten by everyone but me, and I'd kept my mouth shut
because I didn't want to remind Dwight to give me the job again.  We
climbed up into the attic and worked our way down to where I'd put the
boxes.  It was cramped and musty.  From below I could hear faint voices
singing.  Dwight led the way, probing the darkness with a flashlight.
When he found the boxes he stopped and held the beam on them.  Mold
covered the cardboard sides and rose from the tops of the boxes like
dough swelling out of a bread pan.  Its surface, dark and solid-looking,
gullied and creased like cauliflower, glistened in the light.  Dwight
played the beam over the boxes, then turned it on the basin where the
beaver, also forgotten these two years past, had been left to cure. Only
a pulp remained.  This too was covered with mold, but a different kind
than the one that had gotten the chestnuts.  This mold was white and
transparent, a network of gossamer filaments that had flowered to a
height of two feet or so above the basin.  It was like cotton candy but
more loosely spun.

And as Dwight played the light over it I saw something strange.  The
mold had no features, of course, but its outline somehow suggested the
shape of the beaver it had consumed: a vague cloud-picture of a beaver
crouching in the air.

If Dwight noticed it he didn't say anything.  I followed him back
down-stairs and into the living room.  My mother had gone to bed, but
everyone else was still watching TV.  Dwight picked up his saxophone
again and played silently along with the Champagne Orchestra.  The tree
blinked.  Our faces darkened and flared, darkened and flared.

The Birds for Christmas By: Mark Richard,

We wanted The Birds for Christmas.  We had seen the commercials for it
on the television donated thirdhand by the Merchant Seamen's and
Sailors' Rest Home, a big black-and-white Zenith of cracked plastic and
no knobs, a dime stuck in the channel selector.  You could adjust the
picture and have no sound, or hi-fi sound and no picture.  We just
wanted the picture.  We wanted to see The Birds.

The Old Head Nurse said not to get our hopes up.  It was a "Late Show"
after Lights Out the night before Christmas Eve.  She said it would wake
the babies and scare the Little Boys down on the far end of the ward.
Besides, she said, she didn't think it was the type of movie we should
be seeing Christmas week.  She said she was certain there would be
Rudolph and Frosty on.  That would be more appropriate for us to watch
on the night before Christmas Eve.

"Fuck Frosty," Michael Christian said to me.  "I seen that a hunrett
times.  I want to see The Birds, man.  I want to see those birds get all
up in them people's hair.  That's some real Christmas TV to me."

Michael Christian and I were some of the last Big Boys to be claimed for
Christmas.  We were certain someone would eventually come for us.  We
were not frightened yet.  There were still some other Big Boys
around-the Big Boy who ran away to a gas station every other night, the
Human Skeleton who would bite you, and the guy locked away on the sun
porch who the Young Doctors were taking apart an arm and a leg at a
time.  The Young Doctors told Michael Christian that their Christmas
gift to him would be that one day he would be able to do a split on
stage like his idol, James Brown.  There never seemed to be any doubt in
Michael Christian's mind about that.  For now, he just wanted to see The
Birds while he pretended to be James Brown in the Hospital.

Pretending to be James Brown in the Hospital was not without its hazards
for Michael Christian; he had to remember to keep his head lifted from
his pillow so as not to bedhead his budding Afro.  Once, when he was
practicing his singing, the nurses rushed to his bed asking him where it
hurt.  "I'm warming up 'I Feel Good,' stupid bitches," said Michael
Christian.  Then his bed was jerked from the wall and wheeled with great
speed, pushed and pulled along by hissing nurses, jarring other
bedsteads, Michael Christian's wrists hanging over the safety bed rails
like jailhouse-window hands; he was on his way to spend a couple of
solitary hours out in the long, dark, and empty hall, him rolling his
eyes at me as he sped past, saying, "Aw, man, now I feel BAD!"

Bed wheeling into the hall was one of the few alternatives to corporal
punishment the nurses had, most of them being reluctant to spank a child
in traction for spitting an orange pip at his neighbor, or to beat a
completely burned child for cursing.  Bed wheeling into the hall was
especially effective at Christmas time, when it carried the possibility
of missing Christmas programs.  A veteran of several Christmases in the
hospital and well acquainted with the grim Christmas programs, Michael
Christian scoffed at the treasures handed out by the church and state
charities-the aging fruit, the surplus ballpoint pens, the occasional
batches of recycled toys that didn't work, the games and puzzles with
missing pieces.  Michael Christian's Christmas Wish was as specific as
mine.

I wanted a miniature train set with batteries so I could lay out the
track to run around on my bed over the covers.  Not the big Lionel size
or the HO size.  I wanted the set you could see in magazines, where they
show you the actual size of the railroad engine as being no larger than
a walnut.

"You never get that, man," Michael Christian said, and he was right.
James Brown in the Hospital's Christmas Wish was for The Birds for
Christmas.  And, as Michael Christian's friend, I became an accomplice
in his desire.  In that way, "birds" became a code, the way words can
among boys.

"Gimme some BIRDS!" Michael Christian would squawk when the society
ladies on their annual Christmas visit asked us what we wanted.

"How about a nice hairbrush?" a society lady said, laying one for white
people at the foot of Michael Christian's bed.

"I want a pick," Michael Christian told her.

"A pick?  A shovel and a pick?  To dig with?" asked the society lady.

"I think he wants a comb for his hair," I said.  "For his Afro."

"That's right: a pick," said Michael Christian.  "Tell this stupid white
bitch something.  Squawk, squawk," he said, flapping his elbows like
wings, as the nurses wheeled him out into the hall.

"Gimme some BIRDS!" he shouted, and when they asked me, I said to give
me some birds, too.  Michael Christian's boldness over the Christmas
programs increased when Ben, the night porter, broke the television.
Looking back, it may not be fair to say that Ben, the night porter,
actually broke the television, but one evening it was soundlessly
playing some kiddie Christmas show and Ben was standing near it mopping
up a spilled urinal can when the screen and the hope of Michael
Christian's getting his Christmas Wish blackened simultaneously.
Apologetic at first, knowing what even a soundless television meant to
children who had rarely seen any television at all, Ben then offered to
"burn up your butt, Michael Christian, legs braces and all" when Michael
Christian hissed "stupid nigger" at Ben, beneath the night nurse's
hearing.  It was a somber Lights Out.

The next night, a priest and some students from the seminary came by.
Practice Preachers, Michael Christian said.  While one of the students
read the Christmas story from the Bible, Michael Christian pretended to
peck his own eyes out with pinched fingers.  When the story was
finished, Michael Christian said, "Now, you say the sheepherding guys
was so afraid, right?"

"Sore afraid," said the Practice Preacher.  "The shepherds had never
seen angels before, and they were sore afraid."

"Naw," said Michael Christian.  "I'll tell you what-they saw these big
white things flapping down and they was big birds, man.  I know birds,
man, I know when you got bird problems, man!"

"They were angels," said the young seminary student.

"Naw," said Michael Christian.  "They was big white birds, and the
sheepherding guys were so afraid the big white birds was swooping down
and getting all up in they hair and stuff!  Squawk, squawk!" he said,
flapping around in his bed.

"Squawk, squawk!" I answered, and two of the Practice Preachers assisted
the nurses in wheeling Michael Christian into the hall and me into the
linen cupboard.

One night in the week before Christmas, a man named Sammy came to visit.
He had been a patient as a child, and his botched cleftpalate and
harelip repairs were barely concealed by a weird line of blond mustache.
Sammy owned a hauling company now, and he showed up blistering drunk,
wearing a ratty Santa suit, and began handing out black-strapped Tirnex
junior wristwatches.  I still have mine, somewhere.

One by one we told Sammy what we wanted for Christmas, even though we
were not sure, because of his speech defect, that that was what he was
asking.  Me, the walnut train; Michael Christian, The Birds.

We answered without enthusiasm, without hope: it was all by rote.

By the end of the visit, Sammy was a blubbering sentimental mess,
reeking of alcohol and promises.  Ben, the night porter, put him out.

It was Christmas Eve week.  The boy who kept running away finally ran
away for good.  Before he left, he snatched the dime from the channel
selector on our broken TV.  We all saw him do it and we didn't care.  We
didn't even yell out to the night nurse, so he could get a better head
start than usual.

It was Christmas Eve week, and Michael Christian lay listless in his
bed.  We watched the Big Boy ward empty.  Somebody even came for one of
the moaners, and the guy out on the sun porch was sent upstairs for a
final visit to the Young Doctors so they could finish taking him apart.
On the night before Christmas Eve, Michael Christian and I heard street
shoes clicking down the long corridor that led to where we lay.  It was
after Lights Out.  We watched and waited and waited.  It was just Sammy
the Santa, except this time he was wearing a pale-blue leisure suit, his
hair was oiled back, and his hands, holding a red-wrapped box, were
clean.

What we did not want for Christmas were wristwatches.  What we did not
want for Christmas were bars of soap.  We did not want any more candy
canes, bookmarks, ballpoint pens, or somebody else's last year's broken
toy.  For Christmas we did not want plastic crosses, dot books, or fruit
baskets.  No more handshakes, head pats, or storybook times.  It was the
night before Christmas Eve, and Michael Christian had not mentioned The
Birds in days, and I had given up on the walnut train.  We did not want
any more Christmas Wishes.

Sammy spoke with the night nurse, we heard him plead that it was
Christmas, and she said all right, and by her flashlight she brought him
to us.  In the yellow spread of her weak batteries, we watched Michael
Christian unwrap a portable television.

There was nothing to be done except plug the television into the wall.
It was Christmas, Sammy coaxed the reluctant night nurse.

They put the little TV on a chair, and we watched the end of an Andy
Williams Christmas Special.  We watched the eleven-o'clock news.  Then
the movie began: The Birds.  It was Christmas, Sammy convinced the night
nurse.  The night nurse wheeled her chair away from the chart table and
rolled it to the television set.  The volume was low, so as not to
disturb the damaged babies at the Little Boy end of the ward-babies
largely uncollected until after the holidays, if at all.  Sammy sat on
an empty bed.  He patted it.

Michael Christian and I watched The Birds.

During the commercials, the night nurse checked the hall for the
supervisor.  Sammy helped her turn any infant that cried out.  The night
nurse let Sammy have some extra pillows.  Michael Christian spoke to me
only once during the entire movie: quietly, during a commercial when we
were alone, he said, "Those birds messing them people up."

When the movie was over, it was the first hours of Christmas Eve.

The night nurse woke Sammy and let him out through the sun porch.

She told us to go to sleep, and rolled her chair back to her chart
table.  In the emptiness you could hear the metal charts click and
scratch, her folds of white starch rustle.  Through a hole in the pony
blanket I had pulled over my head I could see Michael Christian's bed.
His precious Afro head was buried deep beneath his pillow.

At the dark end of the ward a baby cried in its sleep and then was
still.  It was Christmas Eve, and we were sore afraid.

Christmas for Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo By: Ntozake Shange,

Hilda Effania couldn't wait till Christmas.  The Christ Child was born.
Hallelujah.  Hallelujah.  The girls were home.  The house was humming.
Hilda Effania justa singing, cooking up a storm.  Up before dawn.
Santa's elves barely up the chimney.  She chuckled.  This was gonna be
some mornin'.  Yes, indeed.  There was nothing too good for her girls.
Matter of fact, what folks never dreamed of would only just about do.
That's right, all her babies home for Christmas Day.

Hilda Effania cooking up a storm.  Little Jesus Child lyin' in his
manger.  Praise the Lord for all these gifts.  Hilda Effania justa
singin':

Poor little Jesus Child, Born in a Manger

Sweet little Jesus Child

& they didn't know who you were.

BREAKFAST WITH HILDA EFFANIA &

HER GIRLS ON CHRISTMAS MORNING

HILDA'S TURKEY HASH

1 pound diced cooked turkey meat (white & dark) 2 medium onions, diced 1
red sweet pepper, diced 1 full boiled potato, diced 1 tablespoon
cornstarch 3 tablespoons butter Salt to taste, pepper too (A dash of
corn liquor, optional)

In a heavy skillet, put your butter.  Saute your onions & red pepper.
Add your turkey, once your onions are transparent.

When the turkey's sizzling, add your potato.  Stir.  If consistency is
not to your liking, add the cornstarch to thicken, the corn liquor to
thin.  Test to see how much salt & pepper you want, & don't forget your
cayenne.

CATFISH/ THE WAY ALBERT LIKED IT

1/2 cup flour 3 beaten eggs 1/2 cup cornmeal Oil for cooking Salt Lemons
Pepper   6 fresh catfish 1/2 cup buttermilk

Sift flour and cornmeal.  Season with your salt & pepper.  Mix the
beaten eggs well with the buttermilk.  Dip your fish in the egg & milk.
Then roll your fish in the cornmeal-flour mix.  Get your oil spitting
hot in a heavy skillet.  Fry your fish, not too long, on both sides.
Your lemon wedges are for your table.

1 tangerine    Sugar 1 papaya    Cold water 1 lemon

Delicately grate rinds of fruits.  Make sure you have slender pieces of
rind.  Chop up your pulp, leaving the middle section of each fruit.  Put
the middles of the fruits and the seeds somewhere else in a cotton wrap.
Add three times the amount of pulp & rind.

That's the measure for your water.  Keep this sitting overnight.

Get up the next day & boil this for a half hour.  Drop your wrapped seed
bag in there.  Boil that, too.  & mix in an exact equal of your seed bag
with your sugar (white or brown).  Leave it be for several hours.  Come
back.  Get it boiling again.

Don't stop stirring.  You can test it & test it, but you'll know when it
jells.  Put on your table or in jars you seal while it's hot.

Now you have these with your hominy grits.  (I know you know how to make
hominy grits.)  Fried eggs, sunny-side up.  Ham-sliced

bacon, butter rolls & Aunt Haydee's Red Pimiento Jam.  I'd tell

you that receipt, but Aunt Haydee never told nobody how it is

you make that.  I keep a jar in the pantry for special occasions.  I get
one come harvest.

Mama's breakfast simmering way downstairs drew the girls out of their
sleep.  Indigo ran to the kitchen.  Sassafrass turned back over on her
stomach to sleep a while longer, there was no House Mother ringing a
cowbell.  Heaven.  Cypress brushed her hair, began her daily pli&s & leg
stretches.  Hilda Effania sat at her kitchen table, drinking strong
coffee with Magnolia Milk, wondering what the girls would think of her
tree.

"Merry Christmas, Mama." Indigo gleamed.  "May I please have some coffee
with you?  Nobody else is up yet.  Then we can go see the tree, can't
we, when they're all up.  Should I go get 'em?  " Indigo was making
herself this coffee as quickly as she could, before Hilda Effania said
"no." But Hilda was so happy Indigo could probably have had a shot of
bourbon with her coffee.

"Only half a cup, Indigo.  just today." Hilda watched Indigo moving more
like Cypress.  Head erect, back stretched tall, with some of
Sassafrass's easy coyness.

"So you had a wonderful time last night at your first party?"

"Oh, yes, Mama." Indigo paused.  "But you know what?" Indigo sat down by
her mother with her milk tinged with coffee.  She stirred her morning
treat, serious as possible.  She looked her mother in the eyes.  "Mama,
I don't think boys are as much fun as everybody says."

"What do you mean, darling?"

"Well, they dance & I guess eventually you marry 'em.  But I like my
fiddle so much more.  I even like my dolls better than boys.

They're fun, but they can't talk about important things."

Hilda Effania giggled.  Indigo was making her own path at her own pace.
There'd be not one more boy-crazy, obsessed-with-romance child in her
house.  This last one made more sense out of the world than either of
the other two.  Alfred would have liked that.  He liked independence.

"Good morning, Mama.  Merry Christmas." Sassafrass was still tying her
bathrobe as she kissed her mother.

"Merry Christmas, Indigo.  I see Santa left you a cup of coffee."

"This is not my first cup of coffee.  I had some on my birthday, too."

"Oh, pardon me.  I didn't realize you were so grown.  I've been away,
you know?" Sassafrass was never very pleasant in the morning.

Christmas was no exception.  Indigo & her mother exchanged funny faces.
Sassafrass wasn't going' to spoil this day.

"Good morning.  Good morning.  Good morning, everyone." Cypress flew
through the kitchen: coups jets en tournant.

"Merry Christmas, Cypress," the family shouted in unison.

"Oh, Mama, you musta been up half the night cooking what all I'm
smelling." Cypress started lifting pot tops, pulling the oven door open.

"Cypress, you know I can't stand for nobody to be looking in my food
till I serve it.  Now, come on away from my stove."

Cypress turned to her mama, smiling.  "Mama, let's go look at the tree."

"I haven't finished my coffee," Sassafrass yawned.

"You can bring it with you.  That's what I'm gonna do," Indigo said with
sweet authority.

The tree glistened by the front window of the parlor.  Hilda Effania had
covered it, of course, with cloth & straw.  Satin ribbons of scarlet,
lime, fuchsia, bright yellow, danced on the far limbs of the pine.  Tiny
straw angels of dried palm swung from the upper branches.  Apples
shining, next to candy canes & gingerbread men, brought shouts of joy &
memory from the girls, who recognized their own handiwork.  The black
satin stars with appliques of the Christ Child Cypress had made when she
was ten.  Sassafrass fingered the lyres she fashioned for the children
singing praises of the little Jesus: little burlap children with lyres
she'd been making since she could thread a needle, among the miniatures
of Indigo's dolls.

Hilda Effania had done something else special for this Christmas,
though.  In silk frames of varied pastels were the baby pictures of her
girls & one of her wedding day: Hilda Effania & Alfred, November 30,
1946.

Commotion.  Rustling papers.  Glee & Surprise.  Indigo got a very tiny
laced brassiere from Cypress.  Sassafrass had given her a tiny pair of
earrings, dangling golden violins.  Indigo had made for both her sisters
dolls in their very own likenesses.  Both five feet tall, with hips &
bras.  Indigo had dressed the dolls in the old clothes Cypress &
Sassafrass had left at home.  "Look in their panties," Indigo blurted.
Cypress felt down in her doll's panties.

Sassafrass pulled her doll's drawers.  They both found velvet sanitary
napkins with their names embroidered cross the heart of silk.

"Oh, Indigo.  You're kidding.  You're not menstruating, are you?"

"Indigo, you got your period?"

"Yes, she did." Hilda Effania joined, trying to change the subject.

She'd known Indigo was making dolls, but not that the dolls had their
period.  "Well, what else did you all get?" Hilda asked provocatively.
Cypress pulled out an oddly shaped package wrapped entirely in gold
sequins.  "Mama, this is for you."

The next box was embroidered continuously with Sassafrass's name.

"Here, guess whose?" Cypress held Indigo's shoulders.  Indigo had on her
new bra over her nightgown.  Waiting for her mother & sister to open
their gifts, Cypress did tendues.  "Hold still, Indigo.  If you move, my
alignment goes off."

"Oh, Cypress, this is just lovely." Hilda Effania didn't know what else
to say.  Cypress had given her a black silk negligee with a very
revealing bed jacket.  "I certainly have to think when I could wear this
& you all won't be home to see it."

"Aw, Mama.  Try it on," Cypress pleaded.

"Yeah, Mama.  Put that on.  It looks so nasty." Indigo squinched up her
face, giggled.

"Oh, Cypress, these are so beautiful, I can hardly believe it."

Sassafrass held the embroidered box open.  In the box lined with beige
raw silk were seven cherry-wood hand-carved crochet needles of different
gauges.  "Bet not one white girl up to the Callahan School has ever in
her white life laid eyes on needles like that!" Cypress hugged her
sister, flexed her foot.  "Indigo, you got to put that bra on under your
clothes, not on top of 'em.

Mama, would you look at this little girl?"

Hilda Effania had disappeared.  "I'm trying on this scandalous thing,
Cypress.  You all look for your notes at the foot of the tree." She
shouted from her bedroom, thinking she looked pretty good for a widow
with three most grown girls.

Hilda Effania always left notes for the girls, explaining where their
Christmas from Santa was.  This practice began the first year Sassafrass
had doubted that a fat white man came down her chimney to bring her
anything.  Hilda solved that problem by leaving notes from Santa Claus
for all the children.  That way they had to go search the house, high &
low, for their gifts.  Santa surely had to have been there.  Once school
chums & reality interfered with this myth, Hilda continued the practice
of leaving her presents hidden away.  She liked the idea that each child
experienced her gift in privacy.  The special relationship she nurtured
with each was protected from rivalries, jokes & Christmas confusions.
Hilda Effania loved thinking that she'd managed to give her daughters a
moment of their own.

My Oldest Darling, Sassafrass,

In the back of the pantry is something from Santa.  In a red box by the
attic window is something your father would want you to have.

Out by the shed in a bucket covered with straw is a gift from your Mama.
Love to you,

Mama

Darling Cypress,

Underneath my hat boxes in the 2nd floor closet is your present from
Santa.  Look behind the tomatoes I canned last year for what I got you
in your Papa's name.  My own choice for you is under your bed.    XOXOX,

Mama

Sweet Little Indigo,

This is going to be very simple.  Santa left you something outside your
violin.  I left you a gift by the outdoor stove on the right hand side.
Put your coat on before you go out there.  And the special something I
got you from your Daddy is way up in the china cabinet.  Please, be
careful.

I love you so much,

Mama

In the back of the pantry between the flour & rice, Sassafrass found a
necklace of porcelain roses.  Up in the attic across from Indigo's mound
of resting dolls, there was a red box all right, with a woven blanket of
mohair, turquoise & silver.  Yes, her father would have wanted her to
have a warm place to sleep.  Running out to the shed, Sassafrass knocked
over the bucket filled with straw.

There on the ground lay eight skeins of her mother's finest spun cotton,
dyed so many colors.  Sassafrass sat out in the air feeling her yarns.

Cypress wanted her mother's present first.  Underneath her bed, she felt
tarlatan.  A tutu.  Leave it to Mama.  Once she gathered the whole thing
out where she could see it, Cypress started to cry.  A tutu juponnage,
reaching to her ankles, rose & lavender.  The waist was a wide sash with
the most delicate needlework she'd ever seen.

Tiny toe shoes in white & pink graced brown ankles tied with ribbons.
Unbelievable.  Cypress stayed in her room dancing in her tutu till
lunchtime.  Then she found The Souls of Black Folk by DuBois near the
tomatoes from her Papa's spirit.  She was the only one who'd insisted on
calling him Papa, instead of Daddy or Father.  He didn't mind.  So she
guessed he wouldn't mind now.  "Thank you so much, Mama & Papa." Cypress
slowly went to the second-floor closet where she found Santa'd left her
a pair of opal earrings.  To thank her mother Cypress did a complete
port de bras, in the Cecchetti manner, by her mother's vanity.  The
mirrors inspired her.

Indigo had been very concerned that anything was near her fiddle that
she hadn't put there.  Looking at her violin, she knew immediately what
her gift from Santa was.  A brand-new case.  No secondhand battered
thing from Uncle John.  Indigo approached her instrument slowly.  The
case was of crocodile skin, lined with white velvet.  Plus, Hilda
Effania had bought new rosin, new strings.  Even cushioned the fiddle
with cleaned raw wool.  Indigo carried her new case with her fiddle
outside to the stove where she found a music stand holding A Practical
Method for Violin by Nicolas Laoureux.

"Oh, my.  She's right about that.  Mama would be real mad if I never
learned to read music." Indigo looked through the pages, understanding
nothing.  Whenever she was dealing with something she didn't understand,
she made it her business to learn.  With great difficulty, she carried
her fiddle, music stand & music book into the house.  Up behind the wine
glasses that Hilda Effania rarely used, but dusted regularly, was a
garnet bracelet from the memory of her father.  Indigo figured the
bracelet weighed so little, she would definitely be able to wear it
every time she played her fiddle.  Actually, she could wear it while
conversing with the Moon.

Hilda Effania decided to chance fate & spend the rest of the morning in
her fancy garb from Cypress.  The girls were silent when she entered the
parlor in black lace.  She looked like she did in those hazy photos from
before they were born.  Indigo rushed over to the easy chair &
straightened the pillows.

"Mama, I have my present for you." Hilda Effania swallowed hard.

There was no telling what Indigo might bring her.

"Well, Sweetheart.  I'm eager for it.  I'm excited, too." Indigo opened
her new violin case, took out her violin, made motions of tuning it
(which she'd already done).  In a terribly still moment, she began "My
Buddy," Hilda Effania's mother's favorite song.  At the end, she bowed
to her mother.  Her sisters applauded.

Sassafrass gave her mother two things: a woven hanging of twined ikat
using jute and raffia, called "You Know Where We Came From, Mama," & six
amethysts with holes drilled through, for her mother's creative weaving.

"Mama, you've gotta promise me you won't have a bracelet or a ring or
something made from them.  Those are for your very own pieces."

Sassafrass wanted her mother to experience weaving as an expression of
herself, not as something the family did for Miz Fitzhugh.  Hilda
Effania was still trying to figure out where in the devil she could put
this "hanging," as Sassafrass called it.

"Oh, no, dear.  I wouldn't dream of doing anything with these stones but
what you intended."

When the doorbell rang, Hilda Effania didn't know what to do with
herself.  Should she run upstairs?  Sit calmly?  Run get her house robe?
She had no time to do any of that.  Indigo opened the door.

"Merry Christmas, Miz Fitzhugh.  Won't you come in?" Hilda sank back in
the easy chair.  Cypress casually threw her mother an afghan to cover
herself.  Miz Fitzhugh in red wool suit, tailored green satin shirt, red
tam, all Hilda's design, and those plain brown pumps white women like,
wished everyone a "Merry Christmas." She said Mathew, her butler, would
bring some sweetbreads & venison over later, more toward the dinner
hour.  Miz Fitzhugh liked Sassafrass the best of the girls.  That's why
she'd sponsored her at the Callahan School.  The other two, the one with
the gall to want to be a ballerina & the headstrong one with the fiddle,
were much too much for Miz Fitzhugh.  They didn't even wanta be weavers.
What was becoming of the Negro, refusing to ply an honorable trade.

Nevertheless, Miz Fitzhugh hugged each one with her frail blue,veined
arms, gave them their yearly checks for their savings accounts she'd
established when each was born.  There be no talk that her Negroes were
destitute.  What she didn't know was that Hilda Effania let the girls
use that money as they pleased.  Hilda believed every family needed only
one mother.  She was the mother to her girls.  That white lady was
mighty generous, but she wasn't her daughters' mama or manna from
Heaven.  If somebody needed taking care of, Hilda Effania determined
that was her responsibility; knowing in her heart that white folks were
just peculiar.

"Why, Miz Fitzhugh, that's right kindly of you," Hilda honeyed.

"Why, Hilda, you know I feel like the girls were my very own," Miz
Fitzhugh confided.  Cypress began a series of violent ronds de jambe.
Sassa-frass picked up all the wrapping papers as if it were the most
important thing in the world.  Indigo felt some huge anger coming over
her.  Next thing she knew, Miz Fitzhugh couldn't keep her hat on.  There
was a wind justa pushing, blowing Miz Fitzhugh out the door.  Because
she had blue blood or blue veins, whichever, Indigo knew Miz Fitzhugh
would never act like anything strange was going on.  She'd let herself
be blown right out the door with her white kid gloves, red tailored suit
& all.  Waving good-bye, shouting, "Merry Christmas," Miz Fitzhugh
vanished as demurely as her station demanded.

Sucha raucous laughing & carrying on rarely came out of Hilda Effania's
house like it did after Miz Fitzhugh'd been blown away.

Hilda Effania did an imitation of her, hugging the girls.

"But Miz Fitzhugh, do the other white folks know you touch your
Negroes?" Hilda responded, "Oh, I don't tell anyone!"

Eventually they all went to their rooms, to their private fantasies &
preoccupations.  Hilda was in the kitchen working the fat off her goose,
fiddling with the chestnut stuffing, wondering how she would handle the
house when it was really empty again.  It would be empty; not even
Indigo would be home come January.

"Yes, Alfred.  I think I'm doing right by 'em.  Sassafrass is in that
fine school with rich white children.  Cypress is studying classical
ballet with Effie in New York City.  Imagine that?  I'm sending Indigo
out to Difuskie with Aunt Haydee.  Miz Fitzhugh's promised me a tutor
for her.  She doesn't want the child involved in all this violence 'bout
the white & the colored going to school together, the integration.  I
know you know what I mean, 'less up there's segregated too.

"No, Alfred, I'm not blaspheming.  I just can't imagine another world.
I'm trying to, though.  I want the girls to live the good life.  Like
what we planned.  Nice husbands.  Big houses.  Children.

Trips to Paris & London.  Going to the opera.  Knowing nice people for
friends.  Remember we used to say we were the nicest, most interesting
folks we'd ever met?  Well, I don't want it to be that way for our
girls.  You know, I'm sort of scared of being here by myself.  I can
always talk to you, though.  Can't I?

"I'ma tell Miz Fitzhugh that if she wants Indigo in Difuskie, that tutor
will have to be a violin teacher.  Oh, Alfred, you wouldn't believe what
she can do on that fiddle.  If you could only see how Cypress dances.
Sassafrass's weavings.  I wish you were here sometimes, so we could tell
the world to look at what all we, Hilda Effania & Alfred, brought to
this world." Once her Christmas supper was organized in the oven, the
frigerator, the sideboard, Hilda Effania slept in her new negligee,
Alfred's WWII portrait close to her bosom.

A Christmas Conspiracy Tale By: Ivan Klima,

On Wednesday morning, the day before Christmas, I got up at a quarter
past four.  Although I had set the alarm for five o'clock, the thought
of having to get up so damnably early had kept me awake since three.  I
shuffled off to the dining room, which had a northfacing window on whose
frame was mounted a thermometer.  Pointing my flashlight at the scale, I
saw that it registered only a fraction above freezing.  Cold enough for
me not to relish the prospect of spending eight or nine hours out in the
open, standing up and with my hands forever immersed in cold water.
Still, it wasn't too bad for the time of year, so I should not really
bewail my fate-it could have been much colder.  The kids were asleep, my
wife too, and so I made my own breakfast and ate it in the kitchen. Then
I put on two pullovers, a windcheater, and three pairs of socks.

After yesterday's experience I would have preferred four, but my boots
were too small for that.

I had been inveigled into this whole business by Peter, a former
colleague of mine from the faculty.  Peter was a lecturer in aesthetics,
a literary critic and philologist.  These past three years, however, he
had been earning a living first as a night watchman in the warehouse of
some building firm, and then as a stoker.  During that time he had spent
all his savings and, having discovered that it was impossible to keep
body and soul together by honest toil, had decided to chuck it in and
seek a more lucrative way of life.  I had not heard from him for at
least half a year, and then he phoned me a week ago; after the usual
questions about my health and work came a matter-of-fact query: "How
would you like to sell fish?"

"How would I like what.  .  .  ?"

"Sell carp for Christmas," he explained.  "You can earn a heap of money
doing that."

"Oh but I .  .  ." The proposal was so unexpected that I completely
missed my opportunity to refuse.  "Well, I must say that's something
I've never thought of doing."

"Of course you haven't," he said reassuringly.  "Who would have?  But
you're a writer-you should try your hand at everything."

"I'm not the kind of writer who has to try everything," I countered.
"Sure you are!" he replied, his voice tinged with the authority of his
former calling.  "Anyway, you'll make a lot of money.  You're not going
to tell me you couldn't use it, now that Christmas is coming."

"But look, I've never killed a carp in my life.  I just couldn't do it,"
I added, hoping that this would be the end of the matter.

"Oh, don't worry about that side of it," he said.  "Leave that to me.
And that apart, it's child's play.  Two or three days, that's all, and
you can expect to take home at least two thou."

An hour later he was at my apartment, to continue his enthusiastic
depiction of the job he wanted me to undertake.  Last year, one of his
former students had sold carp outside the White Swan department store,
and in four days had earned ten thousand, tax-free.  And even if we did
not manage to get as good a venue-because that would obviously cost
us-we'd still be sure to make two or three thousand at the very least.
Of course, he explained, if we wanted a decent spot we would first have
to grease some-body's palm.

At last I realized what he was after.  He had a splendid idea, he was
willing to put in some hard work himself and even to slaughter the carp,
but he needed a partner with some capital.

"How much?" I asked him.

Peter had a squint.  Now, too, each of his eyes was looking in a
different direction.  What I found suspicious was that neither was
looking at me.

"Well ...  how much?"

"Say five hundred for the spot," he replied, "a hundred for the fish
warden, and a bottle of brandy for the manager of the supermarket in
front of which we'll do the selling."

"That's quite an investment," I pointed out.

"The more we put in, the more we'll make," he assured me.  "And, I've
found a fantastic spot in Stragnice."

"What's that with the fish warden?"

He explained that if you wanted to make a profit you had to have decent
fish.  That former student of his-who had made enough money selling carp
outside the White Swan to pay for a trip to India-had told him about
some fellow who had ignored the fish warden.  The fish warden had then
simply called out, "Fish for Mr.  Scrooge!" and the soldiers opened a
different tank, out of which came carp that looked more like minnows.
"Soldiers?" I asked, puzzled by this new element in the transaction.
"What soldiers?"

"Why, those manning the fish tanks, of course," he replied somewhat
uncertainly.  "They tell me there are soldiers there.  So what."

I did not share his confidence where the soldiers were concerned, but if
the truth were told, it wasn't the eight hundred crowns he was asking
that put me off.  I simply did not fancy the idea of standing there in
the street from morning till night next to a tank full of carp.  In any
case, I didn't particularly need the money; I had enough to live on and
a little in the savings bank.  Things being as they were I could hardly
expect to be earning more.  So I was not really interested in this extra
cash; I wouldn't know what to do with it, unless I donated it to
somebody.  If you are willing to hand money out, you can never have
enough.  But for that purpose two thousand was a ridiculous amount.

True, a number of my friends were in jail, all of them dangerous
subversives and conspirators, if you were to believe the indictment.
That they should be cooling their heels in prison while we others were
enjoying a degree of freedom which even allowed us to choose whether we
wished to sell carp was all part of the Russian roulette that fate had
been playing with us for some thirty years.

One of those in prison had been a colleague of mine in the editorial
office of a literary magazine in the days when these were still being
published in this country.  Christmas would be just the right time to
pay his wife a visit and bring her a little money.

I lent Peter that eight hundred.  He left in high spirits, promising to
see to everything, fish included.

At a quarter to five I was ready.  I had washed, shaved, breakfasted,
put on three pairs of socks and a pair of boots.  Now I tried reading
the sports page of yesterday's newspaper, but there is not much in the
way of sports going on around Christmas, and we all know that there is
nothing of interest in the rest of the paper at any time of year.

At five I emerged into the frosty morning.  The thin mist smelled of
smoke, sulfur, and bad humor.  Soon we'll all choke and become extinct,
just as we have poisoned the fish in most of our rivers.

All we are left with are some bemused carp in a few select ponds.

Yesterday was our first day as fish salesmen.  We reached the agreed
spot in complete darkness.  The carp, which Peter had procured the day
before, filled a huge tank standing in front of the dimly lighted
supermarket; its manager, a portly, graying, elegantly attired fellow,
gave us a friendly greeting, his friendship having previously been
secured with a bottle of brandy.  He gave us a hand with the wooden
counter we brought out of the storeroom, and then he dragged out an
ancient-looking pair of scales.  For a while he looked on, amused, as we
attempted to align the scales on this complicated contraption, then he
pushed us out of the way and, after making some fine adjustments,
jovially assured us that it could now be relied on to give us five
percent extra per kilogram.

He further instructed us never to fail throwing the fish on the scales
with the maximum quantity of water-"tip the water out only if the
customer has looked at the scales beforehand"-then snatch the carp away
as soon as the indicator reaches the highest point, making sure at the
same time that the scales should not ever show a whole, easily read
weight such as one or one and a half kilos.  We listened most
attentively, which encouraged him to give us some more useful hints.
Naturally, it went without saying that we had to round the price up to
the nearest whole number, if possible to the number nine, which was the
best of all whole numbers.  Then throw in a few odd pence on top, as
that made it look more convincing.  By way of example the manager thrust
his hand in the tank, fished out a carp and threw it on to the recently
adjusted scales.  One kilogram nineteen crowns, then add a few pence for
the sake of appearances-say, nineteen crowns sixty.  Customers as a rule
pay with a large denomination note and don't expect any small change.

That gives us an acceptable price of twenty crowns.  However, the
manager continued our initiation with evident glee, it can happen that a
somewhat absentminded customer enables you to quote an even higher
price, like twenty crowns twenty.  In that case always demand your
change back.  If this proves difficult, you can show magnanimity by
saying, "Never mind, you keep the change I'll collect it next
Christmas!" Not only does that look good, the customer will usually
demur and tip you a crown or two extra, on top of the twenty.  You can
thus make three or four crowns on a seven-teen-crown carp, taking into
account what you already gained on the scales.  Noticing the astonished
expression on my face, the manager obviously concluded that I was
scared, and so he turned to me and assured me there was nothing to be
afraid of.  Most of the customers were women, who hardly ever noticed
what the weight was, much less were able to calculate the price.  But of
course it was up to me to be skillful and to use psychology: to sum up
the customer, chat her up a bit so that she forgets she is out shopping
but feels she is making a date.  And therefore, men, beware of men!  All
this, the manager imparted to us with a faint smile on his lips, as if
he were not being serious but just joking, merely playacting for our
benefit.  "However, as soon as you mention the price you have to be
serious again.  Sometimes it helps to apologize and say you've got it
wrong, correcting the price in the customer's favor."

He pointed to the scales, with the seventeen-crown carp still writhing
on top of them, giving us a graphic demonstration of what he had in
mind.

"That'll be twenty-three sixty, madam," he said, picking up the writhing
fish and turning toward me, carp in hand.  "Oh, I beg your pardon!  just
one moment, please." He threw the carp back on the scales, only to
snatch it off again, his face assuming so penitent an expression that to
harbor any doubt about the sincerity of his apology or to defile that
moment of truth by indulging in something as base as addition or
subtraction would have been to offend his integrity as a salesman and
his dignity as a human being.  "There," he cried, "I almost cheated you,
madam.  It's only twenty-two crowns ten." And with these words the
manager hurled the unfortunate carp back into the tank, packed with its
fellow victims which kept opening their stupid mouths, as Nature
intended, oblivious to the coins clinking in their throats for the sake
of which they would shortly be fished out, slaughtered, fraudulently
overpriced, and eventually eaten.

I got off the half-empty bus.  It was only half-past five, which meant I
had added an extra thirty minutes to the inevitable eight hours of
freezing.  The street was deserted, except for a few sleepy, obviously
irritable pedestrians.  From afar I could see our tank.  The day before
had not been a raging success, businesswise.

Although women had trooped into the supermarket by the dozen, buying up
everything from sugar to soap powder as if bereft of reason, to our
dismay they appeared to be in no hurry to purchase their Christmas carp,
perhaps because they had no room left in their bulging shopping bags;
and so we froze outside the store for nothing.  It was not till almost
lunchtime that a few old-age pensioners and housewives took any interest
in what we had to offer.  I did the weighing and collected the money
while Peter doubled as fisherman-murderer.  He handed me the still
seemingly live bodies, which I would cautiously place on the scales. The
old ladies looked on trustingly, while the younger women exchanged a few
sentences, some even flirted with me a little, so that I all but forgot
that I was there to sell fish and not to make assignations. While
engaged in all this chatter, I had my work cut out just converting grams
into crowns-as for any rounding up, I lacked the necessary gall,
cynicism and mental agility.  The women left and we were alone again.
And cold.  Peter started telling me all about Ha9ek's materialism and
anarchism but then-doubtless influenced by the tankful of animal life at
our side-quickly switched to animal symbolism in the works of Franz
Kafka.  He pointed out that with Kafka, man could always change into an
animal, but never the other way round.  In his view, the animal is
invariably something repulsive, foul, slimy-a mouse, a mole, a monkey,
even an insect.  Peter could not say whether this included fish.

We carried on this conversation for a while, but it was too elevated a
topic for those freezing conditions.  We therefore played at being
conspirators and succeeded (exactly how and by what means we did not for
the moment specify) in forcing the government to obey our instructions.
We ordered the immediate release of all political prisoners and
restricted police powers to such a degree that they became practically
nonexistent.  We agreed that we would not put anyone on trial, and thus
do away, once and for all, with the unending cycle of retribution which
only created new victims.

And finally, how else, we set about drawing up editorial
pro-gramsnaturally consisting entirely of banned authors.  We ended up
with some eighty titles, whereas the total of carp we had managed to
sell was eight.  Not nearly so encouraging as the outcome of our
conspiratorial activity.

At two o'clock we "shut up shop" for thirty minutes, adjourning for a
hot cup of tea with rum to the storeroom at the rear of the supermarket.
It was prepared for us on the manager's orders by one of the three young
shop assistants who answered to the somewhat exotic name of Daniela. Her
face, though, was typically Slav, her small nose flattened
Russian-style, her hair probably a little reddish but you could not tell
because she had recently had it dyed yellow, no doubt with a view to the
approach of Christmas.  We sipped our tea, Miss Daniela sipping with us.
Holding the mug in her tiny flippers, she looked quite delectable.  She
was generous with the rum, and so we felt very cozy with her in that
storeroom at the rear of the shop.  My friend, in keeping with his
former vocation, recounted stories about famous writers while i, when
asked to contribute to the entertainment, told them about my meeting
with a former president.  I don't think his name meant anything to the
young lady from the supermarket, but she seemed quite thrilled to be
rubbing shoulders with someone who had, in his turn, rubbed shoulders
with a president.  She kept eyeing me with what she no doubt considered
provocative glances.

Arriving at our stall next day, the first thing I saw was the enormous
pool of water licking the sides of the tank.  I waded through it on
tiptoe and, fearing the worst, looked inside.

Countless open fish mouths gaped at me from among the mass of carp
bodies in that waterless container, some of the expiring bodies still
twitching in their death throes.

I was seized with panic.  There must have been a good eight thousand
crowns' worth of fish in there.  In all his calculations, Peter had
never made any mention of the possibility of their total extinction.
Quick as a flash I wondered if I had in any way been responsible for the
catastrophe, but I could not think of anything I had done wrong or
neglected to do.  Then, stripping off my windcheater and rolling up the
sleeves of both my pull-overs-and doing my best to overcome my
revulsion-I thrust my arm into the welter of twitching bodies.  It did
not take me long to locate the aperture through which the water had
escaped, but it was at least another quarter of an hour (or so it seemed
to me) before I found the plug.  At last I did discover it under that
mountain of fish and wedged it into the opening with all the strength I
could muster.

Any water that might still have remained in the tank would now no longer
run out.

The trouble was, I had no means of filling the tank up again.

Finding a paper cup in the waste bin I tried to scoop up some water from
the pool on the pavement, but it was hopeless.

I threw away the cup and ran into the building that housed our
supermarket.  At this hour, naturally, it was closed.  I crept past the
doors of the apartments, trying to detect signs of life inside.

With the exception of the postman delivering a telegram, only they can
ring a stranger's doorbell at 6:00 A.M.  when they come to make an
arrest.  Only now did it occur to me that anyone in that line of work
had to be quite shameless and thick-skinned.

I ran down to the cellar in the hope of finding a laundry room.

I did find a laundry room.  From behind the locked door I could even
hear a tap dripping.  Taking my bunch of keys from my pocket I tried in
vain to open the door.  The thought of those dying carp lent me courage
and I lunged at the door with my shoulder, kicking it several times for
good measure.

The sound of footsteps up above startled me.  I had enough to contend
with already without being accused of hooliganism.

As I made my way backstairs I saw yellow-haired Daniela tripping toward
the tank with a bucket of water in her hand.  "These rotten tanks," she
said by way of explanation.  "Everything around here is rotten.  Our
freezers go on the blink at least once a month, usually on a Sunday.
Come Monday morning we've got ice-cream pastries and spinach running all
over the floors.  The burglar alarm goes off if somebody just walks past
the shop window in the evening and it'll ring like mad, fit to wake the
dead.  Then the cops turn up and get the manager out of bed to check if
anything's been taken."

We kept bringing bucketfuls of water to the tank, Daniela complaining
all the while about the rotten supermarket where a person could not earn
a penny on the side because all the goods came already packaged and
weighed.  Coffee was the only commodity you could make a little profit
on, but for that you again had to have empty bags.  She recalled her
predecessor, who got hold of some Tuzex bags, which she filled with the
coffee that was left under the grinder; she patiently filled the black
Tuzex Special bags and took these all the way to Vr9ovice, where she
sold them door-todoor, both for Czech crowns and for Tuzex coupons. With
her coupons she bought genuine Scotch, which she then sold here at the
store, making some two hundred crowns per bottle.  In the end someone
had ratted on her and she had to go, being posted to a pharmacy in
Hostivaf.  Instead of coffee, she now had plaster of Paris to weigh, and
instead of whiskey she sold genuine South Bohemian wine.

By the time my friend and the cause of all my misfortune turned up,
there was enough water in the tank for some of the fish bodies to turn
their bellies heavenward and so demonstrate their pitiful demise.

We dumped all the corpses into a bucket, and as soon as the manager
arrived went to ask him what to do with them so as not to infringe any
hygiene regulations.

He glanced inside the bucket without the least sign of surprise, as if
it had been he himself who had taken the plug out during the night. "How
many?" he asked.

"Sixteen, I'd say," replied my friend.  (Actually there were twenty, but
I suppose Peter thought that by quoting a lower figure he would minimize
our fiasco.)

"You'd say?" the manager repeated mockingly.  "And now you'll want to
throw them out, no doubt?"

"Well, what else?"

Astonishment at last showed in the manager's face.  "What else?  What
else?" Why, we'll gut them, cut them up into portions, and sell them at
a higher price, of course."

And so I found myself in the warm and intimate atmosphere of the
storeroom.  With an apron, a butcher's knife, and the yellow-haired
Daniela to help me, I stood over a much-used bench right at the back,
hidden from the eyes of the world behind boxes full of sunflower-oil
bottles, to put the dead fish to good use.

It was a large storeroom, which smelled of spice and soap powder.

In the corner opposite, a huge wooden crate with a hinged top attracted
my attention.  I had no idea what kind of merchandise it could be used
for.

Miss Daniela squeezed between me and the wall of boxes.  Lightly
brushing against my back with her breasts, she gave a delighted giggle
and said wasn't it a scream to be given such a cushy job for a change. I
had never gutted a fish in my life, and so I watched attentively as her
gentle fingers grasped the knife, cut open the gray body of the carp,
and carefully extracted the innards.

"What do you do normally?" she asked.  "Last Christmas we had a bunch of
students here-but you're not a student, are you?"

"No, it's many years since I was a student."

"What you said yesterday about the president, remember?  That was a lot
of codswallop, wasn't it?"

"No.

"No?"

"No."

"Cross your heart?"

"No really!"

"Would you believe it!" She threw the portions of fish into a tin bowl.
"What do they call you?"

('Ivan."

"That's not much of a name, is it?"

"Well, I suppose they didn't think so when they gave it to me."

"Not that I think much of my name," she admitted.

"What name would you prefer, then?"

"Lucia.  Isn't that a lovely name?  Lucia Masopustovi," she replied in a
dreamy voice.

"Otherwise you're happy?"

"What do you mean, otherwise?"

"With your lot."

The word lot seemed to amuse her.  "Go on with you," she said, going
over to the washbasin to rinse her hands.  Then she pulled a chair
across, sat down, and took a packet of cigarettes from her coat pocket.
She offered me one, but I refused it, saying I didn't smoke.  "Well, you
can at least sit down, can't you." She took a wooden box down from the
pile and placed it opposite her chair.  "I don't have to tell you I'd
much rather work in a greengrocer's or a gas station." She crossed her
legs, shortening the distance between us.  Although our legs did not
touch, a mouse could not have squeezed through the space between them.
It was obviously up to me to eliminate the space altogether.  "Go on," I
said.  "Wouldn't you mind the fumes?"

"Mind?  Have you any idea how much you can make in a month?"

"No," I confessed.

"Ten thousand, if it's a halfway decent pump.  Eight at the very least."

"You're kidding," I said in disbelief.  "Anyway, what would you do with
all that money?"

"Lord Almighty!" she exclaimed, "You'd be surprised."

"All right, then why don't you work at a gas station?"

"Are you being funny?" She gave me a look full of contempt.  just then I
heard a door squeak and then the voice of the manager.  "Dana!" he
shouted.  "What's with those fish?  Let's have some portions over here!"
Miss Daniela leapt from her chair, put out her cigarette, grabbed the
tin bowl with six halves of carp, and made for the door.

I got up, picked up the next deceased and cut his belly open.  I was
itching to find out how Peter was doing outside, but I did not fancy
leaving my warm haven.  I would have to go out there before too long,
though-it was hardly fair to leave a friend to freeze out in the street
while I chatted up the shop assistant.

Daniela came back.  "He says we'd better get a move on.  There's a bunch
of old ladies waiting."

"I'm doing all I can."

"That's all right," she said.  "Fuck 'em."

And with this she resumed our previous conversation.  "If it was that
easy, everybody would be working at the gas stations.  D'ya know how
much I'd have to cough up?  Twenty-five thousand at leastand then they'd
put me in the storeroom for a year, where I'd earn bugger-all.  And what
if after that they give me the boot?  Or if the boss whose palm I'd
greased gets the elbow?  I'd have to pay up all over again."

"So what about the greengrocer's?" I asked.

"It's all the same," she said dejectedly, cutting open another corpse.
"You didn't get here for nothing, did you?"

She looked up at me.

"No, I didn't."

"What do you do for a living?"

"Guess!"

"How should I know.  You're not a student, and you don't work with your
hands.  Maybe you've been in the jug?"

Ishrugged.

"I see," she said, nodding to show she understood.

"What charge would you say?"

"Charge?  You mean why they put you inside?"

"That's right."

"Black market?" she ventured.

"No."

"Embezzlement?"

"No."

"Or did you open your mouth in the pub and say something you shouldn't
have?"

"Well .  .  ." I said noncommittally.  I don't like telling lies.

"What did they give you?"

"Doesn't matter," I said, closing the subject with a wave of my hand. "I
know," she said.  "My elder sister got two years hard labor.  She used
to work at a railway station.  And she didn't do nothing, either.  just
because she knew about the pilfering that went on.  My dad did six
years, but I don't remember nothing about that, I had only just been
born.  He did time because he had owned a shop.  When he came out he
said to us: 'I never stole a bean in my life, and let me tell you, I was
a damned fool!"

"What does your father do now?"

"He's retired," she said.  "Before that he was in charge of a canteen.
But he never learned the ropes.  My parents just didn't know the score."
She threw another gutted fish in the bowl and went on: "You know who
does know the ropes?  Him over there," she pointed toward the shop. "Our
manager.  For instance he used to transport the meat from the
slaughterhouse in Budejovice.  They always dropped off a quarter of the
load for themselves and delivered the rest.

But then the others got greedy and wanted to split it half and half.
Well, our boss knows better than that, he knows when it's better to call
it a day.  So he moved, while his chums carried on for another year, and
then went mad and started buying houses and posh foreign cars and they
all landed up behind bars.  By that time our manager was here in Prague,
delivering beer in cahoots with a guy at the brewery, but again he
wouldn't dream of taking too much, he was too clever for that.  just a
few cases from each truckload.

But that was enough to give them each a hundred a day.  And then he got
fed up driving all the time and got the job here in the supermarket.
He's been here five years now and d'ya think he's had a deficit in all
that time?  Not on your life!" She raised her forefinger to emphasize
the absence of a deficit under her boss's management.  "He's got
everybody bribed up at head office, and so he always knows a week in
advance when a stocktaking is due, so they can never catch him by
surprise.  And he keeps in with us, too," she concluded her eulogy.

"Want some more tea?" she asked.  "I guess your friend might like some,
too."

On her way to the stove she again had to pass between me and the boxes
that formed a high wall behind my back.  I leaned backward and felt her
soft body trapped in the narrow space.

"Oh, Mr.  Ivan!" I heard her protest softly.  "What're you up to?"

Now I suppose I should have turned swiftly and kissed her.  But what
then?  And in any case my hands were covered in carp blood, and for some
reason it seemed inappropriate to wipe them on my apron as a prelude to
an amorous gambit.  Before I could decide what to do, much less do it, I
felt her moist girlish breath on my face and heard her whisper: "Not
now!  If you want, I'll wait for you at six, when the shop shuts."

At that moment we heard loud voices coming from the shop.  They grew
louder and louder.  I quickly stepped forward, Daniela put the kettle
down on the bench, and both of us ran into the supermarket.

There, between the shelves, stood an ugly wizened old man wearing
ludicrously large, baggy trousers.  In one white hand he held a metal
cane, in the other a carp, his ruddy face aflame with fury.  He was
yelling at the top of his voice, and I gathered that he had bought a
carp from us a little earlier and when he got home and weighed it had
discovered that he had been cheated.  By at least two crowns.

I was petrified, feeling as if I had just been caught out in some
million-crown swindle.

The manager, on the other hand, was his usual calm, smiling self.

He offered to weigh the fish again and exchange it for another or refund
any money the old gentleman might have been overcharged; no one was
infallible, but he could honestly not remember when they had last had
any complaint of this nature.  But the old man would not part with the
corpus delicti, perhaps he was not even interested in getting his money
back but just wanted to yell at us and make a scene.  The manager-and I
was amazed to find how much I admired his cool-took the old gent by the
elbow and propelled him delicately past the checkouts and out of the
shop, soft-soaping him all the time as he did so.  He asked him to keep
calm, urged him to take into account his, the manager's unblemished
reputation, and again suggested that the customer have the carp
reweighed, either here or else-where if he did not trust us.

"You're damned right, I don't trust you!" shouted the old man.  "And I
will get it weighed somewhere else." And with this he shuffled off.
Daniela's yellow head leaned closer to me and I again felt her breath as
she explained that the crusty old man was Mr. Vondrieek, who weighed
everything he brought home on his scales, even the content of tins, and
then returned to raise hell in the shop.  All the staff knew him and
would usually give him more than he was entitled to but he never came
back to return anything.  Now of course he would go and have the carp
weighed, but I wasn't to worry, the only scale he trusted anywhere in
the vicinity was at the butcher's, and Mr.  Koeas, the butcher, would
take care of it.

Winking at me, she said that Mr.  Koihas had little magnetic bits of
metal which, if need be, he would attach to the bottom of his scales
where they could not be seen.  When he took the meat off the scales he
would unobtrusively remove the bits of metal so that the customer was no
wiser and thought he was getting the proper weight.

Less than an hour later-I was by this time again out in the cold,
weighing and wrapping up the carp we had resuscitated so that they could
be murdered for profit-a broad-shouldered, red-cheeked man in a white
apron turned up, and I was sure this had to be Mr.  Koihas the butcher.
As he approached, Mr.  Koiftas informed us at the top of his voice that
we owed him a hefty carp.  "You see lads," he exclaimed joyfully, "I
weighed the fish for the old duffer and told him that you had made a
mistake of twenty pence in the price-but in his favor!  And I explained
that a fish isn't a lump of cheese, that it loses weight fast as the
water drains away from inside.  He gaped at me just like a fish, his
mouth wide open, and I bet you he won't bother you again for a month at
least."

The butcher was still speaking when the manager hauled a plump, two-kilo
carp out of the tank, killed it with a blow to the head with a heavy
screwdriver, wrapped it up and handed it to Mr.  KoAas.

And just then it came to me that in this world of ours there existed
real conspirators, that there was a far-reaching conspiracy of those who
had seen through the futility of all ideals and the deadly ambiguity of
all human illusions, a resolute brotherhood of true materialists who
knew that the only things that mattered were those you could hold in
your hand or put in your pocket, that money could buy anything and that
anyone could be bribed-except Death, which they preferred to ignore, and
a few foolish individuals who could be locked up in prison, exiled out
of the country or at the very least into subterranean boiler rooms,
there to stoke furnaces and think their wayward thoughts.  While I on
the whole was one of the fools, at this moment I happened to be with the
others, having been invited into their midst.  Yes, now both Peter and I
were one of them, enjoying their protection and solidarity.  God help
me, I almost wallowed in the warm feeling which comes of belonging.  We
carried on selling carp all that afternoon.  More and more customers
showed up, most of them women, until they formed a long line.  The
weather had turned a little warmer, and there was a touch of spring in
the faint breeze.  How much more pleasant it would have been out in the
country, taking a long walk among the meadows-for me as well as for all
these people waiting their turn in the line.  But they had decided that
they must have a carp, on top of the mountain of pork and beef and
smoked meats, the potato salad, apple strudel, brawn and ice cream and
bowls full of Christmas sweetmeats they had baked these past few days. I
realized that I was beginning to hate this multitude, to despise all
these people, and that this was the first part of my initiation into the
general conspiracy.

Fortunately, at quarter past five we did away with our last victim.

Then we had to clean the tank, put the wooden counter back in the
storeroom, return the miraculous scales with our thanks, and count our
takings.  Peter took charge of the money while I went out again to sweep
the pavement.  And, since there was less litter than cash, I finished
first.  Going back to the storeroom, where that morning Daniela and I
had cut up the dead carp, I sat down on a chair and closed my eyes.  The
air was warm and moist, the place was filled with assorted aromas, and
hot water bubbled in the kettle.  I reflected for a while longer about
the general conspiracy.  Not that I thought of it as some kind of Mafia;
none, or at least certainly not the majority, of its members had any
criminal intent, nor were they intentionally dishonest.  They were,
rather, ordinary, average people who had not been offered a single idea,
a single worthwhile goal that would have given meaning to their life,
and they themselves had not found the strength of character to discover
them on their own.  This is how a whole community of the defeated had
come into being, bringing together a motley crew of butchers,
greengrocers, party secretaries and factory managers, bribed supervisors
and coal men and corrupt newspapermen and, no doubt, also those who had
been appointed to uncover and smash this conspiracy.  My reverie was
interrupted by the sound of soft footsteps, and looking up I saw the
yellow-haired Miss Daniela, now without her white coat and dressed only
in a blue skirt and white blouse.  "Mr.  Ivan," she whispered, "do you
still want to ...  ?" And she beckoned me to follow her, leading the way
to the opposite corner where the big crate stood behind all those
shelves.  Seeing it at close quarters I noticed that it had handles on
each side, like a cabin trunk.  "Here," whispered Daniela, lifting the
lid of the mammoth coffin.  Inside, I could see, everything was ready:
blankets and two pillows.

Daniela quickly unbuttoned her blouse, while I made a start by hurriedly
shedding my boots.  Then we both squeezed into the crate.  As I was
lowering myself down next to her I saw that there was yet another handle
on the inside of the lid, and I raised myself up again to pull it shut
over us.  It was now almost completely dark inside the crate, just a
gleam of light seeming to come from her yellow hair.  Perhaps it was the
peroxide-how should I know?

"Darling," I said emitting the customary sigh, and embraced her
half-naked body.

"Be quiet, Mr.  Ivan," she whispered "You have to be quiet as a mouse,
they'll be here in a minute." I felt her pushing my palms away from her
body, then her flipper slipping inside my trousers.

"Mr.  Ivan," she whispered hotly.  "I saw straightaway you weren't just
any old student come to earn a little pocket money before Christmas, and
I didn't believe you'd been inside, neither.  Your friend told me what
you do, that you write plays for TV and earn heaps of money.  Oh, Mr.
Ivan," she was by now agitating my penis with both hands, "what's twenty
thousand to you.  I've saved up the rest and I know about a service
station where we'd get it back in six months and anything we earned
after that would be ours to keep."

"You mean you want me to come in with you?" I asked, astonished.

"I'll marry you and I'll be faithful to you for the rest of my life,"
whispered Miss Daniela passionately.  "That station is rightby the
highway, all the truck drivers use it and lots of those that go abroad,
too.  In a couple of years we'll make enough to buy a house, and you can
have a brand-new car and we'll go on holiday to the seaside.  We'll have
a marvelous life, what do you say?"

I heard someone calling my name outside, and, still bemused by Miss
Daniela's loving touch, I quickly threw the lid open.  jumping onto the
concrete floor, I ran outside to join Peter in my bare feet-or rather in
my three pairs of woolen socks.

"I just don't understand how this could've happened," Peter said,
standing there with several bundles of bank notes in his hand.  He was
so shocked that he failed to notice the disordered state of my attire.
"What's wrong?"

"That scale was fixed," Peter lamented, "and we sold twenty carp in
portions for almost twice their proper price, and you charged the
customers the way the manager showed us."

"Well, I did the best I could," I said, suddenly feeling that I had to
stand up for myself.  "Did we make a loss?"

He nodded but did not reply.

"How much?"

"Eight hundred."

"You mean we've lost what we put in?"

He shook his head.  "No, over and above that." He looked as if he were
about to burst into tears.

"Oh, to hell with it," I said.  "To hell with all the money."

The savings banks would still be open tomorrow morning.  I would take
out two thousand and take it to the wife of my colleague who was locked
up because he refused to join the great conspiracy.

"I just can't understand how it could've happened," said Peter
plaintively  "All those fish, and we must've made at least two crowns on
each one of them."

I shrugged.  In my mind's eye I could see all those conspirators,
stealthily advancing on our fish tank under cover of the frosty night:
our manager leading the way, followed by Mr.  KoAas the butcher and the
yellow-haired Daniela and all the greengrocers and party secretaries,
factory managers and bribed supervisors, coal merchants and corrupt
newspapermen....  Each and every one of them thrusting greedy hands into
our tank and scuttling away with our carp....

"All I can say is that next time you want to sell carp you'd better
spend the night with them."

"You think so?" His eyes seemed to light up as he got the message, but
all he did was shrug his shoulders.

Well, I guess he was right, at that.  It would have been no use.

They would always find a way to cheat us; we just didn't belong.

Two of a Kind By: Sean O'Faolain,

Maxer Creedon was not drunk, but he was melancholy-drunk, and he knew it
and he was afraid of it.  At first he had loved being there in the
jammed streets, with everybody who passed him carrying parcels wrapped
in green or gold, tied with big red ribbons and fixed with berried holly
sprigs.  Whenever he bumped into someone, parcels toppled and they both
cried "Ooops!" or "Sorree!" and laughed at one another.  A star of snow
sank nestling into a woman's hair.  He smelled pine and balsam.  He saw
twelve golden angels blaring silently from twelve golden trumpets in
Rockefeller Plaza.

He pointed out to a cop that when the traffic lights down Park Avenue
changed from red to green the row of white Christmas trees away down the
line changed color by reflection.  The cop was very grateful to him. The
haze of light on the tops of the buildings made a halo over Fifth
Avenue.  It was all just the way he knew it would be, and he slopping
down from Halifax in that damned old tanker.  Then, suddenly, he swung
his right arm in a wild arc of disgust.  "To hell with 'em!  To hell
with everybody!"

"Ooops!  Hoho, there!  Sorree!"

He refused to laugh back.

"Poor Creedon!" he said to himself.  "All alone in New York, on
Christmas-bloody-well-Eve, with nobody to talk to, and nowhere to go
only back to the bloody old ship.  New York all lit up.  Everybody all
lit up.  Except poor old Creedon."

He began to cry for poor old Creedon.  Crying, he reeled through the
passing feet.  The next thing he knew he was sitting up at the counter
of an Eighth Avenue drugstore sucking black coffee, with one eye screwed
up to look out at the changing traffic lights, chuckling happily over a
yarn his mother used to tell him long ago about a place called
Ballyroche.  He had been there only once, nine years ago, for her
funeral.  Beaming into his coffee cup, or looking out at the changing
traffic lights, he went through his favorite yarn about Poor Lily:

"Ah, wisha!  Poor Lily!  I wonder where is she atall, atall now.  Is she
dead or alive.  It all happened through an Italian who used to be going
from one farm to another selling painted statues.  Bandello his name
was, a handsome black devil o' hell!  I never in all my born days saw a
more handsome devil.  Well, one wet, wild, windy October morning what
did she do but creep out of her bed and we all sound asleep and go off
with him.  Often and often I heard my father say that the last seen of
her was standing under the big tree at Ballyroche Cross, sheltering from
the rain, at about eight o'clock in the morning.  It was Mikey Clancy
the postman saw her.  'Yerrah, Lily girl,' says he, 'what are you doing
here at this hour of the morning?" 'I'm waiting,' says she, 'for to go
into Fareens on the milk cart." And from that day to this not a ight nor
a sound of her no more than if the earth had swallowed her.  Except for
the one letter from a priest in America to say she was happily married
in Brooklyn, New York." Maxer chuckled again.  The yarn always ended up
with the count of the years.  The last time he heard it the count had
reached forty-one.  By this year it would have been fifty.

Maxer put down his cup.  For the first time in his life it came to him
that the yarn was a true story about a real woman.  For as long as four
traffic-light changes he fumbled with this fact.  Then, like a man
hearing a fog signal come again and again from an approaching ship, and
at last hearing it close at hand, and then seeing an actual if dim
shape, wrapped in a cocoon of haze, the great idea revealed itself.

He lumbered down from his stool and went over to the telephones.

His lumpish finger began to trace its way down the gray pages among the
Brooklyn Ban's.  His finger stopped.  He read the name aloud.

Bandello, Mrs.  Lily.  He found a dime, tinkled it home, and dialed the
number slowly.  On the third ring he heard an old woman's voice.

Knowing that she would be very old and might be deaf, he said very
loudly and with the extrameticulous enunciation of all drunks:

"My name is Matthew Creedon.  Only my friends all call me Maxer.  I come
from Limerick, Ireland.  My mother came from the townland of Ballyroche.
Are you by any chance my Auntie Lily?"

Her reply was a bark:

"What do you want?"

"Nothing at all!  Only I thought, if you are the lady in question, that
we might have a bit of an ould gosther.  I'm a sailor.  Docked this
morning in the Hudson."

The voice was still hard and cold:

"Did somebody tell you to call me?"

He began to get cross with her.

"Naw!  just by a fluke I happened to look up your name in the directory.
I often heard my mother talking about you.  I just felt I'd like to talk
to somebody.  Being Christmas and all to that.  And knowing nobody in
New York.  But if you don't like the idea, it's OK with me.  I don't
want to butt in on anybody.  Good-bye."

"Wait!  You're sure nobody sent you?"

"Inspiration sent me!  Father Christmas sent me!" (She could take that
any way she bloody well liked!) "Look!  It seems to me I'm buttin' in.
Let's skip it."

"No.  Why don't you come over and see me?"

Suspiciously he said:

"This minute?"

"Right away!"

At the sudden welcome of her voice all his annoyance vanished.

"Sure, Auntie Lily!  I'll be right over.  But, listen, I sincerely hope
you're not thinking I'm buttin' in.  Because if you are .  .  ."

"It was very nice of you to call me, Matty, very nice indeed.  I'll be
glad to see you.

He hung up, grinning.  She was just like his mother-the same old
Limerick accent.  After fifty years.  And the same bossy voice.  If she
was a day she'd be seventy.  She'd be tall, and thin, and handsome, and
the real lawdy-daw, doing the grand lady, and under it all she'd be as
soft as mountain moss.  She'd be tidying the house now like a devil. And
giving jaw to ould Bandello.  If he was still alive.

He got lost on the subway, so that when he came up it was dark.  He
paused to have another black coffee.  Then he paused to buy a bottle of
Jamaica rum as a present for her.  And then he had to walk five blocks
before he found the house where she lived.  The automobiles parked under
the lights were all snow-covered.  She lived in a brownstone house with
high steps.  Six other families had rooms in it.

The minute he saw her on top of the not brightly lighted landing,
looking down at him, he saw something he had completely forgotten.

She had his mother's height, and slimness, and her wide mouth, but he
had forgotten the pale, liquid blue of the eyes and they stopped him
dead on the stairs, his hand tight on the banister.  At the sight of
them he heard the soft wind sighing over the level Limerick plain and
his whole body shivered.  For miles and miles not a sound but that
soughing wind that makes the meadows and the wheat fields flow like
water.  All over that plain, where a crossroads is an event, where a
little, sleepy lake is an excitement.  Where their streams are rivers to
them.  Where their villages are towns.  The resting cows look at you out
of owls' eyes over the greasy tips of the buttercups.  The meadow grass
is up to their bellies.  Those two pale eyes looking down at him were
bits of the pale albino sky stretched tightly over the Shannon plain.

Slowly he climbed up to meet her, but even when they stood side by side
she was still able to look down at him, searching his face with her
pallid eyes.  He knew what she was looking for, and he knew she had
found it when she threw her bony arms around his neck and broke into a
low, soft wailing just like that Shannon wind.

"Auntie!  You're the living image of her!"

On the click of a finger she became bossy and cross with him, hauling
him by his two hands into her room:

"You've been drinking!  And what delayed you?  And I suppose not a scrap
of solid food in your stomach since morning?"

He smiled humbly.

"I'm sorry, Auntie.  'Twas just on account of being all alone, you know.
And everybody else making whoopee." He hauled out the peace offering of
the rum.  "Let's have a drink!"

She was fussing all over him immediately.

"You gotta eat something first.  Drinking like that all day, I'm ashamed
of you!  Sit down, boy.  Take off your jacket.  I got coffee, and
cookies, and hamburgers, and a pie.  I always lay in a stock for
Christmas.  All of the neighbors visit me.  Everybody knows that Lily
Bandello keeps an open house for Christmas, nobody is ever going to say
Lily Bandello didn't have a welcome for all her friends and relations at
Christmas time......  She bustled in and out of the kitchenette, talking
back to him without stop.

It was a big, dusky room, himself looking at himself out of a tall,
mirrored wardrobe piled on top with cardboard boxes.  There was a divan
in one corner as high as a bed, and he guessed that there was a
washbasin behind the old peacock screen.  A single bulb hung in the
center of the ceiling, in a fluted glass bell with pink frilly edges.
The pope over the bed was Leo XIII.  The snowflakes kept touching the
bare windowpanes like kittens' paws trying to get in.

When she began on the questions, he wished he had not come.

"How's Bid?" she called out from the kitchen.

"Bid?  My mother?  Oh, well, of course, I mean to say ...  My mother?

oh, she's grand, Auntie!  Never better.  For her age, of course, that
is.  Fine, fine out!  just like yourself.  Only for the touch of the old
rheumatism now and again."

"Go on, tell me about all all of them.  How's Uncle Matty?  And how's
Cis?  When were you down in Ballyroche last?  But, sure, it's all
changed now I suppose, with electric light and everything up-to date?
And I suppose the old pony and trap is gone years ago?  It was only last
night I was thinking of Mikey Clancy the postman." She came in, planking
down the plates, an iced Christmas cake, the coffeepot: "Go on!  You're
telling me nothing." She stood over him, waiting, her pale eyes wide,
her mouth stretched.  He said:

"My Uncle Matty?  Oh well, of course, now, he's not as young as he was.
But I saw him there last year.  He was looking fine.  Fine out.

I'd be inclined to say he'd be a bit stooped.  But in great form.

For his age, that is."

"Sit in.  Eat up.  Eat up.  Don't mind me.

He has a big family now, no doubt?"

"A family?  Naturally!  There's Tom.  And there's Kitty, that's my Aunt
Kitty, it is Kitty, isn't it, yes, my Auntie Kitty.  And .  .  .

God, I can't remember the half of them."

She shoved the hamburgers toward him.  She made him pour the coffee and
tell her if he liked it.  She told him he was a bad reporter.

"Tell me all about the old place!"

He stuffed his mouth to give him time to think.

"They have twenty-one cows.  Holsteins.  The black-and-white chaps.

And a red barn.  And a shelter belt of pines.  'Tis lovely there now to
see the wind in the trees, and when the night falls the way the
lighthouse starts winking at you, and .  .  ."

"What lighthouse?" She glared at him.  She drew back from him.  "Are ye
daft?  What are you dreaming about?  Is it a lighthouse in the middle of
the County Limerick?"

"There is a lighthouse!  I saw it in the harbor!"

But he suddenly remembered that where he had seen it was in a toy shop
on Eighth Avenue, with a farm beyond it and a red barn and small cows,
and a train going round and round it all.

"Harbor, Matty?  Are ye out of your senses?"

"I saw it with my own two eyes."

Her eyes were like marbles.  Suddenly she leaned over like a willowjust
the way his mother used to lean over-and laughed and laughed.

"I know what you're talking about now.  The lighthouse on the Shannon!
Lord save us, how many times did I see it at night from the hill of
Ballingarry!  But there's no harbor, Matty."

"There's the harbor at Foynes!"

"Oh, for God's sake!" she cried.  "That's miles and miles and miles
away.  'Tis and twenty miles away!  And where could you see any train,
day or night, from anywhere at all near Ballyroche?"

They argued it hither and over until she suddenly found that the coffee
was gone cold and rushed away with the pot to the kitchen.

Even there she kept up the argument, calling out that certainly, you
could see Moneygay Castle, and the turn of the River Deel on a fine day,
but no train, and then she went on about the steppingstones over the
river, and came back babbling about Normoyle's bull that chased them
across the dry river, one hot summer's day....

He said:

"Auntie!  Why the hell did you never write home?"

"Not even once?" she said, with a crooked smile like a bold child.

"Not a sight nor a sound of you from the day you left Ballyroche, as my
mother used to say, no more than if the earth swallowed you.  You're a
nice one!"

"Eat up!" she commanded him, with a little laugh and a tap on his wrist.

"Did you always live here, Auntie Lily?"

She sat down and put her face between her palms with her elbows on the
table and looked at him.

"Here?  Well, no ...  That is to say, no!  My husband and me had a house
of our very own over in East Fifty-eighth.  He did very well for
himself.  He was quite a rich man when he died.  A big jeweler.

When he was killed in an airplane crash five years ago he left me very
well off.  But sure I didn't need a house of my own and I had lots of
friends in Brooklyn, so I came to live here."

"Fine!  What more do you want, that is for a lone woman!  No family?"

"I have my son.  But he's married, to a Pole, they'll be over here first
thing tomorrow morning to take me off to spend Christmas with them. They
have an apartment on Riverside Drive.  He is the manager of a big
department store, Macy's on Flatbush Avenue.  But tell me about Bid's
children.  You must have lots of brothers and sisters.  Where are you
going from here?  Back to Ireland?  To Limerick?  To Ballyroche?"

He laughed.

"Where else would I go?  Our next trip we hit the port of London.

I'll be back like an arrow to Ballyroche.  They'll be delighted to hear
I met you.  They'll be asking me all sorts of questions about you.  Tell
me more about your son, Auntie.  Has he a family?"

"My son?  Well, my son's name is Thomas.  His wife's name is Catherine.
She is very beautiful.  She has means of her own.  They are very happy.
He is very well off.  He's in charge of a big store, Sears, Roebuck on
Bedford Avenue.  Oh, a fine boy.  Fine out!  As you say.

Fine out.  He has three children.  There's Cissy, and Matty.  And .  .

."

Her voice faltered.  When she closed her eyes he saw how old she was.
She rose and from the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers she pulled out
a photograph album.  She laid it in front of him and sat back opposite
him.  "That is my boy."

When he said he was like her she said he was very like his father.

Maxer said that he often heard that her husband was a most handsome man.
"Have you a picture of him?"

She drew the picture of her son toward her and looked down at it.

"Tell me more about Ballyroche," she cried.

As he started into a long description of a harvest home he saw her eyes
close again, and her breath came more heavily and he felt that she was
not hearing a word he said.  Then, suddenly, her palm slapped down on
the picture of the young man, and he knew that she was not heeding him
any more than if he weren't there.  Her fingers closed on the
pasteboard.  She shied it wildly across the room, where it struck the
glass of the window flat on, hesitated and slid to the ground.  Maxer
saw snowflakes melting as often as they touched the pane.  When he
looked back at her she was leaning across the table, one white lock down
over one eye, her yellow teeth bared.

"You spy!" she spat at him.  "You came from them!  To spy on me!"

"I came from friendliness."

"Or was it for a ha'porth of look-about?  Well, you can go back to
Ballyroche and tell 'em whatever you like.  Tell 'em I'm starving if
that'll please 'em, the mean, miserable, lousy set that never gave a
damn about me from the day I left 'em.  For forty years my own sister,
your mother, never wrote one line to say .  .  ."

"You know damn well she'd have done anything for you if she only knew
where you were.  Her heart was stuck in you.  The two of you were inside
one another's pockets.  My God, she was forever talking and talking
about you.  Morning noon and night .  .  ."

She shouted at him across the table.

"I wrote six letters.  .  .  ."

"She never got them."

"I registered two of them."

"Nobody ever got a line from you, or about you, only for the one letter
from the priest that married you to say you were well and happy."

"What he wrote was that I was down and out.  I saw the letter.  I let
him send it.  That Wop left me flat in this city with my baby.  I wrote
to everybody-my mother, my father, to Bid after she was your mother and
had a home of her own.  I had to work every day of my life.  I worked
today.  I'll work tomorrow.  If you want to know what I do I clean out
offices.  I worked to bring up my son, and what did he do?  Walked out
on me with that Polack of his and that was the last I saw of him, or
her, or any human being belonging to me until I saw you.  Tell them
every word of it.

They'll love it!"

Maxer got up and went over slowly to the bed for his jacket.  As he
buttoned it he looked at her glaring at him across the table.  Then he
looked away from her at the snowflakes feeling the windowpane and dying
there.  He said, quietly:

"They're all dead.  As for Limerick-I haven't been back to Ireland for
eight years.  When my mum died my father got married again.  I ran away
to sea when I was sixteen."

He took his cap.  When he was at the door he heard a chair fall and then
she was at his side, holding his arm, whispering gently to him: "Don't
go away, Matty." Her pallid eyes were flooded.

"For God's sake, don't leave me alone with them on Christmas Eve!"

Maxer stared at her.  Her lips were wavering as if a wind were blowing
over them.  She had the face of a frightened girl.  He threw his cap on
the bed and went over and sat down beside it.  While he sat there like a
big baboon, with his hands between his knees, looking at the snowflakes,
she raced into the kitchen to put on the kettle for rum punch.  It was a
long while before she brought in the two big glasses of punch, with
orange sliced in them, and brown sugar like drowned sand at the base of
them.  When she held them out to him he looked first at them, and then
at her, so timid, so pleading, and he began to laugh and laugh-a laugh
that he choked by covering his eyes with his hands.

"Damn ye!" he groaned into his hands.  "I was better off drunk."

She sat beside him on the bed.  He looked up.  He took one of the
glasses and touched hers with it.

"Here's to poor Lily!" he smiled.

She fondled his free hand.

"Lovie, tell me this one thing and tell me true.  Did she really and
truly talk about me?  Or was that all lies too?"

"She'd be crying rain down when she'd be talking about you.  She was
always and ever talking about you.  She was mad about you."

She sighed a long sigh.

"For years I couldn't understand it.  But when my boy left me for that
Polack I understood it.  I guess Bid had a tough time bringing you all
up.  And there's no one more hard in all the world than a mother when
she's thinking of her own.  I'm glad she talked about me.  It's better
than nothing." They sat there on the bed talking and talking.  She made
more punch, and then more, and in the end they finished the bottle
between them, talking about everybody either of them had known in or
within miles of the County Limerick.

They fixed to spend Christmas Day together, and have Christmas dinner
downtown, and maybe go to a picture and then come back and talk some
more.

Every time Maxer comes to New York he rings her number.  He can hardly
breathe until he hears her voice saying, "Hello, Matty."

They go on the town then and have dinner, always at some place with an
Irish name, or a green neon shamrock above the door, and then they go to
a movie or a show, and then come back to her room to have a drink and a
talk about his last voyage, or the picture postcards he sent her, his
latest bits and scraps of news about the Shannon shore.  They always get
first-class service in restaurants, although Maxer never noticed it
until the night a waiter said, "And what's mom having?" at which she
gave him a slow wink out of her pale Limerick eyes and a slow, lover's
smile.

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring By: Michel TournieR

A Christmas story

For Danny Cowl, this invented story,

which will remind him of a real one

Can you make a career as a great international concert pianist when your
name is Gammon?  By calling their son Raphael, thus placing him under
the tutelage of the most ethereal and melodious of all the archangels,
the Gammons may have been unconsciously taking up this challenge.  In
any case, the child soon showed signs of being gifted with an
intelligence and sensitivity that sanctioned all their hopes.  They put
him at the piano as soon as he was old enough to sit on a stool.  His
progress was remarkable.  Blond, blue-eyed, pale, aristocratic, he was
every whit a Raphael, and in no way a Gammon.

At ten, he was already famous as a child prodigy and much fought over by
the organizers of fashionable soirees.  The ladies went into ecstasies
when he leaned his delicate, transparent face over the keyboard and,
enveloped, so it seemed, in the blue shadow of the wings of the
invisible archangel, sent the notes of Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale
"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" floating up to the heavens like a mystical
love song.

But the child paid dearly for these exceptional moments.  Each year saw
an increase in the number of hours a day he was made to practice.  At
twelve, he was already working six hours a day, and he found himself
envying the fate of boys who were blessed with neither talent nor
genius, nor with the promise of a brilliant career.  It sometimes
brought tears to his eyes when, on a fine day, relentlessly chained to
his instrument, he heard the merry cries of his schoolmates enjoying
themselves outdoors.

Came his sixteenth year.  His talent was flowering with incomparable
abundance.  He was the star pupil of the Paris Conservatoire.  On the
other hand, when adolescence succeeded childhood, it did not seem to
wish to retain the slightest trace of his former angelic visage.

It seemed as if the wicked fairy Puberty had waved her magic wand over
him and was deter-mined to devastate the romantic angel that he had
been.  His bony, asymmetrical face, his protruding eyes, his receding
chin, the thick glasses he had to wear because of his galloping myopia,
none of this would really have mattered if it hadn't been for his
permanent expression of stubborn amaze-mentwhich was much more likely to
raise a laugh than to set people dreaming.  In his appearance, at least,
"Gammon" seemed to have completely triumphed over "Raphael."

Young Benedicte Prieur, who was two years younger than he, seemed to be
impervious to this lack of charm.  A pupil at the Conservatoire, she
simply saw him, no doubt, as the great virtuoso he was in the process of
becoming.  In any case, she lived only in and for music, and the parents
of the two children wondered in amazement whether their relationship
would ever go beyond the ecstatic intimacy they reached when playing
duets.  Raphael came out top in the Conservatoire examination at a
record age and began to pick up a few pupils to make his modest ends
meet.

Benedicte and he were engaged, but they had decided to put off their
marriage until times were better.  They lived on love, music, and hope,
and experienced some years of divine happiness.  When they were lost in
a concert which each dedicated to the other, Raphael, drunk with
exaltation and gratitude, brought the evening to a close by playing once
again Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale "Jesu, joy of Man's Desiring." For
him, this was not only a tribute to the greatest composer of all time,
but also an ardent prayer to God, to ask him to safeguard so pure and
ardent a union.  And so the notes that floated up from his fingers at
the piano rippled with celestial laughter, with the divine hilarity that
was none other than the Creator's benediction of his own created being.

But destiny was to put such an exquisite equilibrium to the test.

Raphael had a friend, like him a graduate of the Conservatoire, who
earned his living by accompanying a chansonnier in a nightclub.

As he was a violinist, he didn't feel he was compromising his integrity
by pounding away on an old upright piano to punctuate the inept couplets
the chansonnier was mouthing downstage.  Now, this Henri Durieu was
about to leave for his first tour of the provinces, and he asked Raphael
to stand in for him for four weeks so as not to jeopardize this
invaluable pay packet.

Raphael hesitated.  It would have been bad enough to have to sit for a
couple of hours in that somber, badly ventilated place and listen to
some-one talking rubbish.  But to have to go there every evening and,
even worse, play a piano in such ignoble conditions .  .  .  The fee,
which for a single evening was the equivalent of a good dozen private
lessons, was no compensation for this sacrilegious ordeal.

He was just about to refuse when, to his great surprise, Benedicte asked
him to think again.  They had been engaged for a very long time.
Raphael's career as an infant prodigy had been forgotten years ago, and
no one knew how long he would have to wait until he became famous.  But
these few evenings might provide them with the extra income they needed
to enable them to get a home together.  Was it too much of a sacrifice,
then?  Could Raphael go on putting off their marriage simply because of
the image certainly worthy of respect, but nevertheless rather
abstract-he had of his art?  He agreed.

The chansonnier he had to accompany was called Gabbler.  Enormous,
flabby and flaccid, he trundled from one extremity of the stage to the
other, relating in a whining voice all the sorrows and misfortunes that
life never stopped heaping on him.  The whole secret of his burlesque
lay in this very simple observation: if you are the victim of a
misadventure, you interest people; of two misadventures, you inspire
them to pity; of a hundred misadventures, you make them laugh.  Hence,
you only have to exaggerate the pathetic and calamitous side of a
character to get the audience roaring with laughter at him.

The very first evening, Raphael assessed the quality of the laughter.
Sadism, spite, and a taste for the contemptible were cynically flaunted
in it.  In exhibiting his misery, Gabbler hit the audience below the
belt and reduced it to its lowest common denominator.  He turned these
decent bourgeois, who were neither better nor worse than any others,
into the vilest of criminals.  His entire act was based on the
infectious force of the ignoble, on the contagion of evil.  In the
bursts of laughter that hit the walls of the little theater Raphael
recognized the laughter of the Devil himself, the triumphal roar, in
other words, that is the breeding ground of hatred, cowardice, and
stupidity.

And it was this ignoble merchandise that he was supposed to accompany at
the piano, and not only accompany, but underline, amplify, exacerbate.
At the piano; hence, with the aid of the sacred instrument on which he
played Johann Sebastian Bach's chorales!

Throughout his childhood and adolescence he had known evil only in its
negative forms: discouragement, laziness, boredom, indifference.  Now,
for the first time, he was meeting it in a growling, grimacing, positive
incarnation-that of the infamous Gabbler, whose active accomplice he was
becoming.

What was his surprise, then, one evening when he was on his way to his
daily hell, to see on the bill posted on the door of the cafetheater a
sticker adding, underneath the name Gabbler:

ACCOMPANIED AT THE PIANO BY GAMMON

He rushed into the manager's office, where he was received with open
arms.  Yes, the manager had felt obliged to include his name on the
bill.  It was only fair.  His performance at the piano escaped none of
the spectators and enormously enriched poor Gabbler's number-which, it
was true, was a little threadbare.  And in any case, the two names were
just made for each other: Gammon and Gabbler.  No one could have dreamed
up a more sonorous, a more typical combination, or anything more
delightfully daffy.  And naturally his fee would be increased.
Substantially.

Raphael had gone to the office to protest.  He came out thanking the
manager, and inwardly cursing his own timidity and feebleness.

That evening, he described the scene to Benedicte.  Very far from
sharing his indignation, she congratulated him on his success and was
delighted at the increase in their finances.  After all, since the whole
point of the operation was that it should be lucrative, wasn't it better
for it to bring in as much money as possible?

Raphael felt he was the victim of a general conspiracy.

Gabbler's attitude toward him, on the other hand, became very much
cooler.  Up till then he had treated him with patronizing condescension.
Raphael was his accompanist, an unobtrusive, useful, but inglorious role
which called for no more than abnegation and tact.  But he was now
attracting some of the audience's attention, hence some of their
applause, and it had got to the point where even the manager had noticed
it.  "Don't overdo it, old man, don't overdo it," he told Raphael, who
could bear no more.

The situation would certainly have become aggravated if Durieu's re-turn
hadn't put an end to it.  Relieved, Raphael went back to his lessons
with the feeling of having fulfilled his duty, and with the memory of an
experience that was all the more instructive in that it had been so
harsh.  Shortly afterward, he married Benedicte.

Marriage didn't change Raphael's life much, but it gave him a sense of
his responsibilities which he had so far been able to ignore.  He had to
share his young wife's worries, for she had great trouble in making ends
meet, especially since every month they had to pay the installments on
the apartment, the car, the television set, and the washing machine, all
bought on credit.  Their evenings were now more frequently spent in
adding up figures than in communing in the pure beauty of a Bach
chorale.

Coming home a little late one day, he found Benedicte all excited by a
visit she had had a few minutes earlier.  It was Raphael, of course,
whom the manager of the cafe-theater had come to see, but in his absence
he had told Benedicte the reason for his visit.  No, this time it wasn't
a question of accompanying the lamentable Gabbler, whose contract in any
case would not be renewed for the coming season.  But perhaps Raphael
would agree to play a few solo piano pieces between two comic numbers?
This would create a pleasant diversion in the middle of the program. The
audience could only be delighted by such a parenthesis of calm and
beauty inserted in a program which, for the remaining portion, would be
full of gusto and gaiety.

Raphael refused point-blank.  Never again would he descend into that den
of pestilence in which he had suffered for a whole month.  He had
endured the experience of evil in his own domain, that of music and
public performance.  That was a very good thing, but he had no more to
learn from it.

Benedicte waited for the storm to pass.  Then, in the following days,
she gently returned to the attack.  What he was being offered had
nothing in common with accompanying the pathetic Gabbler.  He would be
playing solos, and whatever he chose.  In short, he was being given an
opportunity to practice his profession as a soloist.

Certainly this debut was modest, but you had to start somewhere.

Had he any choice?

She returned to it every day, patiently, tirelessly.  At the same time
she started thinking about moving to a different district.  She dreamed
of an old, and more spacious, apartment in a residential district.  But
this improvement in their life-style would demand sacrifices.

He sacrificed himself, and signed an engagement for six months, which
could be terminated by the payment of a substantial indemnity by
which-ever party took the initiative in breaking the contract.

From the very first evening he realized the terrible trap he had fallen
into.  The audience was still vibrant and tumultuous from the previous
number, a grotesque tango performed by a female giant and a male dwarf.
When Raphael appeared on stage, in the black suit that was both too
tight and too short for him, with his stilted, hunted air, his
seminarian's face rigid with fright behind his thick glasses, everything
seemed precisely calculated to form a highly comic composition.  He was
greeted with howls of laughter.  As ill luck would have it, his piano
stool was too low.  He swiveled the seat to raise it, but in his
agitation he unscrewed it completely and found himself facing a
hysterical audience with a stool in two halves, like a mushroom with its
cap separated from its stalk.  In any normal situation it would probably
have taken him only a few seconds to put the seat back in place.  But,
assailed by the photographers' flashes, the coordination of his
movements impaired by panic, he had the added misfortune to drop his
glasses, without which he couldn't see a thing.  When he started to look
for them, groping around the floor on all fours, the audience's joy knew
no bounds.  Next, he had to struggle for several long minutes with the
two halves of the stool before he was finally able to sit down at the
piano with trembling hands, and with his memory put to rout.

What did he play that evening?  He wouldn't have been able to say.

Every time he touched the instrument the howls of laughter, which had
subsided, started up again with renewed vigor.  When he reached the
wings, he was dripping with sweat and overcome by shame.

The manager clasped him in his arms.

"My dear Gammon," he exclaimed, "you were admirable, do you hear me,
admirable.  You are the great revelation of the season.  Your gift for
comic improvisation is incomparable.  And what a presence!

You only have to appear for people to start laughing.  The moment you
touch the piano they go berserk.  And in any case, I'd invited the
press.  I knew how it would be."

Behind him, modest and smiling, Benedicte effaced herself under the
avalanche of compliments.  Raphael hung on to her image as a shipwrecked
mariner clings to a rock.  He looked her in the face with imploring
insistence.  She remained sleek, radiant, and unshakable, did young
Benedicte Prieur, who had this evening become Madame Gammon, the wife of
the celebrated comic musician.  Maybe she was thinking of her splendid
residential apartment, from now on within her reach.

The press was indeed triumphal.  It spoke of a new Buster Keaton.  It
extolled Raphael's sorrowful countenance, which resembled that of a
frantic anthropoid ape, his catastrophic clumsiness, his grotesque
manner of playing the piano.  And the same photo appeared everywhere,
the one that caught him on all fours, groping around for his glasses
between the two halves of his stool.

They moved.  Next, an impresario undertook to represent Gammon's
interests.  They had him make a film.  Then a second film.  With the
third, they were able to move once again, and this time establish
themselves in a mansion in the avenue de Madrid, in Neuilly.

One day, they received a visit.  Henri Durieu had come to pay homage to
the tremendous success of his former comrade.  He walked diffidently
around among the gilded paneling, the crystal candelabra, and the old
masters.  As second violin in the Alenon municipal orchestra, he
couldn't get over so much magnificence.  And yet he had nothing to
complain about.  In any case, he was no longer to be seen playing the
piano in nightclubs, and that was the main thing, wasn't it?  He could
no longer bear to prostitute his art in that fashion, he stoutly
declared.

They spoke of the years they had spent at the Conservatoire together, of
their hopes, their disappointments, and of the patience each had needed
to find his own way.  Durieu hadn't brought his violin with him.  But
Raphael sat down at the piano and played Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin.
"What a career you could have made as a soloist!" Durieu exclaimed.
"Though it's true that you were destined for other laurels.  We all have
to follow the dictates of our own vocation."

More than once the critics had mentioned the name of Grock apropos of
Gammon, and declared that the legendary Swiss Auguste might well have
finally found his successor.

Gammon did in fact make his circus debut in Urbino, one Christmas Eve.
For a long time the locals had been looking for someone to play the
supporting role of the whiteface clown.  After a few inconclusive
trials, Benedicte surprised everyone by suggesting herself.  Why not?
Dressed in a tight, embroidered vest, and breeches, wearing silver
slippers, her face made up with chalk, one eyebrow painted black over
her forehead, where it formed a lofty, interrogative and mocking arc,
and speaking in a high-and-mighty fashion, she did wonders, did young
Benedicte Prieur, who had henceforth become the partner and
indispensable foil of the celebrated musician-clown, Gammon.

Wearing a pink cardboard cranium and a false nose shaped like a sweet
potato, lost in a tailcoat with a celluloid shirtfront teetering around
his neck, and pants corkscrewing down onto enormous clodhoppers, Gammon
played the part of a failed artist, a naively pretentious ignoramus who
had come to give a piano recital.

But the most dreadful cacophony came from his clothes, from the swivel
stool, and above all from the piano itself.  The slightest touch on any
key triggered off a booby trap or a catastrophe: a jet of water, a puff
of smoke, a grotesque noise like a fart, a belch, a whistle.  And the
audience burst into peals of laughter, raised the roof from all the
tiers, and crushed him under his own buffoonery.

Deafened by these joyous catcalls, Gammon sometimes used to think about
poor Gabbler, who no doubt had never fallen so low.  But what protected
him was his myopia, for his makeup made it impossible for him to wear
his glasses and he could therefore see practically nothing, merely big
patches of colored lights.  Even though thousands of torturers were
driving him silly with their bestial laughter, at least he had the
advantage of not seeing them.

Was there still some work to be done to perfect the diabolical piano
number?  Did a kind of miracle take place that evening under the big top
in Urbino?  The plan was that, in the finale, after struggling through a
piece of music as best he could, the unfortunate Gammon should witness
the explosion of his piano, which would vomit out into the ring a vast
array of hams, custard pies, and strings of black and white sausages.
But something quite different occurred.

The savage laughs died down at the sudden immobility of the clown.

Then, when the most complete silence reigned, he began to play.

With contemplative, meditative, fervent serenity he played "Jesu, joy of
Man's Desiring," the Bach chorale that had soothed his student years.
And the poor old circus piano, for all its gimmicks and gadgets, obeyed
his hands marvelously, and sent the divine melody floating up to the
obscure heights of the big top, with its temporarily invisible trapezes
and rope ladders.  After the inferno of guffaws it was the hilarity of
the heavens, tender and spiritual, which soared over a crowd in
communion.

A long silence prolonged the last note, as if the chorale were
continuing in the Beyond.  Then, in the shimmering clouds of his myopia,
the musician-clown saw the piano lid rising.  It didn't explode.  It
didn't spew out sausages.  It opened slowly like a huge, somber flower,
and released a beautiful archangel with wings of light, the archangel
Raphael, the one who had been watching over him all his life and
preventing him from quite becoming Gammon.

The Frozen Fields By: Paul Bowles,

The train was late because the hotbox under one of the coaches had
caught fire in the middle of a great flat field covered with snow.

They had stayed there about an hour.  After the noise and rushing of the
train, the sudden silence and the embarrassed stirring of people in
their seats induced a general restlessness.  At one point another train
had shot by on the next track with a roar worse than thunder; in the
wake of that, the nervousness of the passengers increased, and they
began to talk fretfully in low voices.

Donald had started to scratch pictures with his fingernail in the ice
that covered the lower part of the windowpane by his seat.  His father
had said: "Stop that." He knew better than to ask "Why?" but he thought
it; he could.  not see what harm it would do, and he felt a little
resentful toward his mother for not intervening.  He could have arranged
for her to object to the senseless prohibition, but experience had
taught him that she could be counted on to come to his defense only a
limited number of times during any given day, and it was imprudent to
squander her reserve of goodwill.  The snow had been cleared from the
station platform when they got out.

It was bitter cold; a fat plume of steam trailed downward from the
locomotive, partially enveloping the first coach.  Donald's feet ached
with the cold.

"There's Uncle Greg and Uncle Willis!" he cried, and he jumped up and
down several times.

"You don't have to shout," said his father.  "We see them.  And stand
still.  Pick up your bag."

Uncle Willis wore a black bearskin coat that almost touched the ground.
He put his hands under Donald's arms and lifted him up so that his head
was at a level with his own, and kissed him hard on the mouth.  Then he
swung him over into Uncle Greg's arms, and Uncle Greg did the same
thing.  "How's the man, hey?" cried Uncle Greg as he set him down.
"Fine," said Donald, conscious of a feeling of triumph, because his
father did not like to see boys being kissed.  "Men shake hands," he had
told him.  "They don't kiss each other."

The sky was crystal clear, and although it was already turning lavender
with the passing of afternoon, it still shone with an intense light,
like the sky in one scene at the Russian Ballet.  His mother had taken
him a few weeks earlier because she wanted to see Pavlova; it was not
the dancing that had excited him, but the sudden direct contact with the
world of magic.  This was a magic sky above him now, nothing like the
one he was used to seeing above the streets of New York.  Everything
connected with the farm was imbued with magic.  The house was the
nucleus of an enchanted world more real than the world that other people
knew about.  During the long green summers he had spent there with his
mother and the members of her family he had discovered that world and
explored it, and none of them had ever noticed that he was living in it.
But his father's presence here would constitute a grave danger, because
it was next to impossible to conceal anything from him, and once aware
of the existence of the other world he would spare no pains to destroy
it.

Donald was not yet sure whether all the entrances were safely guarded or
effectively camouflaged.

They sat in the back of the sleigh with a brown buffalo robe tucked
around them.  The two big gray horses were breathing out steam through
their wide nostrils.  Silently the white countryside moved past, its
frozen trees pink in the late light.  Uncle Greg held the reins, and
Uncle Willis, sitting beside him, was turned sideways in his seat,
talking to Donald's mother.

"My feet hurt," said Donald.

"Well, God Almighty, boy!" cried Uncle Willis.  "Haven't you got'em on
the bricks?  There are five hot bricks down there.  That's what they're
there for." He bent over and lifted up part of the heavy lap robe.  The
bricks were wrapped in newspaper.

"My feet are like blocks of ice, too," said Donald's mother.  "Here,
take your shoes off and put your feet on these." She pushed two of the
bricks toward Donald.

"He just wants attention," said Donald's father.  But he did not forbid
him to have the bricks.

"Is that better?" Uncle Willis asked a moment later.

"It feels good.  How many miles is it to the farm?"

"Seven miles to The Corner, and a mile and a half from there."

"Oh, I know it's a mile and a half from The Corner," said Donald.

He had walked it many times in the summer, and he knew the names of the
farms along the road.  "First you come to the Elders, then the Landons,
then the Madisons-"

His father pushed him hard in the ribs with his elbow.  "Just keep quiet
for a while."

Uncle Willis pretended not to have heard this.  "Well, well.  You
certainly have a good memory.  How old are you now?"

Donald's throat had constricted; it was a familiar occurrence which did
not at all mean that he was going to cry-merely that he felt like
crying.  He coughed and said in a stifled voice: "Six." Then he coughed
again; ashamed, and fearful that Uncle Willis might have noticed
something amiss, he added: "But I'll be seven the day after New Year's."

They were all silent after that; there were only the muffled rhythm of
the horses' trot and the soft, sliding sound of the runners on the
packed snow.  The sky was now a little darker than the white meadows,
and the woods on the hillside beyond, with their millions of bare
branches, began to look frightening.  Donald was glad to be sitting in
the middle.  He knew there were no wolves out there, and yet, could
anybody be really certain?  There had been wolves at one time and bears
as well-and simply because nobody had seen one in many years, they now
said there weren't any.  But that was no proof.

They came to The Corner, where the road to the farm turned off from the
main road.  Seven rusty mailboxes stood there in a crooked row, one for
each house on the road.

"R.F.D.  number I," said Uncle Willis facetiously.  This had always been
a kind of joke among them, ever since they had bought the farm, because
they were townspeople and thought the real farmers were very funny.

Now Donald felt he was on home ground, and it gave him the confidence to
say: "Rural free delivery." He said the words carefully, since the first
one sometimes gave him difficulty.  But he pronounced it all right, and
Uncle Greg, without turning round, shouted: "That's right!  You go to
school now?"

"Yes." He did not feel like saying more, because he was following the
curves in the road, which he knew by heart.  But everything looked so
different from the way he remembered it that he found it hard to believe
it was the same place.  The land had lost its intimacy, become bare and
unprotected.  Even in the oncoming night he could see right through the
leafless bushes that should have hidden the empty fields beyond.  His
feet were all right now, but his hands in their woolen mittens under the
buffalo skin were numb with cold.

The farm came into view; in each downstairs window there was a lighted
candle and a holly wreath.  He bent over and put his shoes on.  It was
hard because his fingers ached.  When he sat up again the sleigh had
stopped.  The kitchen door had opened; someone was coming out.  Everyone
was shouting "Hello!" and "Merry Christmas!" Between the sleigh and the
kitchen he was aware only of being kissed and patted, lifted up and set
down, and told that he had grown.  His grandfather helped him take off
his shoes again and removed a lid from the top of the stove so he could
warm his hands over the flames.  The kitchen smelled, as in summer, of
wood-smoke, sour milk and kerosene.

It was always very exciting to be in the midst of many people.  Each one
was an added protection against the constant watchfulness of his mother
and father.  At home there were only he and they, so that mealtimes were
periods of torture.  Tonight there were eight at the supper table.  They
put an enormous old leather-bound dictionary in a chair so he would be
high enough, and he sat between his grandmother and Aunt Emilie.  She
had dark brown eyes and was very pretty.  Uncle Greg had married her a
year ago, and Donald knew from many overheard conversations that none of
the others really liked her.

Gramma was saying: "Louisa and Ivor couldn't get down till tomorrow. Mr.
Gordon's driving them down as far as Portersville in his car. They'll
all stay in the hotel tonight, and we've got to go in first thing in the
morning and bring them out."

"Mr.  Gordon, too, I suppose," said his mother.

"Oh, probably," Uncle Greg said.  "He won't want to stay alone Christmas
Day."

His mother looked annoyed.  "It seems sort of unnecessary," she said.
"Christmas is a family day, after all."

"Well, he's part of the family now," said Uncle Willis with a crooked
smile.

His mother replied with great feeling: "I think it's terrible."

"He's pretty bad these days," put in Grampa, shaking his head.

"Still on the old firewater?" asked his father.

Uncle Greg raised his eyebrows.  "That and worse.  You know....  And
Ivor too."

Donald knew they were being mysterious because of him.  He pretended not
to be listening, and busied himself making marks on the table-cloth with
his napkin ring.

His father's mouth had fallen open with astonishment.  "Where do they
get it?" he demanded.

"Prescription," said Uncle Willis lightly.  "Some crooked Polack doctor
up there."

"Oh, honestly," cried his mother.  "I don't see how Louisa stands it."
Aunt Emilie, who had been quiet until now, suddenly spoke.  "Oh, I don't
know," she said speculatively.  "They're both very good to her.  I think
Mr.  Gordon's very generous.  He pays the rent on her apartment, you
know, and gives her the use of the car and chauffeur most afternoons."

"You don't know anything about it," said Uncle Greg in a gruff,
unpleasant voice which was meant to stop her from talking.  But she went
on, a bit shrilly, and even Donald could hear that they were in the
habit of arguing.

"I do happen to know that Ivor's perfectly willing to give her a divorce
any time she wants it, because she told me so herself."

There was silence at the table; Donald was certain that if he had not
been there they would all have begun to talk at that point.

Aunt Emilie had said something he was not supposed to hear.

"Well," said Uncle Willis heartily, "how about another piece of cake,
Donald, old man?"

"How about bed, you mean," said his father.  "It's time he went to bed."

His mother said nothing, helped him from his chair and took him
upstairs.

The little panes of his bedroom window were completely covered with ice.
Opening his mouth, he breathed on one pane until a round hole had been
melted through and he could see blackness outside.  "Don't do that,
dear," said his mother.  "Gramma'll have to clean the window.  Now come
on; into bed with you.  There's a nice hot brick under the covers so
your feet won't get cold." She tucked the blankets around him, kissed
him, and took the lamp from the table.

His father's voice, annoyed, came up from the foot of the stairs.

"Hey, Laura!  What's going on up there?  Come on."

"Won't there be any light in my room at all?" Donald asked her.  "I'm
coming," she called.  She looked down at Donald.  "You never have a
light at home."

"I know, but home I can turn it on if I need it."

"Well, you're not going to need it tonight.  Your father would have a
fit if I left the lamp.  You know that.  Now just go to sleep."

"But I won't be able to sleep," he said miserably.

"Laura!",shouted his father.

"Just a minute!" she cried, vexed.

"Please, Mother.  .  .  ?"

Her voice was adamant.  "This cold air will put you to sleep in two
shakes of a lamb's tail.  Now go to sleep." She went to the doorway, the
lamp in her hand, and disappeared through it, closing the door behind
her.  There was a little china clock on the table that ticked very loud
and fast.  At infrequent intervals from below came a muffled burst of
laughter which immediately subsided.  His mother had said: "I'll open
this window about an inch; that'll be enough."

The room was growing colder by the minute.  He pushed the sole of one
foot against the heated brick in the middle iof the bed and heard the
crackle of the newspaper that enfolded it.  There was nothing left to do
but go to sleep.  On his way through the borderlands of consciousness he
had a fantasy.  From the mountain behind the farm, running silently over
the icy crust of the snow, leaping over the rocks and bushes, came a
wolf.  He was running toward the farm.  When he got there he would look
through the windows until he found the dining room where the grown-ups
were sitting around the big table.  Donald shuddered when he saw his
eyes in the dark through the glass.  And now, calculating every movement
perfectly, the wolf sprang, smashing the panes, and seized Donald's
father by the throat.  In an instant, before anyone could move or cry
out, he was gone again with his prey still between his jaws, his head
turned sideways as he dragged the limp form swiftly over the surface of
the snow.  The white light of dawn was in the room when he opened his
eyes.  Already there were burnpings in the bowels of the house: people
were stirring.  He heard a window slammed shut, and then the regular
sound of someone splitting wood with a hatchet.  Presently there were
nearer noises, and he knew that his parents in the next room had gotten
up.  Then his door was flung open and his mother came in, wearing a
thick brown flannel bathrobe, and with her hair falling loose down her
back.  "Merry Christmas!  " she cried, holding up a gigantic red mesh
stocking crammed with fruit and small packages.  "Look what I found
hanging by the fireplace!" He was disappointed because he had hoped to
go and get his stocking himself, "I brought it up to you because the
house is as cold as a barn," she told him.  "You stay put right here in
bed till it's warmed up a little."

"When'll we have the tree?" The important ritual was the tree: the most
interesting presents were piled under it.

"You just hold your horses," she told him.  "You've got your stocking.
We can't have the tree till Aunt Louisa gets here.  You wouldn't want
her to miss it, would you?"

"Where's my present for Aunt Louisa and Uncle Ivor?  Uncle Ivor's
coming, too, isn't he?"

"Of course he's coming," she replied, with that faintly different way of
speaking she used when she mentioned Uncle Ivor.  "I've already put it
under the tree with the other things.  Now you just stay where you are,
all covered up, and look at your stocking.  I'm going to get dressed."
She shivered and hurried back into her room.

The only person he had to thank at breakfast was his grandfather, for a
box of colored pencils which had been jammed into the foot of the
stocking.  The other gifts had been tagged: "For Donald from Santa."
Uncle Willis and Uncle Greg had eaten an early breakfast and gone in the
sleigh to the hotel in Portersville to fetch Aunt Louisa and Uncle Ivor.
When they got back, Donald ran to the window and saw that Mr.  Gordon
had come.  Everyone had talked so mysteriously about Mr.  Gordon that he
was very eager to see him.

But at that moment his mother called him upstairs to help her make the
beds.  "We all have to do as much as we can for Gramma," she told him.
"Lord knows she's got all she can manage with the kitchen work."

But eventually he heard Aunt Louisa calling up the staircase.  They went
down: he was smothered in kisses, and Aunt Louisa asked him: "How's my
boy?  You're my boy, aren't you?" Then Uncle Ivor kissed him, and he
shook hands with Mr.  Gordon, who was already sitting in Grampa's
armchair, where nobody else ever sat.  He was plump and pale, and he
wore two big diamond rings on one hand and an even bigger sapphire on
the other.  As he breathed he wheezed slightly; now and then he pulled
an enormous yellow silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped
his forehead with it.  Donald sat down on the other side of the room and
turned the pages of a magazine, from time to time looking up to observe
him.  He had called Donald "my lad," which sounded very strange, like
someone talking in a book.  At one point he noticed Donald's attention
and beckoned to him.  Donald went and stood beside the armchair while
Mr.  Gordon reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat watch with a
little button, and tiny chimes struck inside the watch.  A few minutes
later he signaled to him afresh; Donald bounded over to him and pressed
the button again.  The next time, his mother told him to stop bothering
Mr.  Gordon.

"But he asked me to," objected Donald.

"Sit down right there.  We're all going in and have our tree in a little
while.  Uncle Ivor's going to be Santa Claus."

Presently Uncle Willis came into the room.  "Well, everybody, he said,
rubbing his hands together, "I think the parlor's warm enough now.  How
about our tree?"

"It's about time," said Aunt Emilie.  She was wearing a red taffeta
dress which Donald had heard his mother discussing with his father
earlier.  "Most inappropriate," she had said.  "The girl doesn't seem to
realize she's living on a farm." Aunt Emilie reached down and took
Donald's hand.  "Would you care to accompany me, Sir?" she said.  They
walked into the parlor holding hands.  The fire in the fireplace roared
and crackled.  "Where's Ivor?" said Uncle Greg.  "Has everybody got a
seat?"

"Here he is," said Uncle Ivor, coming in from the hallway.  He had put
on an old red knit skullcap and a red dressing gown, and he had a wreath
of green fluted paper around his neck.  "This is all Santa Claus could
find," he announced.

Aunt Louisa began to laugh.  "Look at your Uncle Ivor," she told Donald.
"I am," said Donald.  But he was really looking at the tree.

It was a tall hemlock that reached to the ceiling, and underneath it was
piled the most enormous assortment of packages he had ever seen.  "Look
at that!" they all cried.

"What do you suppose is in them all?" said Aunt Louisa.

"I don't know," he replied.

Uncle Ivor sat down on the floor as near the tree as he could get, and
lifting up a large crate he passed it to Uncle Greg, who stood in the
middle of the room.  "Let's get this out of the way first," he said.
Then Uncle Greg intoned: "To Donald from the folks at Rutland."

While Uncle Ivor went on passing out packages, Donald struggled with his
box.  He was vaguely aware of the little cries that were being uttered
around him: "How lovely!  But it's too much!"

"Oh, you shouldn't have!"

"Why did you do it?" as the others opened their gifts, but he was too
preoccupied to notice that most of the exclamations were being addressed
to Mr.  Gordon, who sat in the window looking very pleased.

It was too good to believe: a fire engine three feet long, with rubber
tires and a bell and a siren and three ladders that shot upward
automatically when it stopped.  Donald looked at it and for a moment was
almost frightened by the power he knew it had to change his world.

"Oh ...  isn't ...  that ...  lovely!" said his mother, her annoyance
giving a sharp edge to each word.  "Louisa, why did you do it?"

Donald glanced up quickly and saw Aunt Louisa indicate Mr.  Gordon with
a jerk of her head, as if she were saying: "Everything is his fault."

His mother moved along the floor toward the crate and fished out the
greeting card.  "I want you to keep each card in with the present it
came with," she told Donald, "because you'll have a lot of thank-you
notes to write tomorrow, and you don't want to get them mixed up.  But
you can thank Aunt Louisa and Uncle Ivor right now."

He hated to be told to thank a person in that person's presence, as
though he were a baby.  But he said the words bravely, facing Mr.
Gordon: "Thank you so much for the beautiful fire engine."

"There's more there, my lad," beamed Mr.  Gordon; the diamonds flashed
in the sunlight.

Aunt Emilie was holding out her arm in front of her, looking at her new
wristwatch.  Grampa had put on a black silk dressing gown and was
smoking a cigar.  He looked perfectly content as he turned to Mr. Gordon
and said: "Well, you've spoiled us all." But Donald's mother interpreted
his phrase as a reproach, and added in explanation: "We're not used to
getting such elaborate gifts, Mr. Gordon."

Mr.  Gordon laughed and turning to Donald, told him: "You've barely
started, my lad.  Tell your Uncle Ivor to get on with it."

Now it seemed as though nearly every package was for Donald.  He opened
them as fast as he could, and was freshly bewildered by the apparition
of each new marvel.  There were, of course, the handkerchiefs and books
and mufflers from the family, but there was also a Swiss music box with
little metal records that could be changed; there were roller skates, a
large set of lead soldiers, a real accordion, and a toy village with a
streetcar system that ran on a battery.  As Donald opened each package,
the little cries of admiration made by his parents came closer to
sounding like groans.

Finally his father said, in a voice loud enough for Mr.  Gordon to hear
him above the general conversation: "It's bad business for one kid to
get so much."

Mr.  Gordon had heard him.  "You were young once yourself," he said
airily.

Aunt Emilie was trying on a fur jacket that Uncle Greg had given her.
Her face was flushed with excitement; she had just planted a big kiss on
Uncle Greg's cheek.

"The little Astor baby got five thousand dollars' worth of toys on its
last birthday," she said to Donald's father, running her hand back and
forth along the fur.

Donald's father looked at her with narrowed eyes.  "That," he said,
enunciating very clearly, "is what might be called an asinine remark."
Save for the crackling of the fire there was silence for a moment in the
room.  Those who had not heard knew that something had happened.  Uncle
Greg looked quickly at Donald's father, and then at Aunt Emilie.  Maybe
there would be a quarrel, thought Donald, with everyone against his
father.  The idea delighted him; at the same time he felt guilty, as
though it were his doing.

Uncle Ivor was handing him a package.  Automatically he untied the
ribbon and pulled out a tan cashmere sweater.  "That's Mother and
Daddy's present to you," his mother said quietly.  "It's a little big
for you now, but I got it big purposely so you could grow into it." The
small crisis had passed; they all began to talk again.

Donald was relieved and disappointed.  "How about christening that
bottle of brandy?" cried Uncle Willis.  "You menfolk sit here," Gramma
told them.  "We've got to get out into the kitchen."

"I'll bring yours out to you," said Uncle Ivor to Aunt Louisa as she got
up.

On her way out of the room Donald's mother bent over and touched his
shoulder.  "I want you to put every present back into its box just the
way it was.  After that you carry them all up into our room and stack
them carefully in the corner under the window.  You hear me?"

She went out.  Donald sat a moment; then he jumped up and ran after her
to ask if he might save out just one thing-the fire engine, perhaps. She
was saying to Gramma: ".  .  .  quite uncalled for.

Besides, I don't know how we're ever going to get it all back to New
York.  Owen can take the big things at least with him tomorrow, I
suppose."

He stopped running and felt peace descend upon him.  His father was
leaving the farm.  Then let him take everything with him, fire engine
and all; it would not matter.  He turned and went back into the parlor,
where he meticulously packed the toys into their boxes, put the covers
on, and tied them up with lengths of ribbon and string.

"What's all this?" exclaimed Mr.  Gordon suddenly, noticing him.

"What are you doing?"

"I have to take everything upstairs," said Donald.  His father joined
the conversation.  "I don't want to find those boxes lying all over the
place up there, either.  See that you pile 'em neatly.  Understand?"

Donald continued to work without looking up.

After a moment Mr.  Gordon said under his breath: "Well, I'll be
damned." Then to Donald's father: "I've seen some well-behaved kids in
my time, but I don't mind telling you I never saw one like that.

Never."

"Discipline begins in the cradle," said his father shortly.

"It's sinister," murmured Mr.  Gordon to himself.

Donald glanced up and saw his father looking at Mr.  Gordon with hatred.

In the kitchen his grandmother, his aunts and his mother were busy
preparing dinner.  Donald sat by the window mashing potatoes.  The blue
of the sky had disappeared behind one curtain of cloud, uniformly white.
"We'll have more snow before night," said Gramma, looking out of the
window above the sink.

"Want to smell something good?" Donald's mother asked him.  He ran
across to the stove and she opened the oven door: the aroma of onions
mingled with that of the roasting turkey.  "He's coming along
beautifully," she announced.  She shut the oven door with a bang and
hung the pot holders on their hooks.  Then she went into the pantry.

Donald followed her.  It was very cold in here, and it smelled of
pickles and spices.  His mother was searching for something along the
shelves, among the jars and tin boxes.  "Mother," he said.

"Hmm?" she replied distraughtly, without looking down at him.

"Why does Mr.  Gordon live at Uncle Ivor's?"

Now she did look at him, and with an intensity that startled him.

"What was that?" she demanded sharply.  Then, before he could repeat his
question, she went on in a suddenly matter-of-fact voice: "Dear, don't
you know that Uncle Ivor's what they call a male nurse?  Like Miss
Oliver, you remember, who took care of you when you had influenza?  Only
a man.  man nurse'

"Is Mr.  Gordon sick?"

"Yes, he is," she said, lowering her voice to little more than a
whisper.  "He's a very sick man, but we don't talk about it."

"What's he got?" He was conscious of being purposely childish at the
moment, in the hope of learning more.  But his mother was already
saying: "I don't know, dear.  You go back into the kitchen now.  It's
too cold for you in here.  Scoot!  Out with you!" He giggled, ran back
into the kitchen, satisfied for having definitely established the
existence of a mystery.

During dinner his father looked across at him with the particular kind
of sternness he reserved for remarks which he knew were unwelcome, and
said: "You haven't been outside yet today, young man.  We'll take a walk
down the road later."

Aunt Louisa had brought a large glass of brandy to the table with her
and was sipping it along with her food.  "It's too cold, Owen," she
objected.  "He'll catch his death o' cold." Donald knew she was trying
to help him, but he wished she had kept quiet.  If it became an issue,
his father would certainly not forget about the walk.

"Too cold!" scoffed his father.  "We have a few basic rules in our
little family, and one of them is that he has to get some fresh air
every day."

"Couldn't you make an exception for Christmas?

Just for one day?" demanded Aunt Louisa.

Donald did not dare look up, for fear of seeing the expression on his
father's face.

"Listen, Louisa," he said acidly.  "I suggest you just stay on your side
of the fence, and I'll stay on mine.  We'll get along a lot better."
Then as an afterthought he snapped: "That all right with you?"

Aunt Louisa leaned across Grampa's plate toward Donald's father and
spoke very loud, so that everyone stopped eating.  "No, it's not all
right with me!" she cried.  "All you do is pick on the child from
morning till night.  It's shameful!  I won't sit by and watch my own
flesh and blood plagued that way!"

Both Gramma and Donald's father began to speak at once.  Gramma was
saying, "Louisa," trying to soothe her.  Donald's father shouted:
"You've never had a kid.  You don't know the first thing about raising
kids."

"I know when a man's selfish and plain cussed," Aunt Louisa declared.
"Louisa!" cried Gramma in a tone of surprise and mild reproof.  Donald
continued to look at his plate.

"Have I ever come up to Rutland and stuck my nose in your affairs and
criticized?  Have P" demanded Donald's father.

"Now come on," said Uncle Willis quickly, "Let's not spoil a beautiful
Christmas.

"That's right," Grampa said.  "We're all happy.  Let's not say anything
we'll be sorry for later."

But Aunt Louisa would not retreat.  She took a fast gulp of brandy and
almost choked on it.  Then, still leaning toward Donald's father, she
went on: "What do you mean, come to Rutland and criticize?  What've you
got to criticize in Rutland?  Something wrong there?"

For an instant Donald's father did not reply.  During that instant it
was as though everyone felt the need to say something without being able
to say it.  The one who broke the short silence was Donald's father,
using a peculiar, soft voice which Donald recognized immediately as a
vicious imitation of Uncle Ivor.  "Oh, no!  There's nothing wrong in
Rutland!"

Suddenly, with two simultaneous motions, Donald's mother slapped her
napkin into her place and pushed her chair back violently.  She rose and
ran out of the room, slamming the door.  No one said anything.  Donald
sat frozen, unable to look up, unable even to breathe.  Then he realized
that his father had got up, too, and was on his way out.

"Leave her alone, Owen," said Gramma.

"You keep out of this," his father said.  His footsteps made the stairs
creak as he went up.  No one said anything until Gramma made as if to
rise.  "I'm going up," she declared.

"For God's sake, Abbie, sit still," Grampa told her.  Gramma cleared her
throat but did not get up.

Aunt Louisa looked very red, and the muscles of her face were twitching.
"Hateful," she said in a choked voice.  "Just hateful."

"I felt like slapping his face," confided Aunt Emilie.  "Did you hear
what he said to me when we were having our presents?"

At a glance from Uncle Greg, Aunt Emilie stopped.  "Why, Donald!"

she exclaimed brightly, "you've scarcely touched your dinner!

Aren't you hungry?"

In his mind's eye he was seeing the bedroom upstairs, where his father
was twisting his mother's arm and shaking her to make her look at him.
When she wouldn't, he punched her, knocking her down, and kicked her as
hard as he could, all over her body.  Donald looked up.  "Not very," he
said.

Without warning Mr.  Gordon began to talk, holding his glass in front of
him and examining it as he turned it this way and that.

"Family quarrels," he sighed.  "Same old thing.  Reminds me of my
boyhood.  When I look back on it, it seems to me we never got through a
meal without a fight, but I suppose we must have once in a while." He
set the glass down.  "Well, they're all dead now, thank God."

Donald looked quickly across at Mr.  Gordon as if he were seeing him for
the first time.

"It's snowing!" cried Gramma triumphantly.  "Look, it's snowing again. I
knew we'd have more snow before dark." She did not want Mr.  Gordon to
go on talking.

Aunt Louisa sobbed once, got up, and went out into the kitchen.

Uncle Ivor followed her.

"Why, Donald!  You've got the wishbone!" cried Aunt Emilie.  "Eat the
meat off it and we'll hang it up over the stove to dry, and tomorrow
we'll wish on it.  Wouldn't that be fun?"

He picked it up in his fingers and began to chew on the strips of white
meat that clung to it.  When he had carefully cleaned it, he got down
and went out into the kitchen with it.

The room was very quiet; the teakettle simmered on the stove.

Outside the window the falling snowflakes looked dark against the
whiteness beyond.  Aunt Louisa was sitting on the high stool, doubled
over, with a crumpled handkerchief in her hand, and Uncle Ivor was
bending over her talking in a very low voice.  Donald laid the wishbone
on the sink shelf and started to tiptoe out, but Uncle Ivor saw him.
"How'd you like to go up to the henhouse with me, Donald?" he said.
"I've got to find us a dozen eggs to take back to Rutland."

"I'll get my coat," Donald told him, eager to go out before his father
came back downstairs.

The path up the hill to the henhouse had been made not by clearing the
snow away but by tramping it down.  The new snow was drifting over the
track; in some places it already had covered it.  When Uncle Ivor went
into the henhouse Donald stood still, bending his head back to catch
some snowflakes in his mouth.  "Come on in and shut the door.  You'll
let all the heat out," Uncle Ivor told him.

"I'm coming," said Donald.  He stepped through the doorway and closed
the door.  The smell inside was very strong.  As Uncle Ivor approached
the hens, they set up a low, distrustful murmur.

"Tell me, Donald," said Uncle Ivor as he explored the straw with his
hands.

"What?" said Donald.

"Does your mother often run to her room and shut the door, the way she
did just now?"

"Sometimes."

"Why?  Is your father mean to her?"

"Oh," said Donald vaguely, "they have fights." He felt uncomfortable.
"Yes.  Well, it's a great pity your father ever got married.  It would
have been better for everybody if he'd stayed single."

"But then I wouldn't have been born at all," cried Donald, uncertain
whether Uncle Ivor was serious or not.

"At least, we hope not!" said Uncle Ivor, rolling his eyes and looking
silly.  Now Donald knew it was a kind of joke, and he laughed.  The door
was flung open.  "Donald!" roared his father.

"What is it?" he said, his voice very feeble.

"Come out here!"

He stumbled toward the door; his father was peering inside uncertainly.
"What are you doing in there?" he demanded.

"Helping Uncle Ivor look for eggs."

"Hmmph!" Donald stepped out and his father shut the door.  They started
to walk along the road in the direction of the Smithson farm.  Presently
his father fell in behind him and prodded him in the back, saying: "Keep
your head up.  Chest out!  D'you want to get round-shouldered?  Before
you know it you'll have curvature of the spine.

" When they had got out of sight of the house, in a place where the
tangle of small trees came to the edge of the road on both sides, his
father stopped walking.  He looked around, reached down, picked up a
handful of the new snow, and rolled it into a hard ball.  Then he threw
it at a fairly large tree, some distance from the road.  It broke,
leaving a white mark on the dark trunk.  "Let's see you hit it," he told
Donald.

A wolf could be waiting here, somewhere back in the still gloom of the
woods.  It was very important not to make him angry.  If his father
wanted to take a chance and throw snowballs into the woods, he could,
but Donald would not.  Then perhaps the wolf would understand that he,
at least, was his friend.

"Go on," said his father.

"No.  I don't want to."

With mock astonishment his father said: "Oh, you don't?" Then his face
became dangerous and his voice cracked like a whip, "Are you going to do
what I told you?"

"No." It was the first time he had openly defied him.  His father turned
very red.

"Listen here, you young whippersnapper!" he cried, his voice tight with
anger.  "You think you're going to get away with this?" Before Donald
knew what was happening, his father had seized him with one hand while
he bent over and with the other scooped up as much snow as he could.
"We'll settle this little matter right now," he said through his teeth.
Suddenly he was rubbing the snow violently over Donald's face, and at
the same time that Donald gasped and squirmed, he pushed what was left
of it down his neek.  As he felt the wet, icy mass sliding down his
back, he doubled over.  His eyes were squeezed shut; he was certain his
father was trying to kill him.  With a desperate lunge he bounded free
and fell face-downward into the snow.

"Get up," his father said disgustedly.  He did not move.  If he held his
breath long enough he might die.

His father yanked him to his feet.  "I've had just about enough of your
monkeyshines," he said.  Clutching him tightly with both hands, he
forced him to hobble ahead of him, back through the twilight to the
house.

Donald moved forward, looking at the white road in front of him, his
mind empty of thoughts.  An unfamiliar feeling had come to him: he was
not sorry for himself for being wet and cold, or even resentful at
having been mistreated.  He felt detached; it was an agreeable, almost
voluptuous sensation which he accepted without understanding or
questioning it.  As they advanced down the long alley of maple trees in
the dusk his father said: "Now you can go and cry in your mother's lap."

"I'm not crying," said Donald loudly, without expression.  His father
did not answer.

Fortunately the kitchen was empty.  He could tell from the sound of the
voices in the parlor that Aunt Louisa, Uncle Ivor and Mr. Gordon were
getting ready to leave.  He ran upstairs to his room and changed his
clothes completely.  The hole he had breathed in the ice on the
windowpane had frozen over thickly again, but the round mark was still
visible.  As he finished dressing his mother called him.

It was completely dark outside.  He went downstairs.  She was standing
in the hallway.

"Oh, you've changed your clothes," she said.  "Come out and say good-bye
to Aunt Louisa and Uncle Ivor.  They're in the kitchen." He looked
quickly at her face to see if there were signs of her recent tears: her
eyes were slightly bloodshot.

Together they went into the kitchen.  "Donald wants to say good-bye to
you" she told Mr.  Gordon, steering Donald to Aunt Louisa.

"You've given him a wonderful Christmas"-her voice became reproachful-"
but it was much too much."

The thick beaver collar of Mr.  Gordon's overcoat was turned up over his
ears, and he had on enormous fur gloves.  He smiled and clapped his
hands together expectantly; it made a cushioned sound.  "Oh, it was a
lot of fun," he said.  "He reminds me a little of myself, you know, when
I was his age.  I was a sort of shy and quiet lad, too."

Donald felt his mother's hand tighten on his shoulder as she pushed him
toward Aunt Louisa.  "Mm," she said.  "Well, Auntie Louisa, here's
somebody who wants to say good,bye to you."

Even in the excitement of watching Uncle Willis and Uncle Greg drive the
others off in the sleigh, Donald did not miss the fact that his father
had not appeared in the kitchen at all.  When the sleigh had moved out
of sight down the dark road, everyone went into the parlor and Grampa
put another log on the fire.

"Where's Owen?" Gramma said in a low voice to Donald's mother.

"He must be upstairs.  To tell the truth, I don't care very much where
he is."

"Poor child," said Gramma.  "Headache a little better?"

"A little." She sighed.  "He certainly managed to take all the pleasure
out of my Christmas."

"A mean shame," said Gramma.

"It was all I could do to look Ivor in the face just now.  I meant it."

"I'm sure they all understood," said Gramma soothingly.

"Just don't you fret about it.  Anyway, Owen'll be gone tomorrow, and
you can rest up."

Shortly after Uncle Willis and Uncle Greg got back, Donald's father came
downstairs.  Supper was eaten in almost complete silence; at no time did
his father speak to him or pay him any attention.  As soon as the meal
was over his mother took him upstairs to bed.

When she had left him, he lay in the dark listening to the sound of the
fine snow as the wind drove it against the panes.  The wolf was out
there in the night, running along paths that no one had ever seen, down
the hill and across the meadow, stopping to drink at a deep place in the
brook where the ice had not formed.  The stiff hairs of his coat had
caught the snow; he shook himself and climbed up the bank to where
Donald sat waiting for him.  Then he lay down beside him, putting his
heavy head in Donald's lap.  Donald leaned over and buried his face in
the shaggy fur of his scruff.  After a while they both got up and began
to run together, faster and faster, across the fields.

The World in a Bowl of Soup* A Christmas Story By: Annie Dillard,

Once there was a great feast held in a banquet hall of such enormous
proportions that you could not believe men built such a thing.  Two
thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling: lumber cut from all the
world's forests made the walls and parti-color floor.

Great loose areas of the hall were given to various activities: there
were dances and many kinds of gaming; a corner was devoted to the sick
and injured, and another to the weaving of cloth.  Children chanted
rhymes wherever they gathered, and young men sought pretty girls in
greenhouses or behind the damask hangings of booths and stalls.

The feast lasted all night long.  Guests sat at a table as long as a
river that stretched down the middle of the hall.  No one cloth could
cover such a table, nor could one centerpiece suffice.  So the table was
decorated in hundreds of different themes, with different combinations
of colors and kinds of tableware, with various carved figures and
various drinks, and with lively musicians in costume playing to each set
of guests a special music.  There was only a single course served to the
guests, but that was a soup made of so many ingredients it seemed to
contain all other dishes.  The soup was served continuously, all night
long, and there were so many guests that all the places at the table
were always taken, and the benches always full, when the servants ladled
the soup into the endlessly decorated array of metal, glass, wood, and
pottery bowls.

Now, the host of this feast was a young man of tremendous wealth and
power who stood behind a curtain on a balcony above the great hall and
watched the guests as they ate and drank at the long table.  He thought:
"All night long people have been eating as much soup as they wanted and
then coming back to the table for more.  It is good that they enjoy
themselves.  But not one person has seen or really understood the
excellence of that soup." So the host parted the curtain a crack more
and let his gaze fall.  It fell directly on an old man who happened to
be sitting at the table in his line of vision, looking about and
thinking of nothing at all.

At once the old man felt an overwhelming sense of power, an impact as if
his spirit had been struck broadside and wakened to a flood of light. He
bowed his head and saw, through charged eyes, his bowl of soup that had
come alive and was filled to endless depths with wonderful things.

There were green fields in his soup bowl, with carrots growing, one by
one, in slender rows.  As he watched, transfixed, men and women in
bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots, one by one, out of
the soil, and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they
scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water.  He saw
white-faced cattle lowing and wading in rivers, with dust on the whorled
and curly white hair between their ears.  He saw tomatoes in kitchen
gardens set out as seedlings by women in plaid shirts and by
strong-handed men; and he watched the tomatoes as, before his eyes, the
light from the sun blew each one up like a balloon.  Cells on the root
hairs of beans swelled and divided, and squashes grew spotted and
striped in the fall.  Wine aged in caves, and the barrel maker went home
to his wife through sunlight and shade.

He saw the ocean, and he seemed to be in the ocean himself, swimming
over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks
where whitefish school.  Or again he saw the tops of poplars and the
whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks
flew with outstretched necks and called, one by one, and flew on.

All these things the old man saw in his soup.  Scenes grew in depth and
sunlit detail under his eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes,
until, with the flight of wild ducks, the worlds resolved into one blue
sky, now streaked, now clear, and, at last, into soup again, dark soup,
fragrant in its bowl.  The host had let the curtain fall shut.

The man blinked and moved his head from side to side.  "I see now," he
said to himself, "that this is truly an excellent soup, praise God." And
he ate his bowlful and joined the dancers in a daze, a kind of very
energetic daze.

Xmas By: Thomas M. Disch,

it was December 12 and the Christmas coming up looked like it was going
to be the worst yet, a catastrophe.  He began to get in more and more of
a state about it.  The Geritol jingle from the sixo'clock news formed a
tape loop in his head and played itself over and over.  Make every day
count.  Do what you really want to do.

Every day every day every day.

Partly the problem was being stuck here in the heart of the woeful
Midwest, the American Siberia.  Because he was divorced, the company
considered him more deployable than his married colleagues.  He'd been
posted to four branches in as many years.  Each new posting represented
a step up the ladder but even so.  This time at least he was returning
some-where, and if it wasn't anywhere he'd have chosen to return to, he
could take comfort that it wasn't as alien as Anchorage, which had been
one of the alternatives.  Here there were faces he could recognize,
names he could remember, addresses still extant in his address book.

That was the other part of the problem.  None of these names and faces
bore thinking of.  He had run out of friends.  Not just here but
everywhere, in the whole creation.  Practically speaking he'd become a
misanthrope.  Certainly he'd never intended to, and he had no theory to
back up his spontaneous dislike of the people he knew.

It had just sneaked up on him gradually over the years, like baldness.

Last Christmas it had reached the point where he'd received only a
single present that could be considered a gift of friendship, and in the
ensuing year the friend who'd given it to him had totaled his new Buick
and himself in a collision on the Santa Monica Freeway.  This Christmas,
therefore, there would be no booty under the tree, no stuffing in his
stocking, nobody in the whole world to care.  It was gross to make such
reckonings, it was embarrassing, but it was true.  Christmas was coming
at him like the searchlight in pursuit of an escaped convict, ready to
expose the mess he'd made of his life.

it wasn't fair.  At almost any other time he was rather contented, not
to say smug, with the shape that his life-meaning his careerhad taken.
He liked his work, he did it well, and he was making good money.  But
all through Advent his success had a distinct aftertaste of ashes.
Better an underling and swaddled in love than a vice-president and alone
for the holidays.  If he'd wanted to build a creche, it would have
represented not the stable in Bethlehem but Herod's palace, with lots of
little plaster statuettes of Herod's staff and secretaries.

It shouldn't have made such a difference.  Other people in his position
seemed to glide by Yuletide with just a few bahs and humbugs.  It
shouldn't but it did.  He'd been the oldest child in a large family, and
the drama of gathering the various branches and generations together for
solemn unwrap-pings around the Christmas tree had been a major one.  It
wasn't just getting; it even transcended the slightly less suspect
pleasure of giving, for he could be aroused by the wholly impersonal
tableau of his cousin Dolly opening presents from people he'd never
heard of.  And then, the next morning, there'd been the ever-lovely
fiction of presents from Santa, a pretense he'd maintained well into
adolescence for the sake of his younger brothers.  That golden age was
gone, irretrievably.  His parents had died, and his brothers had chosen
to contest a will that had given him a firstborn's (or lion's) share,
including the house.  His lawyers had won the case, and he'd sold the
house to a developer for a spitefully low price, with the result that
there was no chance, now or ever, of flying back home to horn in on his
brothers' festivities.  The house had become a methadone clinic.

It was the twelfth and then the thirteenth and every store window in
this frozen city's lamentable downtown reproached him for not being part
of the human race.  Santa's elves hammered with manic, unflagging
industry in the windows of Evans & McDowell's, while in the rival
department store across the street a ballerina performed a perpetual
pirouette, touching with her gilded wand gift after gift after gift
whose sweet mysteries he would never see unveiled.

A pair of gloves?  Stereo earphones?  A deluxe edition of Monopoly?

Whatever, they were not for him and he would never know.  He thought of
buying presents for himself but that smacked too patently of self-pity
and, what was worse, futility.

Still, there was one little charity he might perform that would not go
unappreciated.  He stopped at his liquor store on the way home and asked
for a bottle of Chivas Regal and one of Cordon Bleu.

"I'm afraid we're out of Christmas boxes for the Chivas," the clerk
said.

He assured him it would be all right, that he'd use his own gift wrap,
and at the stationery shop next door he did buy a long tube of their
most expensive gold-foil wrap and two big stick,on bows of simulated red
ribbon.  At home he wrapped the two boxed bottles carefully and put them
away in the hall closet.  He meant to unwrap them and drink them on
Christmas Eve.

On the fifteenth he bought a gigantic Scotch pine.  Mrs.  Lurkey, the
supers wife, seeing him wrestle it into the elevator, thanked him for
his check and wished him a merry Christmas.

"The same to you," he shouted, just as the doors chomped together on the
lowest branches of his twenty-dollar pine.

He was up till after midnight decorating the thing.  Balls, lights,
garlands, tinsel, and an antique art deco angel on the top.

When he was done he sank back on his recliner and thought: "There, that
does it.  I've exercised Christmas.  I'm in control."

But he lay awake that night remembering past Christmases in obsessive
detail-the presents he'd got and the presents he'd given, the different
turkeys and the single underdone goose.

He was forty-three years old.  Every day did not count.  He did not do
what he really wanted to.  Every day every day every day.

Next morning on the way into the office and altogether against his
principles he dropped ten dollars into a Salvation Army pot.  He thought
it might help.

His secretary had sorted his mail, as requested, into actual business
and seasons greetings, of which there were twelve, eight from
underlings, three from superiors, and one from his opposite number in
the Cincinnati office.  He read the texts that various employees of
Hallmark and Norcross and UNICEF had written to print on the blank
insides of their cards.  Harley Krueger wished him:

A wonderful world of

good wishes for the

HOLIDAY SEASON.

Mrs.  Palmer, of Accounting, offered this thought:

Every gift of love to our neighbors

is a gift of peace to our world.

And Ted and Vita Milstein saluted him with a multilingual:

Seasons Qreetings

Meilleurs Voeux

Felices Fiestas

C HoBblm Toaom.

They all went into his attache case, and that night he propped them up
under the tree, a little paper fortress to guard him from his doom.

On the evening of the eighteenth, with Christmas only a week away, he
began to imagine friends, friends who would (if they'd been real) have
given him the presents he wasn't going to get, friends who cherished his
good qualities and forgave his faults.  This required, in order to
formulate such friends with any exactness, that he ask himself what his
good qualities and his faults were.

He couldn't think of any, in either category.

Wasn't it, he wondered, a fault in itself that he didn't like other
people more than he did?  In college he'd had lots of friends.  He'd
been a premed and palled around with other premeds.  Then, in his senior
year, someone, he never found out who, sabotaged a crucial organic
chemistry experiment, and someone else (he suspected his roommate) had
swiped all his notebooks a week before the finals.  He didn't get into
med school.  (In fairness it must be said that even without treachery
his would have been a borderline case.)  After that, working at this job
and that job, he'd formed a few tentative friendships, although he
tended to think of Ralph and Bob and Terry even then more as
"acquaintances" or at best "colleagues." He'd had a wife, and a
mistress, sort of, both very beautiful and both rather limited
intellectually, putting it kindly.  Such love as he'd felt for them was
of the obsessive, grabbing kind.  He'd never thought of women as
potential friends, under-standing and understood, but rather as
mysterious bosomy embodiments of Otherness.

He was lonely.  Of course.  But he'd come to think of loneliness as a
necessary attribute of manhood, the moral corollary of being
clearheaded.  Being clearheaded, he couldn't help being aware that the
people he knew were shits.  There might be people elsewhere in the world
who were not.  He had no theoretical reason for supposing that there
weren't.  But he had yet to meet them.

As to the propriety or sanity of inventing his own alternatives, that
gave him no concern.  From his earliest years, when he had governed the
complex fates of two families of multicolored bowling pins, his fantasy
life had been hyperactive.  In later years his unreal friends had
usually been females who differed from each other chiefly with respect
to their sexual

proclivities, but at least he'd kept in practice, and even then he was
capable of daydreaming long James Bondish adventures on which blond
Trina or even raven-haired Rebecca would accompany him, adventures in
which sex figured only peripherally.  He had no qualms: it could be
done.

The first friend to be hypothesized was John Bartram Hall, who was now
seventy and living in retirement in Savannah, Georgia, with two Negro
servants and a stamp collection of exceptional rarity.  Hall would have
been his first boss, assuming he'd gone to work at Meinhard-Commercial,
as he'd seriously considered doing in his last weeks of grad school. His
real-life bosses had been little more than rednecks in business suits,
true believers in football, Goldwater, and flying saucers.  Their only
merit had been a coarseness of wit so genuine that they never knew till
much too late when they'd been outmaneuvered in the brushes and
skirmishes of middle-management politics.  John Bartram Hall, by
contrast, was a man of culture, a bon vivant, a gentleman.  He was
solicitous of his protege in an avuncular way and anxious to remedy the
defects of his false-genteel suburban up-bringing and an education
topheavy with science and math.  He selected his shoes and censored his
ties and helped him get an American Express card when his first
application had been refused.  He bullied him into reading grown-up
books and made him sit down and listen to the three M's-Mozart,
Monteverdi, and Mahler.  They talked about important things.  They were
friends.  Once (to mark his retirement) Hall took him on a four-day
holiday to Las Vegas, where he proceeded to lose a bundle with the most
gentlemanly aplomb.

There was something uneasy-making about this first friendship, a
distinct undercurrent of something latent and unmentionable, that
prompted him to fashion, perhaps too hastily, an Eve for his Adam.

He called her Weena Jessel, after Weena of Qreen Mansions and Mary
jessel, whom he'd lusted after uselessly all through eleventh grade.
Weena was an ex-call girl who now worked as a beautician and dealt dope.
He'd first met her, or would have, late in '68, as his marriage was
breaking up.  Weena was Venus the goddess of love, manic and languorous,
all-accommodating yet fiercely independent, a centerfold come to life.
Through her he'd discovered his own deepest feelings.  Through him she'd
found the strength to leave her life of degradation.  Basically, Weena
was Jane Fonda in Mute, minus the dialogue.  It wasn't so much that she
was stupid (though she would accuse herself of that from time to time)
but rather that she was overprotective of her tenuous,
never-entirely-expressible thoughts.  Occasionally, in an odd remark or
in one of the sad little watercolors she painted of doll-faced modistes
and pink ballerinas, he could glimpse the possibility of a finer Weena
trapped inside this one, a Weena, alas, lost forever in a haze of drugs.

He became fascinated with the way his fantasy, like a hooked fish
invisible beneath his boat, seemed to have a life of its own.

Deliberately he let it run with his line.  Weena (it developed) was
really rather dull!  It was all very well to respect her potentialities
but in the here and now, except when they had sex, Weena was about as
interesting as a dead TV screen.  Trying to carry on a conversation with
her was like trying to talk to sea-weed.  It was like being married all
over again.

One night, the nineteenth of December, he arranged to meet her at the
diner across from the beauty shop where she worked.  He never showed up.
Weena waited two hours and then slowly, sadly, walked home through the
snow.

It's hard to make friends, even imaginary friends, and harder still to
keep them.  Something, his reality principle or his death wish, kept
intruding, like a vengeful witch cursing each newly fledged friend with
warts and foibles and fatal flaws of character.  Lolah Silverberg was
his most painful disappointment in this respect, for she had seemed at
first the most promising of his creations, virtually a new direction for
his hopes to move in, a grail to go off in quest of.

Lolah was the polar opposite of Weena.  She was homely, but homely, like
George Eliot or Virginia Woolf, in a manner associated with abundance of
character.  Not Venus but gray-eyed Athena.  Not only could you talk to
her, you could listen.  She had ideas, beliefs, a sense of humor. What's
more,

she could cope.  After years of teaching she was now an assistant
principal in one of the city's toughest junior high schools.  Like
himself, she was divorced.  By mutual unspoken agreement they never
discussed their exes.  She lived with her two teenage daughters, Alice
and Emma, in the same apartment building on a higher floor.

Often he'd go up the fire stairs late at night to play long, guilty
games of Monopoly with them, till two or three in the morning.  They
were happy just being together.  He began to wonder (in his fantasy) if
he were in love.

If so, that love was not returned, for suddenly Lolah began to avoid
him, suddenly she was always in a hurry somewhere else.  Once, on Adams
Street, she'd seen him approaching from the opposite direction
and-obviously to avoid the chance encounter-had stooped down, pretending
to lace a shoe.  (That had happened to him in real life, in Omaha.)  Her
daughters would answer the phone and say that Lolah wasn't there and
could they take a message.  He knew they were lying and that they were
under orders to.  What had he done to deserve it?  Was it because he'd
criticized her for letting Alice and Emma subscribe to an astrology
magazine?  Because he made jokes about her affecting to be part
Cherokee?  Could she be so petty?  In any case he'd sent her an
imaginary letter apologizing for these slights.  It was more basic: he
had begun to bore her.  No, it was something still worse and more
serious, something rooted in his nature, something he couldn't imagine.

He'd known from the very start that the last of his friends, Peter
Snyder, was a son of a bitch.  A thin, red-haired parrot of a man, vain
as a mirror, Peter considered himself a kind of count of Monte Cristo
with a score to settle against the world at large.  He wrote (this much
was a fact) the movie reviews for the Evening StarCourier, as
intemperate and mean-spirited a column as one could find this side of
John Simon.  Through all of 1975 the only movie he had anything good to
say about was Jaws.  There were people (he was one) who took the
Star-Courier just for the spectacle of Snyder's savage tongue.  He was
also a sponge: of food, of booze, of books, of whatever he could wangle.
He would even make jokes about it, as though to show that he was on your
side, after all.

They'd met at a party that Lolah had taken him to, and over the next
weeks he'd graduated from being one of the admiring throng to the status
of an old pal thanks to an apparently ungrudging willingness to provide
all the flattery and the free drinks that Snyder required.  The quid for
this quo was that he got to be a witness to the man's kamikaze assaults
on other subjects than the movies.  Watergate, naturally, had been his
heyday, but with half a bottle of B & L under his belt (Snyder was not,
bless him, picky about labels) there was nothing that wasn't grist for
his mill.  He would assassinate the characters of his friends or
complain about the weather or ridicule the pretensions of the restaurant
he was being taken to, all with an equanimity that was equal to his
eloquence.

He was not such a fool as to suppose that Peter Snyder liked him, or
that he liked Snyder.  He thought of him rather as a cell mate in the
world's prison, one who made the time pass better than most, but a
criminal essentially, a person not to be trusted.

If there was anything worse than being Peter Snyder, it was being Peter
Snyder's sycophant, and that's what he'd become.

At this point he stopped inventing imaginary friends.

It was the night before Christmas.  Besides the liquor and the Christmas
cards there were four presents under the tree: a present from John
Bartram Hall, a present from Weena Jessel, a present from Lolah
Silverberg, and a present from Peter Snyder.  They were wrapped in gold
foil paper but they lacked bows.  Weena's was the smallest, about the
size of a box of Anacin, and Peter's the largest, the size of a brick.

Not yet, he told himself.  Later.

He broke out the Chivas and put on a record from his album of Handel's
Messiah.  "Oh, we like sheep!" the chorus announced cheerily.  "Oh, we
like sheep!" He'd made a mistake.  Instead of the opening Nativity
section he'd hit the Crucifixion.  But it sounded pretty in a tinkly way
that suited the occasion just as well, even when the chorus was laughing
Christ to scorn.  "Oh, we like sheep!

Oh, we like sheep!" The lights on the tree seemed to blink on and off in
time to the music.  He drank a toast to George Frideric Handel.

The phone rang.

He turned down the volume and answered it by the third ring.  A woman
wished him a merry Christmas.  Her name was Janet, and she'd dialed a
wrong number.  He tried to keep her on the phone with small talk but she
grew uneasy.  He proposed marriage and hung up.

When he turned the volume back up, the tenor was just starting the
recitative that goes, "He was cut off out of the land of the living.  .
.  ." And even that Handel made to seem halfway cheerful.

The record played over and over.  He'd neglected to lower the arm of the
changer.

At midnight he thought, "Now's the time to open the presents."

But next morning they were still intact underneath the big red wool
stocking hanging limply from the arm of the recliner.  Oddly, he did not
feel hung over.  He'd only dozed off for four hours, so maybe he was
still drunk.  Half of the brandy was left and a smidgen of Scotch.  He
put off opening the presents till later and watched a nondenominational
church service while he soaked in the tub.

Children in red choir robes walked about with candles, singing shrill
carols.

He made a very simple stuffing for the turkey, nothing but bread crumbs,
butter, celery, onion, and seasonings.  It weighed twelve pounds and it
went into the oven at ten thirty.  That meant, according to Fannie
Farmer, that it should come out at two thirty or three.

The pie came from a local bakery.  He could pop it in the oven when the
bird came out.  Nothing else required much in the way of preparation.
There would be instant mashed potatoes, yams from a can, and frozen
peas, all of which could be done at the last minute.  Simple but
sufficient.  The important thing was to uphold tradition.

There was nothing but dreck on the television, and he still didn't feel
like opening the presents, so he occupied the time by doing his next
year's taxes.

All the while it had cooked it had smelled terrific, but now, sitting
there on the table, and sitting there himself before it, he had no
appetite at all.  He'd put on the Messiah again, careful this time to
start with side 1.  He just sat there like a marble allegory of
Abundance all through "Comfort ye my people (saith your God)" without
lifting the carving knife or looking up from the poinsettias on his
paper napkin.

He felt iniquitous and utterly cast down.

Was there no way to combat Christmas?  Must it make him wretched over
and over all through his life?

Or, as the countertenor put it, rather more pointedly: "Who may abide
the day of His coming?  Who shall stand when He appeareth?"

Slowly and reverently, in strict time to the contralto's joyful air ("O
thou that tellest good tidings to Zion"), he began to stab the golden
turkey in its moist, plump breast.

Later, after he'd cleaned up most of the mess, and feeling cleansed
himself and radiant and free, he fed the scraps of his sacrifice into
the incinerator.  Along with it went the presents from his four
imaginary friends.  He'd never opened them and he would never know how
they had meant to surprise him.

The Centerpiece By: Peter Matthiessen,

In 1941 Grandmother Hartlingen, Madrina to the family, was considerably
older than anyone I had ever known, "too old for Christmas presents," as
she said.  She had given way gently to her years, lowering the window
upon her past as on a too-early snow, yet thoughtfully aware of its
delicate weight on the high eaves of her household.

None of her family lived beneath her roof, nor even in the township of
Concord, but they were present nevertheless, in neat smiling ranks upon
her bedroom tables, ones and twos and threes, and in various postures of
memory throughout the rooms.  Most of them would gather for her German
Christmas, and the rest had preceded her into the ground.  These she had
long ago forgiven, they lost no favor on the bedroom tables, represented
only a certain unsatisfactory transience, like gypsies or violets.  In
the dark December of 1941, 1 alone among Madrina's descendants suffered
no misgivings about her festival.  To a boy of fourteen, German
Christmas meant receiving presents twelve hours in advance and Christmas
Day free to enjoy them and had nothing whatever to do with Germany.  The
relation of Christmas to war seemed as tenuous to Madrina as to myself.
She had visited Germany but twice in her lifetime and did not intend to
visit there again.  At the same time, although she was born in New York
City, a heritage of Christmas in Bavaria was imprinted in the first
pages of her mind, not only of the Hartlingen gathering itself but of
the beauty of this tradition to all Germans, at home or abroad.  For
Madrina, like a fountain sinking back into its well, had returned
unconsciously to her source as she grew older and had long since
astounded her countrymen of Concord by referring to herself as High
German.  No shell threatened the household of habit her universe had
become, and although she crocheted for the soldiers and was offended by
the Red Cross refusal of her offer of blood-good German blood, she
assured them-she saw no grounds what-soever for renouncing her German
Christmas.  It never occurred to her, in fact.  Those of the family to
whom it did occur awaited in vain the reprieve from Concord and finally,
not daring open rebellion, forgathered uneasily on Christmas Eve.  It
was the last German Christmas ever celebrated in our family, for Madrina
died late in the following year.

Everybody forgathered, that is, except Cousin Millicent, aged fifteen,
who refused to leave the car.

My cousin was known in school as Silly Milly, and, as cousins are apt to
be, she was ill-favored and even a little distempered.  She contributed
to family gatherings her own special brand of lackluster silence, as if
life in general were a personal affront and no stratagem on the part of
others would make her a party to it.  Milly was the last descendant
Madrina would have suspected as the viper, and Milly's parents, Uncle
Charles and Aunt Alice, were as startled as the rest of us.  Milly's
teacher in school, her one friend in the world, had lost a brother at
Pearl Harbor, and Milly's awareness of the forces of good and evil was
far keener than my own.  After all, I told her, Madrina isn't
celebrating a Japanese Christmas.

We had gone to sing Christmas carols in the country church.  When the
tramping of boots had died in the hallway and the family, the snow still
white on their heads, had picked their way into the living room and paid
homage to Madrina, there was a moment of silence for the mutineer.
"Good," Madrina said, taking the census through her lorgnette, attached
by a wisp of chain to her collar.  I can remember how struck I was by
this large matriarchal woman with a full-featured serenity of visage
entirely absent in the generations grouped before her.  "Good," she
repeated "you've come at last.  And where is Millicent?"

"Silly Milly," I remarked, from behind the Christmas tree.  I had
winnowed my presents from a heap which cornucopiaed from the base of the
spruce to the shoulder of the hearth, and was engaged in arraying them
in good order for opening.  The face of the tree was splendid in red
candles, with fine antique ornaments, gilt and silver, garnet and
emerald, and Bohemian crystal of the sort Madrina said was no longer
made.  "Silly Milly," I said, "won't come to German Christmas."

Uncle Charles requested my silence, and Aunt Alice stepped forward.

"It's nothing, Madrina," she said and smiled.

"What?  What's nothing?  Don't smile at me that way, Alice.  Are you
ill?"

" Milly's taking a stand," Uncle Charles announced, and I saw my father
wince.  "I'm sure she'll be in in a while, Madrina."

"Taking a stand?  What on earth is he saying?" Madrina seized her
lorgnette again and peered at her elder son as at an impostor.  "The
child is far too young to take a stand on anything."

She pronounced "take-a-stand" all in a word, as if Milly, in conspiracy
with Uncle Charles, were doing something unheard-of, even a trifle
indecent.

"What is it, Charles?  Have her come in this instant."

"In a few minutes, Madrina," my father said.  "She's being very silly
about it."

"Silly Milly," I repeated, vindicated, and was promptly admonished by my
sister Polly, the eldest of the younger generation and its unofficial
keeper.  Madrina's attention was thereby drawn to me.

"Wolfgang," she said, "come out from behind that tree and fetch a candy
to your cousin."

"My name's not Wolfgang," I objected, but out I came.  Madrina had taken
to calling me Wolfgang quite arbitrarily, since my given name is Wendell
and my popular title is Sandy.  I think Wolfgang satisfied a curious
humor of Madrina's devoted to the nettling of my parents.  "What candy?"
I said.

"What candy, Madrina," Polly said.  Polly was very tiresome as a child.

"It doesn't matter what candy," my mother said.  "Do as you're told,
Wendell."

"Sandy," I said.  I ran into the dining room to look for candy and greet
the servants but was arrested, as I had been every year, by the wondrous
centerpiece on the table.  It was five feet long, Saint Nicholas and the
rein-deer before a hostelry, hand-wrought of mahogany and bone, and
restaged each year with cotton-and-mica snow.  After a long service in
Germany, a century of Hartlingen Christmases, it had been delivered into
Madrina's hands and now symbolized to all of us not only Christmas but
the past.  It was girded round with pine fronds and holly, the orbit of
a vast oval of silverware and banquet oddments, muscat raisins, mints,
almonds, wine, cranberry jelly, and butterballs.  Madrina had beautiful
silver, ancient and heavy with Hartlingen history, the epochs of pigs
with apples in their mouths and wine from golden goblets.

I secured a thin mint for Milly, but it deteriorated in transit, and
Madrina instructed me to throw it into the fire.  "Take one of those,"
she said and pointed out a gleaming coffer on a side table, guarded by
dancing Dresden figurines, ivory burgomasters, and a peevish dachshund
named Bismark V, decaying on a period chair.

"I hope they're not Qerman candies," I said.

"You'd be in luck if they were," Madrina told me and laughed so oddly
that I turned to stare at her.  The reason for Milly's stand had
obviously been explained, and now my grandmother regarded the family,
fourteen strong about the room, with an abstracted gaze, as if they
could not be her family after all.

Uncomfortable, I selected the biggest item from the box and hastened
through the snow to Milly.  Milly had her nose pressed to the rear
window of the car, and although she ducked back at my appearance, I knew
she was happy someone had come.

"Here, silly," I said.

She struck the candy from my hand.

"Oh-h!" Milly gasped.  "That old German thing!  I don't love her
anymore."

"Can I have your candy, then?" I said, picking it up.

"No!" Milly said and, snatching it from me, burst into tears.  Now she
was uglier than ever, and I had neither the age nor wisdom to be sorry
for her.  "And I won't come in.  I won't!" Her knee, in stamping,
knocked the candy into the snow.

"All right," I said, seizing it, "but you're spoiling everything."

I ran back up the path, my mission a delightful failure.

The wreathed light from the windows gave body to the darkness, breathing
tracery into the slow arras of snow.  It gave the house a snug,
enchanted air, like some magic sanctuary of childhood deep in a wood.
The holly berries on the door wreath, round red as picture peasants'
cheeks, and the deep green halo of ground pine itself were as fresh as
our New World winter.  Inside, the voices traveled on pine-scented air,
safe from the future and from Millicent's war.

"Silly Milly lost the candy in the snow and won't come in," I reported,
swallowing the last of it.

There was a pause, and eyes turned to Madrina for her dictum.

Madrina said, "How very foolish."

She rang for Clara, who presently appeared with a copper caldron of
brandy and milk and nutmeg and a set of silver mugs.  There was a fine
bowl of nuts by the fire, black walnuts, butternuts, and hazelnuts, and
seated in warmth, one eye cast luxuriously on my presents, I indulged
myself in contempt for Milly and pity for Madrina, undone by the rude
granddaughter outside.

Seated in her flowered chair as still and enduring as the dry cattails
and bittersweet in the vase behind her, Madrina told us a tale of
another Christmas, another century, her face alive with soft expressive
rhythms, like a moment of birds in a winter tree.

Her German cousin Ernst was traveling with his mother to a Hardingen
Christmas of long ago, and as the carriage was to pass the region of the
Black Forest, the coachman advised his passengers of the danger of
brigands, then very numerous in the byways.  The brigands were captained
by a well-mannered man of noble extraction, so it was said, who treated
his victims with great courtesy so long as they offered no resistance,
but dealt very harshly with objectors.  Madrina's cousin Ernst was just
the sort to object: he had no sense of humor in such matters, and his
mother cautioned him strongly against rash actions in the event of
trouble.  No sooner had she spoken than the carriage halted, and she was
handed down by an enormous bearded gentleman, who relieved her
discreetly of all jewelry but a family brooch, of the sentimental value
of which she had managed to persuade him.  At this moment Ernst sprang
from the carriage, brandishing a pistol, and was on the point of taking
a stand on the matter, Madrina said tartly, when his head, parted from
his shoulders by the sword of a mounted henchman, rolled ignominiously
under the carriage.  Very regrettable, the chieftain remarked, and
seized the brooch.

Madrina's aunt was inconsolable.  She bent and peered under the
carriage, where, catching the eye of her son, she shouted at him: "I
told you, Ernst!  I told you, you blockhead!"

Madrina peered from one descendant to the next, as if seeking a
successor by the gauge of laughter.  But her own smile faltered, then
disappeared entirely.  "We shall go to dinner," she whispered.

The family stared toward the hallway, where not Milly but Clara, her
hands prim on her apron, leaned sepulchrally into the room.  "We will
start without Miss Millicent, Clara," Madrina said, less to Clara than
to Milly herself, as if she had said, I told you, Ernst, I told you!

Marching past the faded tapestries and bronze,green urns from the halls
of her forebears, artifacts far too ponderous for the houses of her
children, Madrina entered the dining room, touching the oaken chairs
fondly as she journeyed to her place.

"She will come in a minute, Madrina," Aunt Alice said.  "She will do as
she pleases," said Madrina.

From my position, far away below the salt, the centerpiece stretched
eternally between the two lines of heads which converged on the white
face of Madrina.  She gave a whispered benediction, and afterward the
family toasted her, holding high the glasses of Rhenish wine.  Against
the candle-light and the chandelier, the red wine glowed like liquid
rubies, and for the last time in my life I was wholly in the past again,
a baron at a medieval board, drunk on the wine of my betters.

When, late in the second course, the centerpiece ignited from a fallen
candle, the flame ran a furious circle in the snow before an uncle had
the wit to dash his wine at it.  The inn was tinder in the molten
cotton, and the whalebone reindeer pranced proudly on the table, freed
forever of Saint Nicholas, who perished in his sleigh.

In the chaos of motion and voices I saw Madrina, the only person still
seated, observing the destruction as if the ruin of this antiquated
treasure was somehow fitting, as if she sensed that, like the tapestries
and urns, it was far too venerable and vast to serve the New World
Hartlingens again.  She did not respond to the condolences addressed to
her, but sat in silence, her hands folded on her lap.  When at last she
could be heard, she said: "Milly ...  I would like to see Milly."

And as if the girl had been poised on the threshold, the door flew open
and Milly appeared, in a flurry of snow and tears, stumbling forward to
Madrina.  Milly cried very loudly in Madrina's embrace, and Madrina was
crying, too, a harsh unwilling sputter which her glaring eyes denied.
"It's all my fault," Milly was saying, "it's all my fault." And Madrina,
looking over Milly's shoulder at the black Saint Nicholas, said: "How
foolish, my dear.

I am as American as you are.  We are simply celebrating Christmas Eve."

Santa's Children By: Italo Calvino,

No period of the year is more gentle and good, for the world of industry
and commerce, than Christmas and the weeks preceding it.

From the streets rises the tremulous sound of the mountaineers'
bagpipes; and the big companies, till yesterday coldly concerned with
calculating gross product and dividends, open their hearts to human
affections and to smiles.  The sole thought of boards of directors now
is to give joy to their fellowman, sending gifts accompanied by messages
of goodwill both to other companies and to private individuals; every
firm feels obliged to buy a great stock of products from a second firm
to serve as presents to third firms; and those firms, for their part,
buy from yet another firm further stocks of presents for the others; the
office windows remain aglow till late, especially those of the shipping
department, where the personnel work overtime wrapping packages and
boxes; beyond the misted panes, on the sidewalks covered by a crust of
ice, the pipers advance.  Having descended from the dark mysterious
mountains, they stand at the downtown intersections, a bit dazzled by
the excessive lights, by the excessively rich shop windows; and heads
bowed, they blow into their instruments; at that sound among the
businessmen the heavy conflicts of interest are placated and give way to
a new rivalry: to see who can present the most conspicuous and original
gift in the most attractive way.

At Sbav and Co.  that year the Public Relations Office suggested that
the Christmas presents for the most important persons should be
delivered at home by a man dressed as Santa Claus.

The idea won the unanimous approval of the top executives.  A complete
Santa Claus outfit was bought: white beard, red cap and tunic edged in
white fur, big boots.  They had the various delivery men try it on, to
see whom it fitted best, but one man was too short and the beard touched
the ground; another was too stout and couldn't get into the tunic;
another was too young; yet another was too old and it wasn't worth
wasting makeup on him.

While the head of the Personnel Office was sending for other possible
Santas from the various departments, the assembled executives sought to
develop the idea: the Human Relations Office wanted the employees'
Christmas packages also to be distributed by Santa Claus, at a
collective ceremony; the Sales Office wanted Santa to make a round of
the shops as well; the Advertising Office was worried about the
prominence of the firm's name, suggesting that perhaps they should tie
four balloons to a string with the letters S-B-A-V.

All were caught up in the lively and cordial atmosphere spreading
through the festive, productive city; nothing is more beautiful than the
sensation of material goods flowing on all sides and, with it, the
goodwill each feels toward the others; for this, this above all, as the
skirting sound of the pipes reminds us, is what really counts.

In the shipping department, goods-material and spiritual-passed through
Marcovaldo's hands, since it represented merchandise to load and unload.
And it was not only through loading and unloading that he shared in the
general festivity, but also by thinking that at the end of that
labyrinth of hundreds of thousands of packages there waited a package
belonging to him alone, prepared by the Human Relations Office, and even
more, by figuring how much was due him at the end of the month, counting
the Christmas bonus and his overtime hours.  With that money, he too
would be able to rush to the shops and buy, buy, buy, to give presents,
presents, presents, as his most sincere feelings and the general
interests of industry and commerce decreed.

The head of the Personnel Office came into the shipping department with
a fake beard in his hand.  "Hey, you!" he said to Marcovaldo.

"See how this beard looks on you.  Perfect!  You're Santa then.  Come
upstairs.  Get moving.  You'll be given a special bonus if you make
fifty home deliveries per day."

Got up as Santa Claus, Marcovaldo rode through the city on the saddle of
the motorbike-truck laden with packages wrapped in varicolored paper,
tied with pretty ribbons, and decorated with twigs of mistletoe and
holly.  The white cotton beard tickled him a little but it protected his
throat from the cold air.

His first trip was to his own home, because he couldn't resist the
temptation of giving his children a surprise.  At first, he thought,
they won't recognize me.  Then I bet they'll laugh!

The children were playing on the stairs.  They barely looked up.

"Hi, Papi."

Marcovaldo was let down.  "Hmph .  .  .  Don't you see how I'm dressed?"

"How are you supposed to be dressed?" Pietruccio said.  "Like Santa
Claus, right?"

"And you recognized me first thing?"

"Easy!  We recognized Signor Sigismondo, too; and he was disguised
better than you!"

"And the janitor's brother-in-law!"

"And the father of the twins across the street!"

"And the uncle of Ernestina-the girl with the braids!"

"All dressed like Santa Claus?" Marcovaldo asked, and the disappointment
in his voice wasn't due only to the failure of the family surprise, but
also because he felt that the company's prestige had somehow been
impaired.

"Of course.  Just like you," the children answered.  "Like Santa Claus.
With a fake beard, as usual." And turning their backs on him, the
children became absorbed again in their games.

It so happened that the public relations offices of many firms had had
the same idea at the same time; and they had recruited a great number of
people, jobless for the most part,' pensioners, street vendors, and had
dressed them in the red tunic, with the cotton wool beard.  The
children, the first few times, had been amused, recognizing
acquaintances under that disguise, neighborhood figures, but after a
while they were jaded and paid no further attention.

The game they were involved in seemed to absorb them entirely.  They had
gathered on a landing and were seated in a circle.  "May I ask what
you're plotting?" Marcovaldo inquired.

"Leave us alone, Papa; we have to fix our presents."

"Presents for who?"

"For a poor child.  We have to find a poor child and give him presents."

"Who said so?"

"It's in our school reader."

Marcovaldo was about to say: "You're poor children yourselves!" But
during this past week he had become so convinced that he was an
inhabitant of the Land of Plenty, where all purchased and enjoyed
themselves and exchanged presents, that it seemed bad manners to mention
poverty; and he preferred to declare: "Poor children don't exist any
more!" Michelino stood up and asked: "Is that why you don't bring us
presents, Papa?"

Marcovaldo felt a pang at his heart.  "I have to earn some overtime
now," he said hastily, "and then I'll bring you some."

"How do you earn it?"

"Delivering presents," Marcovaldo said.

"To us?"

"No, to other people."

"Why not to us?  It'd be quicker."

Marcovaldo tried to explain.  "Because I'm not the Human Relations Santa
Claus, after all; I'm the Public Relations Santa Claus.  You
under-stand?"

"No."

"Never mind." But since he wanted somehow to apologize for coming home
empty-handed, he thought he might take Michelino with him, on his round
of deliveries.  "If you're good, you can come and watch your Papa taking
presents to people," he said, straddling the seat of the little delivery
wagon.

"Let's go.  Maybe I'll find a poor child," Michelino said and jumped on,
clinging to his father's shoulders.

In the streets of the city Marcovaldo encountered only other
redand-white Santas, absolutely identical with him, who were driving
panel trucks or delivery carts or opening the doors of shops for
customers laden with packages or helping carry their purchases to the
car.  And all these Santas seemed concentrated, busy, as if they were
responsible for the operation of the enormous machine of the Holiday
Season.

And exactly like them, Marcovaldo ran from one address to another,
following his list, dismounted from his seat, sorted the packages in the
wagon, selected one, presented it to the person opening the door,
pronouncing the words "Sbav and Company wish a merry Christmas and a
happy New Year," and pocketed the tip.

This tip could be substantial and Marcovaldo might have been considered
content, but something was missing.  Every time, before ringing at a
door, followed by Michelino, he anticipated the wonder of the person
who, on opening the door, would see Santa Claus himself standing there
before him; he expected some fuss, curiosity, gratitude.  And every time
he was received like the postman, who brings the newspaper day after
day.

He rang at the door of a luxurious house.  A governess answered the
door.  "Oh, another package.  Who's this one from?"

"Sbav and Company wish a .  .  ."

"Well, bring it in," and she led Santa Claus down a corridor filled with
tapestries, carpets, and majolica vases.  Michelino, all eyes, followed
his father.

The governess opened a glass door.  They entered a room with a high
ceiling, so high that a great fir tree could fit beneath it.  It was a
Christmas tree lighted by glass bubbles of every color, and from its
branches hung presents and sweets of every description.  From the
ceiling hung heavy crystal chandeliers, and the highest branches of the
fir caught some of the glistening drops.  Over a large table were
arrayed glass, silver, boxes of candied fruit and cases of bottles.  The
toys, scattered over a great rug, were as numerous as in a toy shop,
mostly complicated electronic devices and model spaceships.  On that
rug, in an empty corner, there was a little boy about nine years old,
lying prone, with a bored, sullen look.  He was leafing through an
illustrated volume, as if everything around him were no concern of his.

"Gianfranco, look.  Gianfranco," the governess said.  "You see?  Santa
Claus has come back with another present?"

"Three hundred twelve," the child sighed, without looking up from his
book.  "Put it over there."

"It's the three hundred and twelfth present that's arrived," the
governess said.  "Gianfranco is so clever.  He keeps count; he doesn't
miss one.  Counting is his great passion."

On tiptoe Marcovaldo and Michelino left the house.

"PapA is that little boy a poor child?" Michelino asked.

Marcovaldo was busy rearranging the contents of the truck and didn't
answer immediately.  But after a moment, he hastened to protest: "Poor?
What are you talking about?  You know who his father is?  He's the
president of the Society for the Implementation of Christmas
Consumption.  Com-mendatore "

He broke off, because he didn't see Michelino anywhere.  "Michelino!

Michelino!  Where are you?" He had vanished.

I bet he saw another Santa Claus go by, took him for me, and has gone
off after him.  .  .  .  Marcovaldo continued his rounds, but he was a
bit concerned and couldn't wait to get home again.

At home, he found Michelino with his brothers, good as gold.

"Say, where did you go?"

"I came home, to collect our presents....  the presents for that poor
child......

"What?  Who?"

"The one that was so sad....  the one in the villa, with the Christmas
tree.

"Him?  What kind of a present could you give him?"

"Oh, we fixed them up very nice....  three presents, all wrapped in
silver paper."

The younger boys spoke up: "We all went together to take them to him!
You should have seen how happy he was!"

"I'll bet!" Marcovaldo said.  "That was just what he needed to make him
happy: your presents!"

"Yes, ours!  ...  He ran over right away to tear off the paper and see
what they were......

"And what were they?"

"The first was a hammer: that big round hammer, the wooden kind."

"What did he do then?"

"He was jumping with joy!  He grabbed it and began to use it!"

"How?"

"He broke all the toys!  And all the glassware!  Then he took the second
present......

"What was that?"

"A slingshot.  You should have seen him.  He was so happy!  He hit all
the glass balls on the Christmas tree.  Then he started on the
chandeliers......

"That's enough.  I don't want to hear anymore!  And the .  .  .  third
present?"

"We didn't have anything left to give, so we took some silver paper and
wrapped up a box of kitchen matches.  That was the present that made him
happiest of all.  He said: "They never let me touch matches!" He began
to strike them, and

"And?"

it...  and he set fire to everything!"

Marcovaldo was tearing his hair.  "I'm ruined!"

The next day, turning up at work, he felt the storm brewing.  He dressed
again as Santa Claus, in great haste, loaded the presents to be
delivered onto the truck, already amazed that no one had said anything
to him, and then he saw, coming toward him, the three section chiefs:
the one from public relations, the one from advertising, and the one
from sales.  "Stop!" they said to him.

"Unload everything, At once!" This is it, Marcovaldo said to himself and
could already picture himself fired.

,,Hurry up!  We have to change all the packages!" the three section
chiefs said.  "The Society for the Implementation of Christmas
Consumption has launched a campaign to push the Destructive Gift!"

"On the spur of the moment like this," one of the men remarked.

"They might have thought of it sooner....

"It was a sudden inspiration the president had," another chief
explained.  "It seems his little boy was given some ultramodern gift
articles, Japanese, I believe, and for the first time the child was
obviously enjoying himself......

"The important thing," the third added, "is that the Destructive Gift
serves to destroy articles of every sort: just what's needed to speed up
the pace of consumption and give the market a boost....

All in minimum time and within a child's capacities....  The president
of the society sees a whole new horizon opening out.  He's in seventh
heaven, he's so enthusiastic.  .  .  ."

"But this child .  .  ." Marcovaldo asked, in a faint voice: "did he
really destroy much stuW"

"It's hard to make an estimate, even a hazy one, because the house was
burned down......

Marcovaldo went back to the street, illuminated as if it were night,
crowded with mammas and children and uncles and grannies and packages
and balloons and rocking horses and Christmas trees and Santa Clauses
and chickens and turkeys and fruitcakes and bottles and bagpipers and
chimney sweeps and chestnut vendors shaking pans of chestnuts over
round, glowing black stoves.

And the city seemed smaller, collected in a luminous vessel, buried in
the dark heart of a forest, among the age-old trunks of the chestnut
trees and an endless cloak of snow.  Somewhere in the darkness the howl
of the wolf was heard; the hares had a hole buried in the snow, in the
warm red earth under a layer of chestnut burrs.

A jack hare came out, white, onto the snow; he twitched his ears, ran
beneath the moon, but he was white and couldn't be seen, as if he
weren't there.  Only his little paws left a light print on the snow,
like little clover leaves.  Nor could the wolf be seen, for he was black
and stayed in the black darkness of the forest.  Only if he opened his
mouth, his teeth were visible, white and sharp.

There was a line where the forest, all black, ended and the snow began,
all white.  The hare ran on this side, and the wolf on that.

The wolf saw the hare's prints on the snow and followed them, always
keeping in the black, so as not to be seen.  At the point where the
prints ended there should be the hare, and the wolf came out of the
black, opened wide his red maw and his sharp teeth, and bit the wind.

The hare was a bit farther on, invisible; he scratched one ear with his
paw and escaped, hopping away.

Is he here?  There?  Is he a bit farther on?

Only the expanse of snow could be seen, white as this page.

A Clock Ticks at Christmas By: Patricia Highsmith,

"Have you got a spare franc, madame?"

That was how it began.

Michele looked down over her armfuls of boxes and plastic bags at a
small boy in a loose tweed coat and tweed cap that hung over his ears.
He had big dark eyes and an appealing smile.  "Yes!" She managed to drop
two francs which were still in her fingers after paying the taxi.

"Merd, madame!"

"And this," said Michele, suddenly remembering that she had stuck a
ten-franc note into her coat pocket a moment ago.

The boy's mouth fell open.  "Oh, madame!  Merci!"

One slippery shopping bag had fallen.  The boy picked it up.

Michele smiled, secured the bag handle with one finger, and pressed the
door button with an elbow.  The heavy door clicked open, and she stepped
over a raised threshold.  A shove of her shoulder closed the door, and
she crossed the courtyard of her apartment house.  Bamboo trees stood
like slender sentinels on left and right, and laurels and ferns grew on
either side of the cobbled path she took to Court E.  Charles would be
home, as it was nearly six.  What would he say to all the packages, the
more than three thousand francs she had spent today?  Well, she had done
most of their Christmas shopping, and one of the presents was for
Charles to give his family-he could hardly complain about that-and the
rest of the presents were for Charles himself and her parents, and only
one thing was for her, a Herm&s belt that she hadn't been able to
resist.

"Father Christmas!" Charles said as Michle came in.  "Or Mother
Christmas?  "

She had let the packages fall to the floor in the hall.  "Whew!  Yes, a
good day!  A lot done, I mean.  Really!"

"So it seems." Charles helped her to gather the boxes and bags.  Michele
had taken off her coat and slipped out of her shoes.  They tossed the
parcels on the big double bed in their bedroom, Mich&1e talking all the
while.  She told him about the pretty white tablecloth for his parents,
and about the little boy downstairs who had asked her for a franc.  "A
franc-after all I bought today!  Such a sweet little boy about ten years
old.  And so poor-looking-his clothes.  Just like the old stories about
Christmas, I thought.  You know?  When someone with less asks for such a
little bit." Michele was smiling broadly, happily.

Charles nodded.  Michele's was a rich family.  Charles Clement had
worked his way up from apprentice mason at sixteen to become the head of
his company, Athenas Construction, at twenty-eight.  At thirty, he had
met Michele, the daughter of one of his clients, and married her.
Some-times Charles felt dazzled by his success in his work and in his
marriage, because he adored Michele and she was lovely.  But he realized
that he could more easily imagine himself as the small boy asking for a
franc, which he would never have done, than he could imagine himself as
Mi-chele's brother, for instance, dispensing largesse with her
particular attitude, at once superior and kindly.  He had seen that
attitude before in Michele.

"Only one franc?" Charles said finally, smiling.

Michele laughed.  "No, I gave him a ten-franc note.  I had it loose in
my pocket-and after all it's Christmas."

Charles chuckled.  "That little boy will be back." Mich6le was facing
her closet, whose sliding doors she had opened.  "What should I wear
tonight?  That light purple dress you like or-the yellow?  The yellow
one's newer."

Charles circled her waist with his arm.  The row of dresses and blouses,
long skirts, looked like a tangible rainbow: shimmering gold, velvety
blue, beige and green, satin and silk.  He could not even see the light
purple in all of it, but he said, "The light purple, yes.  Is that all
right with you?"

"Of course, dear."

They were going out to dinner at the apartment of some friends.

Charles went back into the living room and resumed his newspaper, while
Mich8e showered and changed her clothes.  Charles wore his house
Slippers-the habit of an old man, he thought, though he was only
thirty-two.  At any rate, it was a habit he had had since his teens,
when he had been living with his parents in the Clichy area.

Half the time he had come home with his shoes and socks damp from
standing in mud or water on a construction lot, and woolen house
slippers had felt good.  Otherwise Charles was dressed for the evening
in a dark blue suit, a shirt with cuff links, a silk tie knotted but not
yet tightened at the collar.  Charles lighted his pipe Michele would be
a long while yet-and surveyed his handsome living room, thinking of
Christmas.  Its first sign was the dark green wreath some thirty
centimeters in diameter, which Michele must have bought that morning,
and which leaned against the fruit bowl on the dining table.  Michele
would put it on the knocker of the apartment door, he knew.  The brass
fixtures by the fireplace gleamed as usual, poker and tongs, polished by
Genevive, their femme de m6nage.  Four of the six or seven oil paintings
on the walls were of Michele's ancestors, two of them in white ruffled
lace collars.  Charles poured himself a small Glenfiddich whiskey and
sipped it straight.  The best whiskey in the world, in his opinion. Yes,
fate had been good to him.  He had luxury and comfort, everywhere he
looked.  He stepped out of his clumsy house slippers and carried them
into the bed-room, where he put on his shoes for the evening with the
aid of a silver shoehorn.  MicMe was still in the bathroom, humming,
doing her makeup.  Two days later Michele again encountered the small
boy to whom she had given the ten-franc note.  She was nearly at her
house door before she saw him, because she had been concentrating on a
white poodle that she had just bought.  She had dismissed her taxi at
the corner of the street and was carefully leading the puppy on his new
black and gold leash along the curb.  The puppy did not know in which
direction to go, unless Michele tugged him.  He turned in circles,
scampered in the wrong direction until his collar checked him, then
looked up smiling at Mich8e and trotted after her.  A man paused to look
and admire.

"Not quite three months," Michele replied to his question.

It was then that she noticed the small boy.  He wore the same tweed coat
with its collar turned up against the cold, and she realized that it was
a man's suit jacket, much too big, with the cuffs rolled back and the
buttons adjusted so it would fit more tightly around the child's body.
"B'jour, madame!" the boy said.  "This is your dog?"

"Yes, I've just bought him," said Michele.

"How much did he cost?"

Michele laughed.

The boy whipped something out of his pocket.  "I brought this for you."

It was a tiny bunch of holly with red berries.  As Michele took it with
her free hand, she realized that it was plastic, that the berries were
bent on their artificial stems, the tinsel cup crushed.  "Thank-you,"
she said, amused.  "Oh, and what do I owe you for this?"

"Nothing at all, madame!" He had an air of pride and looked her straight
in the eyes, smiling.  His nose was running.

She pressed the door button of her house.  "Would you like to come up
for a minute-play with the puppy?"

"Oui, merci!" he replied, pleased and surprised.

Michele led the way across the court and into the lift.  She unlocked
her apartment door and unfastened the puppy's leash.  Then she handed
the boy a paper tissue from her handbag, and he blew his nose.  The boy
and the puppy behaved in the same manner, Michele thought, looking
around, turning in circles, sniffing.

"What shall I name the puppy?" Michele asked.  "Any ideas?  What's your
name?"

"Paul, madame," the boy replied, and returned to gazing at the walls,
the big sofa.

"Let's go in the kitchen.  I'll give you-a Coca-Cola."

The boy and the puppy followed her.  Michele set down a bowl of water
for the puppy and took a bottle of Coca-Cola from the fridge.

The boy sipped his drink from a glass, while his eyes wandered over the
big white kitchen, eyes that reminded Michele of open windows, or of a
camera's lens.  "You give the puppy bifteck hacU, madame?" asked the
boy.  MicMe was spooning the red meat from the butcher's paper into a
saucer.  "Oh, today, yes.  Maybe all the time, a little bit.  Later he
can eat from tins." The child's eyes had fixed on the meat she was
wrapping up, and she said impulsively, "Would you like some?  A
hamburger?"

"Even uncooked!  A little bit-yes." He extended a hand whose nails were
filthy and took what Michele held out in the teaspoon.  Paul shoved the
meat into his mouth.

MicMe put the meat package back into the fridge and nudged the door
shut.  The boy's hunger made her nervous, somehow.  Of course if he were
poor, his family wouldn't eat meat often.  She didn't want to ask him
about this.  It was easier for her, a moment later, to offer Paul some
cookies from a box that was nearly full.  "Take several!"

She handed the box to him.  Slowly and steadily, the boy ate them all,
while he and Michele watched the puppy licking the last morsels from his
saucer.  Then Paul picked up the saucer and carried it to the sink.

"Is this right, madame?"

Michele nodded.  She and Charles had a washing machine and seldom used
the sink for washing dishes.  Now the boy was putting the empty cookie
box into the yellow garbage bin.  The bin was almost full, and the boy
asked if he could empty it for her.  Michle shook her head a little, in
wonderment, feeling as if a Christmas angel had wandered into her home.
The boy and the white puppy!  The boy so hungry, and he and the puppy so
young!  "It's this way-but you don't have to."

The boy wanted to be of help, so she showed him the gray plastic sack at
the servants' entrance, where he could dump the contents of the garbage
bin.  Then they went back into the living room and played with the puppy
on the carpet.  Michele had bought a blue rubber ball with a bell in it.
Paul rolled the ball carefully for the puppy.  He had politely declined
to remove his coat or to sit down.  Michele noticed holes at the heels
of both his socks.  His shoes were in worse condition, cracked between
soles and uppers.

Even his blue jeans cuffs were tattered.  How could a child keep warm in
blue jeans in this weather?

"Thank you, madame," said Paul.  "I'll go now."

"Aw-ruff!" said the puppy, wanting the boy to roll the ball again.

Michele found herself as awkward suddenly as if she were with an adult
from a different country and culture.  "Thank you for your visit, Paul.
And I wish you a happy Christmas in case I don't see you again." Paul
looked equally ill at ease, twisted his neck, and said, "And to you,
madame, happy Christmas.-And you!" He addressed the white puppy.
Abruptly he turned toward the door.

"I'd like to give you a present, Paul," MicMe said, following him.

"How about a pair of shoes?  What size do you wear?"

"Ha!" Was the boy blushing?  "Thirty-two.  Thirty-three maybe, since I'm
growing, my father says." He lifted one foot in a comical manner.  "What
does your father do?" Michele was delighted to ask him a down-to-earth
question.

"Deliverer.  He takes bottles down from trucks."

Michele imagined a sturdy fellow hauling down boxes of mineral water,
wine, beer from a huge truck and tossing up empty crates.

She saw such work all over Paris, every day, and maybe she had even
glimpsed Paul's father.  "Have you brothers and sisters?"

"One brother.  Two sisters."

"And where do you live?"

"Oh-we live in a basement."

Michele didn't want to ask him about the basement, whether it was a
semi- or total basement, or whether his mother worked too.  She was
cheered by the idea of a present for him, shoes.  "Come back tomorrow
around eleven, and I'll have a pair of shoes for you."

Paul looked unbelieving and wriggled his hands nervously in the pockets
of his coat.  "Yes, OK.  At eleven."

The boy wanted to go down in the lift by himself, so Michele let him.

The next morning at a few minutes past eleven, Michele was strolling
along the pavement near her apartment with the puppy on his leash.  She
and Charles had decided to name him Ezekiel last evening, a name already
shortened to Zeke.  Michele suddenly saw Paul and a smaller figure
beside him.

" My sister, Marie-Jeanne," said Paul, looking up at Michele with his
big dark eyes, then at his sister, whose hand he pushed toward Michle.
Mich&1e took the little hand and they greeted each other.  The sister
was a smaller version of Paul, with longer black hair.  The shoes.
Mich8e had bought two pairs for Paul.  She asked them both to come up.
The lift again, the apartment door opening, and the same wonder in the
eyes of the sister.  "Try them on, Paul.  Both pairs," said Michle.

Paul sat on the floor and did so, excited and happy.  "They both fit!
Both pairs!" For fun, he put on a left and a right shoe of different
pairs.  Marie-Jeanne was taking more interest in the apartment than in
the shoes.

Mich8e fetched Coca-Cola.  One bottle each might be enough, she thought.
Her heart went out to these children, but she was afraid of overdoing
it, of losing control somehow.  When she brought the cold drinks in,
Zeke was starting to chew on one new shoe, and Paul was laughing.
Quickly his sister rescued the shoe.  Some Coca-Cola got spilled on the
carpet, Mich&1e brought a sponge, and Paul scrubbed away, then rinsed
the sponge.  Then suddenly they were both gone, each with a box of shoes
under an arm.

That evening Charles could not find his letter opener.  It lay always on
his desk in a room off the living room which was their library as well
as Charles's study.  He asked Michele if she had possibly taken it. "No.
Maybe it fell on the floor?"

"I looked," said Charles.

But they both looked again.  It was of silver, like a flat dagger with
the hilt in the form of a coiled serpent.

"Genevi6ve will find it somewhere," said Michle, but as soon as the
words were out of her mouth, she suspected Paul-or even his sister.  A
throb went through her, akin to a sense of personal embarrassment, as if
she were responsible for the theft, which was only a possibility, not
yet a fact.  But Michele felt guilt as she glanced at her husband's
slightly troubled face.  He was opening a letter with his thumbnail.

"What did you do today, darling?" asked Charles, smiling once more,
putting his letter away in a business folder.

Michele told him she had argued with the telephone company about their
last bill and won, this on Charles's behalf as he had queried a
long-distance call, had looked in at the hairdresser's but only for an
hour, and had aired Zeke three times, and she thought the puppy was
learning fast.  She did not tell Charles about buying two pairs of shoes
for the boy called Paul, or about the visit of Paul and his sister to
the apartment.  "And I hung the wreath on the door," said Michele.  "Not
a lot of work, I know, but didn't you notice?"

"Of course.  How could I have missed it?" He embraced her and kissed her
cheek.  "Very pretty, darling, the wreath."

That was Saturday.  On Sunday Charles worked for a few hours in his
office alone, as he often did.  Michele bought a small Christmas tree
with an X-shaped base and spent part of the afternoon decorating it,
having put it on the dining table finally, instead of the floor, because
the puppy refused to stop playing with the ornaments.  Michele did not
look forward to the obligatory visit to Charles's parents-who never had
a tree, and even Charles considered Christmas trees a silly import from,
England-on Christmas Eve Monday at 5:00 P.m.  They lived in a big old
walk-up apartment house in the eighteenth arrondissement.  Here they
would exchange presents and drink hot red wine that always made Michele
feel sickish.  The rest of the evening would be jollier at her parents'
apartment in Neuilly.  They would have a cold midnight supper with
champagne and watch color TV of Christmas breaking all over the world.
She told this to Zeke.  "Your first Christmas, Zeke!  And you'll have-a
turkey leg!" The puppy seemed to understand her and galloped around the
living room with a lolling tongue and mischievous black eyes.  And Paul
and Marie-Jeanne?  Were they smiling now?  Maybe Paul was, with his two
pairs of shoes.  And maybe there was time for her to buy a shirt, a
blouse for MarieJeanne, a cake for the other brother and sister, before
Christmas Day.  She could do that Monday, and maybe she'd see Paul and
be able to give him the presents.  Christmas meant giving, sharing,
communicating with friends and neighbors and even with strangers.

With Paul, she had begun.  "Oo-woo-woo," said the puppy, crouching.

"One second, Zeke, darling!" Michle hurried to get his leash.

She flung on a fur jacket, and she and Zeke went out.

Zeke at once made for the gutter, and Michele gave him a word of praise.
The fancy grocery store across the street was open, and Michele bought a
box of candy-a beautiful tin box costing over a hundred francs-because
the red ribbon on it had caught her eye.

"Madame-bonjour!"

Once more Michle looked down at Paul's upturned face.  His nose was
bright pink with cold.

"Happy Christmas again, madame!" Paul said, smiling, stamping his feet.
He wore the brown pair of new shoes.  His hands were rammed into his
pockets.

"Would you like a hot chocolate?" Michele asked.  A bar-tabac was just a
few meters distant.

"Non, merci." Paul twisted his neck shyly.

"Or soup!" Michele said with inspiration.  "Come up with me!"

"My sister is with me." Paul turned quickly, stiff with cold, and at
that moment Marie-Jeanne dashed out of the bar-tabac.

"Ah, bonjour, madame!" Marie-Jeanne was grinning, carrying a blue straw
shopping bag which looked empty, but she opened it to show her brother.
"Two packs.  That's right?-Cigarettes for my father," she said to
Michele.

"Would you like to come up for a few minutes and see my Christmas tree?"
Michele's hospitality still glowed strongly.  What was wrong with giving
these two a bowl of hot soup and some candy?

They came.  In the apartment, Michele switched on the radio to London,
which was giving out with carols.  just the thing!  MarieJeanne squatted
in front of the Christmas tree and chattered to her brother about the
pretty packages amassed at the base, the decorations, the little
presents perched in the branches.  Michele was heating a tin of split
pea soup to which she had added an equal amount of milk.  Good
nourishing food!  The English choir-boys sang a French carol, and they
all joined in:

II est n le divin enfant ...

Chantez hautbois, rsonnez musettes ...

Then as before they were gone all too suddenly-their laughter and
chatter-Zeke barked as if to call them back, and Michele was left with
the empty soup bowls and crumpled chocolate papers to clear away.
Impulsively Michele had given them the pretty cookie box to take home.
And Charles was due in a few minutes.  MicMe had tidied the kitchen and
was walking into the living room when she heard the click of the lift
door and Charles's step in the hall, and at the same time noticed a gap
on the mantel.  The clock!  Charles's ormolu clock!  It couldn't be
gone.  But it was gone.  A key was fitted into the lock, and the door
opened.

Michele seized a box-yellow-wrapped; house slippers for Charles-and set
it where the clock had been.

"Hello, darling!" Charles said, kissing her.

Charles wanted a cup of tea: the temperature was dropping and he had
nearly caught a chill waiting for a taxi just now.  Michele made tea for
both of them and tried to seat herself so that Charles would take a
chair that put his back to the fireplace, but this didn't work, as
Charles took a different armchair from the one Michele had intended.

"What's the idea of a present up there?" Charles asked, meaning the
yellow package.

Charles had an eye for order.  Smiling, still in a good mood, he left
his first cup of tea and went to the mantel.  He took the package,
turned toward the Christmas tree, then looked back at the mantel.  "And
where's the clock?  You took it away?"

Michele clenched her teeth, longing to lie, to say, yes, she'd put it in
a cupboard in order to have room for Christmas decorations on the
mantel, but would that make sense?  "No, I-"

"Something the matter with the clock?" Charles's face had grown serious,
as if he were inquiring about the health of a member of the family whom
he loved.

"I don't know where it is," Michele said.

Charles's brows came down and his body tensed.  He tossed the
lightweight package down on the table where the tree stood.  "Did you
see that boy again?-Did you invite him up?"

"Yes, Charles.  Yes-I know I-"

"And today was perhaps the second time he was here?"

Mich8e nodded.  "Yes."

"For God's sake, Michele!  You know that's where my letter opener went
too, don't you?  But the clock!  My God, it's one hell of a lot more
important!  Where does this kid live?"

"I don't know."

Charles made a move toward the telephone and stopped.  "When was he
here?  This afternoon?"

"Yes, less than an hour ago.  Charles, I really am sorry!"

"He can't live far from here.-How could he have done it with you here
with him?"

"His sister was here too." Mich&1e had showed her where the bathroom
was.  Of course Paul had taken the clock, then, put it in that blue
shopping bag.

Charles understood and nodded grimly.  "Well, they'll have a nice
Christmas, pawning that.  And I'll bet we won't see either of them
around here for the next many days-if ever.  How could you bring such
hoodlums into the house?"

Mich8e hesitated, shocked by Charles's wrath.  It was wrath turned
against her.  "They were cold and they were hungry-and poor." She looked
her husband in the eyes.

"So was my father," Charles said slowly, "when he acquired that clock."

Michele knew.  The ormolu clock had been the Clement family's pride and
joy since Charles had been twelve or so.  The clock had been the one
handsome item in their working class household.  It had caught Michele's
eye the first time she had visited the Clements, because the rest of the
furnishings were dreadful style rustique, all varnish and Formica.  And
Charles's father had given the clock to them as a wedding present.
"Filthy swine," Charles murmured, drawing on a cigarette, looking at the
gap on the mantel.  "You don't know such people perhaps, my dear
Michele, but I do.  I grew up with them."

"Then you might be more sympathetic!  If we can't get the clock back,
Charles, I'll buy another for us, as near like it as possible.  I can
remember exactly how that clock looked."

Charles shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut and turned away.

Michele left the room, taking the tea things with her.  It was the first
time she had seen Charles near tears.

Charles did not want to go to the dinner party to which they were
invited that evening.  He suggested that Michele go alone and make some
excuse for him, and Michele at first said she would stay at home too,
then changed her mind and got dressed.

"I don't see what's the matter with my idea of buying another clock,"
Michele said.  "I don't see "

"Maybe you'll never see," Charles said.

Michele had known Bernard and Yvonne Petit a long time.  Both had been
friends of Michele's before she and Charles were married.

Michele wanted very much to tell Yvonne the story about the clock, but
it was not a story one could tell at a dinner table of eight, and by
coffee time Michele had decided it was best not to tell it at all:
Charles was seriously upset, and the mistake was her own.

But Yvonne, as Michele was leaving, asked her if something was on her
mind, and Michele was relieved to admit there was.  She and Yvonne went
into a library much like the one in MicMe's apartment, and Michele told
the story quickly.

"We've got just the clock you need here!" said Yvonne.  "Bernard doesn't
even much like it.  Ha!  That's a terrible thing to say, isn't it?  But
the clock's right here, darling Mich8e.  Look!" Yvonne pushed aside some
invitation cards, so that the clock on the library mantel showed
plainly'on its splayed base: black hands, its round face crowned with a
tiara of gilded knobs and curlicues.

The clock was indeed very like the one that had been stolen.  While
Michele hesitated, Yvonne found newspaper and a plastic bag in the
kitchen and wrapped the clock securely.  She pressed it into Michele's
hands.  "A Christmas present!"

"But it's the principle of the thing.  I know Charles.  So do you,
Yvonne.  If the clock that was stolen were from my family, if I'd known
it all my life, even, I know it wouldn't matter to me so much."

"I know, I know."

"It's the fact that these kids were poor-and that it's Christmas.

I asked them in, Paul first, by himself.  just to see their faces light
up was so wonderful for me.  They were so grateful for a bowl of soup.
Paul told me they live in a basement somewhere."

Yvonne listened, though it was the second time Michele had told her all
this.  "Just put the clock on the mantel where the clock was-and hope
for the best." Yvonne spoke with a confident smile.

When Michele got home by taxi, Charles was in bed reading.  Michele
unwrapped the clock in the kitchen and set it on the mantel.

Amazing how much it did look like the other clock!  Charles, behind his
newspaper, said that he had taken Zeke out for a walk half an hour ago.
Otherwise Charles was silent, and Mich8e did not try to talk to him.

The next morning, Christmas Eve, Charles spotted the new clock on the
mantel as he walked into the living room from the kitchen, where he and
Mich8e had just breakfasted.  Charles turned to Michele with a shocked
look in his eyes.  "All right, Michele.  That's enough."

"Yvonne gave it to me.  To us.  I thought-just for Christmas-" What had
she thought?  How had she meant to finish that sentence?

"You do not understand," he said firmly.  "I gave the police a
description of that clock last night.  I went to the police station, and
I intend to get

that clock back!  I also informed them of the boy aged 'about ten' and
his sister who live somewhere in the neighborhood in a basement."
Charles spoke as if he had declared war on a formidable enemy.  To MicMe
it was absurd.  Then as Charles talked on in his tone of barely
repressed fury about dishonesty, handouts to the irresponsible, to those
who had not earned them or even tried to, about hooligans' disrespect
for private property, Michele began to understand.  Charles felt that
his castle had been invaded, that the enemy had been admitted by his own
wife-and that she was on their side.  Are you a Communist, Charles might
have asked, but he didn't.  Michele didn't consider herself a Communist,
never had.

"I simply think the rich ought to share," she interrupted.

"Since when are we rich, really rich, I mean?" Charles replied.

"Well, I know.  Your family, they are rich and you're used to it.

You inherited it.  That's not your fault."

Why on earth should it be her fault, Michele wondered and began to feel
on surer ground.  She had read often enough in newspapers and books that
wealth had to be shared in this century, or else.  "Welland as for these
kids, I'd do the same thing again," she said.

Charles's cheeks shook with exasperation.  "They insulted us!  This was
thievery!  "

Michele's face grew warm.  She left the room, as furious as Charles.

But Michele felt that she had a point.  More than that, that she was
right.  She should put it into words, organize her argument.  Her heart
was beating fast.  She glanced at the open bedroom door, expecting
Charles's figure, expecting his voice, asking her to come back.  There
was silence.

Charles went off to his office half an hour later and said he would
probably not be back before three thirty.  They were to go to his
parents' house between four and five.  Michele rang up Yvonne, and in
the course of their conversation Michele's thoughts became clearer, and
her trickle of tears stopped.

"I think Charles's attitude is wrong," Michle said.

"But you mustn't say that to a man, dear Michele.  You be careful."

That afternoon at four, Michele began tactfully with Charles.  She asked
him if he liked the wrapping of the present for his mother.

The package contained the white tablecloth, which she had shown Charles.
"I'm not going.  I can't." He went on, over Michele's protestations. "Do
you think I can face my parents-admit to them that the clock's been
stolen?"

Why mention the clock, unless he wanted to ruin Christmas, Michele
thought.  She knew it was useless to try to persuade him to come, so she
gave it up.  "I'll go-and take their presents." So she did, and left
Charles at home to sulk, and to wait for a possible telephone call from
the police, he had said.

Michele had gone out laden with Charles's parents' presents as well as
those for her own parents.  Charles had said he would turn up at her
parents' Neuilly apartment at 8:00 P.m.  or so.  But he did not.

Michele's parents suggested that she telephone Charles: maybe he had
fallen asleep or was working and had lost track of time, but Michele did
not telephone him.  Everything was so cheerful and beautiful at her
parents' house-their tree, the champagne buckets, her nice presents, one
a travel umbrella in a leather case.  Charles and the clock story loomed
like an ugly black shadow in the golden glow of her parents' living
room, and Michele again blurted out the events.

Her father chuckled.  "I remember that clock-I think.  Nothing so great
about it.  It wasn't made by Cellini after all."

"It's the sentiment, however, Edouard," said Michele's mother.  "A pity
it had to happen just at Christmas.  And it was careless of you,
Michele.  But-I have to agree with you, yes, they were simply little
urchins of the street, and they were tempted."

Michele felt further strengthened.

"Not the end of the world," Edouard murmured, pouring more champagne.

Michele remembered her father's words the next day, Christmas Day, and
on the day after.  It was not the end of the world, but the end of
something.  The police had not found the clock, but Charles believed
they would.  He had spoken to them with some determination, he assured
Michele, and had brought them a colored drawing of the clock which
Charles had made at the age of fourteen.

"Naturally the thieves wouldn't pawn it so soon," Charles said to
Michele, "but they're not going to drop it in the Seine either.

They'll try to get cash for it sooner or later, and then we'll nail
them."

"Frankly, I find your attitude unchristian and even cruel," said
Michele.

"And I find your attitude-silly."

It was not the end of the world, but it was the end of their marriage.
No later words, no embrace if it ever came, could compensate MicMe for
that remark from her husband.  And, just as vital, she felt a deep
dislike, a real aversion to her within Charles's heart and mind.  And
she for him?  Was it not a similar feeling?  Charles had lost something
that Michele considered humanif he had ever had it.  With his poorer,
less privileged background, Charles should have had more compassion than
she, Michele thought.

What was wrong?  And what was right?  She felt muddled, as she sometimes
did when she tried to ponder the phrases of carols, or of some poems,
which could be interpreted in a couple of ways, and yet the heart, or
sentiment always seemed to seek and find a path of its own, as hers had
done, and wasn't this right?  Wasn't it right to be forgiving,
especially at this time of year?

Their friends, their parents counseled patience.  They should separate
for a week or so.  Christmas always made people nervous.

MicMe could come and stay at Yvonne and Bernard's apartment, which she
did.  Then she and Charles could talk again, which they did.  But
nothing really changed, not at all.

Michele and Charles were divorced within four months.  And the police
never found the clock.

Christmas By: Harper Lee,

"You can just take that back, boy!" This order, given by me to Cecil
Jacobs, was the beginning of a rather thin time for Jem and me.  My
fists were clenched and I was ready to let fly.  Atticus had promised me
he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fighting any more; I was far
too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned
to hold in, the better off everybody would be.  I soon forgot.

Cecil Jacobs made me forget.  He had announced in the school yard the
day before that Scout Finch's daddy defended niggers.  I denied it but
told Jem.

"What'd he mean sayin' that?" I asked.

"Nothing," Jem said.  "Ask Atticus, he'll tell you."

"Do you defend niggers, Atticus?" I asked him that evening.

"Of course I do.  Don't say nigger, Scout.  That's common."

"That's what everybody at school says."

"From now on it'll be everybody less one-"

"Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send
me to school?"

My father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes.  Despite our
compromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form or
another since my first day's dose of it: the beginning of last September
had brought on sinking spells, dizziness, and mild gastric complaints. I
went so far as to pay a nickel for the privilege of rubbing my head
against the head of Miss Rachel's cook's son, who was afflicted with a
tremendous ring-worm.  It didn't take.

But I was worrying another bone.  "Do all lawyers defend Negroes,
Atticus?"

"Of course they do, Scout."

"Then why did Cecil say you defended niggers?  He made it sound like you
were runnin' a still."

Atticus sighed.  "I'm simply defending a Negro-his name's Tom Robinson.
He lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump.

He's a member of Calpurnia's church, and Cal knows his family well.

She says they're clean-living folks.  Scout, you aren't old enough to
understand some things yet, but there's been some high talk around town
to the effect that I shouldn't do much about defending this man.  It's a
peculiar case it won't come to trial until summer session.  John Taylor
was kind enough to give us a postponement......

"If you shouldn't be defendin' him, then why are you doin' it?"

"For a number of reasons," said Atticus.  "The main one is, if I didn't
I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent this county in
the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something
again."

"You mean if you didn't defend that man, Jem and me wouldn't have to
mind you anymore?"

"That's about right."

"Why?"

"Because I could never ask you to mind me again.  Scout, simply by the
nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime
that affects him personally.  This one's mine, I guess.  You might hear
some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will:
you just hold your head high and keep those fists down.  No matter what
anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat.  Try fighting with
your head for a change....  it's a good one, even if it does resist
learning."

"Atticus, are we going to win it?"

"No, honey."

"Then why-"

"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no
reason for us not to try to win," Atticus said.

"You sound like Cousin Ike Finch," I said.  Cousin Ike Finch was Maycomb
County's sole surviving Confederate veteran.  He wore a General
Hood-type beard of which he was inordinately vain.  At least once a year
Atticus, Jem and I called on him, and I would have to kiss him.  It was
horrible.  Jem and I would listen respectfully to Atticus and Cousin Ike
rehash the war.  "Tell you, Atticus," Cousin Ike would say, "the
Missouri Compromise was what licked us, but if I had to go through it
agin I'd walk every step of the way there an' every step back jist like
I did before an' furthermore we'd whip 'em this time; ...  now in 1864,
when Stonewall Jackson came around by-1 beg your pardon, young folks.
01' Blue Light was in heaven then, God rest his saintly brow......

"Come here, Scout," said Atticus.  I crawled into his lap and tucked my
head under his chin.  He put his arms around me and rocked me gently.
"It's different this time," he said.  "This time we aren't fighting the
Yankees, we're fighting our friends.  But remember this, no matter how
bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our
home." With this in mind, I faced Cecil Jacobs in the school yard next
day: "You gonna take that back, boy?"

"You gotta make me first!" he yelled.  "My folks said your daddy was a
disgrace an' that nigger oughta hang from the water tank!"

I drew a bead on him, remembered what Atticus had said, then dropped my
fists and walked away, "Scout's a cowward!" ringing in my ears.  It was
the first time I ever walked away from a fight.

Somehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Atticus down.  Atticus so rarely
asked Jem and me to do something for him, I could take being called a
coward for him.  I felt extremely noble for having remembered, and
remained noble for three weeks.  Then Christmas came and disaster
struck.

Jem and I viewed Christmas with mixed feelings.  The good side was the
tree and Uncle Jack Finch.  Every Christmas Eve day we met Uncle Jack at
Maycomb junction, and he would spend a week with us.

A flip of the coin revealed the uncompromising lineaments of Aunt
Alexandra and Francis.

I suppose I should include Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Alexandra's husband, but as
he never spoke a word to me in my life except to say, "Get off the
fence," once, I never saw any reason to take notice of him.

Neither did Aunt Alexandra.  Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty
and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry, who left home as soon as was
humanly possible, married, and produced Francis.  Henry and his wife
deposited Francis at his grandparents' every Christmas, then pursued
their own pleasures.

No amount of sighing could induce Atticus to let us spend Christmas Day
at home.  We went to Finch's Landing every Christmas in my memory.  The
fact that Aunty was a good cook was some compensation for being forced
to spend a religious holiday with Francis Hancock.

He was a year older than I, and I avoided him on principle: he enjoyed
everything I disapproved of and disliked my ingenuous diversions.

Aunt Alexandra was Atticus's sister, but when Jem told me about
changelings and siblings, I decided that she had been swapped at birth,
that my grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead of a Finch.
Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains that seem to
obsess lawyers and judges, Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to
Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there.

When Uncle Jack jumped down from the train Christmas Eve day, we had to
wait for the porter to hand him two long packages.  Jem and I always
thought it funny when Uncle Jack pecked Atticus on the cheek; they were
the only two men we ever saw kiss each other.

Uncle Jack shook hands with Jem and swung me high, but not high enough:
Uncle Jack was a head shorter than Atticus; the baby of the family, he
was younger than Aunt Alexandra.  He and Aunty looked alike, but Uncle
Jack made better use of his face: we were never wary of his sharp nose
and chin.

He was one of the few men of science who never terrified me, probably
because he never behaved like a doctor.  Whenever he performed a minor
service for Jem and me, as removing a splinter from a foot, he would
tell us exactly what he was going to do, give us an estimation of how
much it would hurt, and explain the use of any tongs he employed.  One
Christmas I lurked in corners nursing a twisted splinter in my foot,
permitting no one to come near me.

When Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher who
hated going to church so much that every day he stood at his gate in his
dressing gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute sermons to
any passersby who desired spiritual comfort.  I interrupted to make
Uncle Jack let me know when he would pull it out, but he held up a
bloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said he yanked it while I was
laughing, that was what was known as relativity.

"What's in those packages?" I asked him, pointing to the long thin
parcels the porter had given him.

"None of your business," he said.

Jem said, "How's Rose Aylmer?"

Rose Aylmer was Uncle Jack's cat.  She was a beautiful yellow female
Uncle Jack said was one of the few women he could stand permanently.  He
reached into his coat pocket and brought out some snapshots.  We admired
them.

"She's gettin' fat," I said.

"I should think so.  She eats all the leftover fingers and ears from the
hospital."

"Aw, that's a damn story," I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

Atticus said, "Don't pay any attention to her, Jack.  She's trying you
out.  Cal says she's been cussing fluently for a week, now."

Uncle Jack raised his eyebrows and said nothing.  I was proceeding on
the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that
if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn't make me
go.  But at supper that evening when I asked him to pass the damn ham,
please, Uncle Jack pointed at me.  "See me afterward, young lady," he
said.  When supper was over, Uncle Jack went to the living room and sat
down.  He slapped his thighs for me to come sit on his lap.  I liked to
smell him: he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly
sweet.  He pushed back my bangs and looked at me.  "You're more like
Atticus than your mother," he said.  "You're also growing out of your
pants a little."

"I reckon they fit all right."

"You like words like damn and hell now, don't you?" I said I reckoned
so.

"Well I don't," said Uncle Jack, "not unless there's extreme provocation
connected with 'em.  I'll be here a week, and I don't want to hear any
words like that while I'm here.  Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go
around saying things like that.  You want to grow up to be a lady, don't
you?" I said not particularly.

"Of course you do.  Now let's get to the tree."

We decorated the tree until bedtime, and that night I dreamed of the two
long packages for Jem and me.  Next morning Jem and I dived for them:
they were from Atticus, who had written Uncle Jack to get them for us,
and they were what we had asked for.

"Don't point them in the house," said Atticus when Jem aimed at a
picture on the wall.

"You'll have to teach 'em to shoot," said Uncle Jack.

"That's your job," said Atticus.  "I merely bowed to the inevitable." It
took Atticus's courtroom voice to drag us away from the tree.  He
declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already
begun to think of shooting Francis) and said if we made one false move
he'd take them away from us for good.

Finch's Landing consisted of 366 steps down a high bluff and ending in a
jetty.  Farther downstream, beyond the bluff, were traces of an old
cotton landing, where Finch Negroes had loaded bales and produce,
unloaded blocks of ice, flour and sugar, farm equipment, and feminine
apparel.  A two-rut road ran from the riverside and vanished among dark
trees.  At the end of the road was a two-story white house with porches
circling it upstairs and downstairs.  In his old age, our ancestor Simon
Finch had built it to please his nagging wife; but with the porches all
resemblance to ordinary houses of its era ended.  The internal
arrangements of the Finch house were indicative of Simon's guilelessness
and the absolute trust with which he regarded his offspring.

There were six bedrooms upstairs, four for the eight female children,
one for Welcome Finch, the sole son, and one for visiting relatives.
Simple enough; but the daughters' rooms could be reached only by one
staircase, Welcome's room and the guest room only by another.  The
daughters' staircase was in the ground floor bedroom of their parents,
so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters' nocturnal comings and
goings.  There was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked
onto it by a wooden catwalk; in the backyard was a rusty bell on a pole,
used to summon field hands or as a distress signal; a widow's walk was
on the roof, but no widows walked there from it, Simon oversaw his
overseer, watched the riverboats, and gazed into the lives of
surrounding landholders.

There went with the house the usual legend about the Yankees: one Finch
female, recently engaged, donned her complete trousseau to save it from
raiders in the neighborhood; she became stuck in the door to the
daughters' staircase but was doused with water and finally pushed
through.  When we arrived at the Landing, Aunt Alexandra kissed Uncle
Jack, Francis kissed Uncle Jack, Uncle Jimmy shook hands silently with
Uncle Jack, Jem and I gave our presents to Francis, who gave us a
present.  Jem felt his age and gravitated to the adults, leaving me to
entertain our cousin.

Francis was eight and slicked back his hair.

"What'd you get for Christmas?" I asked politely.

"Just what I asked for," he said.  Francis had requested a pair of knee
pants, a red leather book sack, five shirts and an untied bow tie.
"That's nice," I lied.  "Jem and me got air rifles, and Jem got a
chemistry set-"

"A toy one, I reckon."

"No, a real one.  He's gonna make me some invisible ink, and I'm gonna
write to Dill in it."

Francis asked what was the use of that.

"Well, can't you just see his face when he gets a letter from me with
nothing in it?  It'll drive him nuts."

Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the
bottom of the ocean.  He was the most boring child I ever met.  As he
lived in Mobile, he could not inform on me to school authorities, but he
managed to tell everything he knew to Aunt Alexandra, who in turn
unburdened herself to Atticus, who either forgot it or gave me hell,
whichever struck his fancy.  But the only time I ever heard Atticus
speak sharply to anyone was when I once heard him say, "Sister, I do the
best I can with them!" It had something to do with my going around in
overalls.

Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire.  I could not
possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do
nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing things that
required pants.  Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved
playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-a-Pearl
necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of
sunshine in my father's lonely life.  I suggested that one could be a
ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to
behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively
worse every year.  She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently on
edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already
enough sunbeams in the family and to go on about my business, he didn't
mind me much the way I was.

At Christmas dinner, I sat at the little table in the dining room; Jem
and Francis sat with the adults at the dining table.  Aunty had
continued to isolate me long after Jem and Francis graduated to the big
table.  I often wondered what she thought I'd do, get up and throw
something?  I some-times thought of asking her if she would let me sit
at the big table with the rest of them just once, I would prove to her
how civilized I could be; after all, I ate at home every day with no
major mishaps.  When I begged Atticus to use his influence, he said he
had none-we were guests, and we sat where she told us to sit.  He also
said Aunt Alexandra didn't understand girls much, she'd never had one.

But her cooking made up for everything: three kinds of meat, summer
vegetables from her pantry shelves; peach pickles, two kinds of cake and
ambrosia constituted a modest Christmas dinner.  Afterward, the adults
made for the living room and sat around in a dazed condition.  Jem lay
on the floor, and I went to the backyard.  "Put on your coat," said
Atticus dreamily, so I didn't hear him.

Francis sat beside me on the back steps.  "That was the best yet," I
said.  "Grandma's a wonderful cook," said Francis.  "She's gonna teach
me how."

"Boys don't cook." I giggled at the thought of Jem in an apron. "Grandma
says all men should learn to cook, that men oughta be careful with their
wives and wait on 'em when they don't feel good," said my cousin.

"I don't want Dill waitin' on me," I said.  "I'd rather wait on him."

"Dill?"

"Yeah.  Don't say anything about it yet, but we're gonna get married as
soon as we're big enough.  He asked me last summer."

Francis hooted.

"What's the matter with him?" I asked.  "Ain't anything the matter with
him."

"You mean that little runt Grandma says stays with Miss Rachel every
summer?"

"That's exactly who I mean."

"I know all about him," said Francis.

"What about him?"

"Grandma says he hasn't got a home."

"Has too, he lives in Meridian."

"-he just gets passed around from relative to relative, and Miss Rachel
keeps him every summer."

"Francis, that's not so!"

Francis grinned at me.  "You're mighty dumb sometimes, Jean Louise.

Guess you don't know any better, though."

"What do you mean?"

"If Uncle Atticus lets you run around with stray dogs, that's his own
business, like Grandma says, so it ain't your fault.  I guess it ain't
your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger lover besides, but I'm here to
tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family-"

"Francis, what the hell do you mean?"

"Just what I said.  Grandma says it's bad enough he lets you all run
wild, but now he's turned out a nigger lover we'll never be able to walk
the streets of Maycomb agin.  He's ruinin' the family, that's what he's
doin'."

Francis rose and sprinted down the catwalk to the old kitchen.  At a
safe distance he called, "He's nothin' but a nigger lover!  "

"He is not!" I roared.  "I don't know what you're talkin' about, but you
better cut it out this red-hot minute!"

I leapt off the steps and ran down the catwalk.  It was easy to collar
Francis.  I said take it back quick.

Francis jerked loose and sped into the old kitchen.  "Nigger lover!"

he yelled.

When stalking one's prey, it is best to take one's time.  Say nothing,
and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.
appeared at the kitchen door.  "You still mad, Jean Louise?" he
asked tentatively.  "Nothing to speak of," I said.

Francis came out on the catwalk.

"You gonna take it back, Francis?" But I was too quick on the draw,
Francis shot back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps.  I could
wait patiently.  I had sat there perhaps five minutes when I heard Aunt
Alexandra speak: "Where's Francis?"

"He's out yonder in the kitchen."

"He knows he's not supposed to play in there."

Francis came to the door and yelled, "Grandma, she's got me in here and
she won't let me out!"

"What is all this, Jean Louise?"

I looked up at Aunt Alexandra.  "I haven't got him in there, Aunty, I
ain't holdin' him."

"Yes she is," shouted Francis, "she won't let me out!"

"Have you all been fussing?"

"Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma," called Francis.

"Francis, come out of there!  Jean Louise, if I hear another word out of
you I'll tell your father.  Did I hear you say hell a while ago?"

"Nome."

"I thought I did.  I'd better not hear it again."

Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener.  The moment she was out of
sight Francis came out head up and grinning.  "Don't you fool with me,"
he said.

He jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts of grass,
turning around occasionally to smile at me.  Jem appeared on the porch,
looked at us, and went away.  Francis climbed the mimosa tree, came
down, put his hands in his pockets and strolled around the yard.  "Hah!"
he said.  I asked him who he thought he was, Uncle Jack?  Francis said
he reckoned I got told, for me to just sit there and leave him alone.

"I ain't botherin' you," I said.

Francis looked at me carefully, concluded that I had been sufficiently
subdued, and crooned softly, "Nigger lover .  .  ."

This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth.  My left
impaired, I sailed in with my right, but not for long.  Uncle Jack
pinned my arms to my sides and said, "Stand still!"

Aunt Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her
handkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek.  Atticus, Jem, and
Uncle Jimmy had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling.
"Who started this?" said Uncle Jack.

Francis and I pointed at each other.  "Grandma," he bawled, "she called
me a whore lady and jumped on me!"

"Is that true, Scout?" said Uncle Jack.

"I reckon so."

When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were like Aunt
Alexandra's.  "You know I told you you'd get in trouble if you used
words like that?  I told you, didn't I?"

"Yes Sir, but-"

"Well, you're in trouble now.  Stay there."

I was debating whether to stand there or run, and tarried in indecision
a moment too long: I turned to flee but Uncle Jack was quicker.  I found
myself suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb in
the grass.

"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live!  I hate you an'
despise you an' hope you die tomorrow!" A statement that seemed to
encourage Uncle Jack, more than anything.  I ran to Atticus for comfort,
but he said I had it coming and it was high time we went home.  I
climbed into the backseat of the car without saying goodbye to anyone,
and at home I ran to my room and slammed the door.

Jem tried to say something nice, but I wouldn't let him.

When I surveyed the damage there were only seven or eight red marks, and
I was reflecting upon relativity when someone knocked on the door.  I
asked who it was; Uncle Jack answered.

"Go away!"

Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he'd lick me again, so I was
quiet.  When he entered the room I retreated to a corner and turned my
back on him.  "Scout," he said, "do you still hate me?"

"Go on, please Sir."

"Why, I didn't think you'd hold it against me," he said.  "I'm
disappointed in you-you had that coming and you know it."

"Didn't either."

"Honey, you can't go around calling people."

"You ain't fair," I said, "you ain't fair."

Uncle Jack's eyebrows went up.  "Not fair?  How not?"

"You're real nice, Uncle Jack, an' I reckon I love you even after what
you did, but you don't understand children much."

Uncle Jack put his hands on his hips and looked down at me.  "And why do
I not understand children, Miss Jean Louise?  Such conduct as yours
required little understanding.  It was obstreperous, disorderly, and
abusive

"You gonna give me a chance to tell you?  I don't mean to sass you, I'm
just tryin' to tell you."

Uncle Jack sat down on the bed.  His eyebrows came together, and he
peered up at me from under them.  "Proceed," he said.

I took a deep breath.  "Well, in the first place you never stopped to
gimme a chance to tell you my side of it-you just lit right into me.
When Jem an' I fuss Atticus doesn't ever just listen to Jem's side of
it, he hears mine too, an' in the second place you told me never to use
words like that except inextreme provocation, and Francis provocated me
enough to knock his block off-"

Uncle Jack scratched his head.  "What was your side of it, Scout?"

"Francis called Atticus somethin', an' I wasn't about to take it off
him."

"What did Francis call him?"

"A nigger lover.  I ain't very sure what it means, but the way Francis
said it-tell you one thing right now, Uncle Jack, I'll be I swear before
God if I'll sit there and let him say somethin' about Atticus."

"He called Atticus that?"

"Yes sir, he did, an' a lot more.  Said Atticus'd be the ruination of
the family an' he let Jem an' me run wild......

From the look on Uncle Jack's face, I thought I was in for it again.
When he said, "We'll see about this," I knew Francis was in for it.
"I've a good mind to go out there tonight."

"Please sir, just let it go.  Please."

"I've no intention of letting it go," he said.  "Alexandra should know
about this.  The idea of-wait'll I get my hands on that boy.  .

.  ."

"Uncle Jack, please promise me somethin', please sir.

Promise you won't tell Atticus about this.  He-he asked me one time not
to let anything I heard about him make me mad, an' I'd ruther him think
we were fightin' about somethin' else instead.  Please promise .  .  ."

"But I don't like Francis getting away with something like that-"

"He didn't.  You reckon you could tie up my hand?  It's still bleedin'
some."

"Of course I will, baby.  I know of no hand I would be more delighted to
tie up.  Will you come this way?"

Uncle Jack gallantly bowed me to the bathroom.  While he cleaned and
bandaged my knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about a funny
near-sighted old gentleman who had a cat named Hodge, and who counted
all the cracks in the sidewalk when he went to town.  "There now," he
said.  "You'll have a very unladylike scar on your wedding ring finger."

"Thank you sir.  Uncle Jack?"

"Ma'am?"

"What's a whore lady?"

Uncle Jack plunged into another long tale about an old prime minister
who sat in the House of Commons and blew feathers in the air and tried
to keep them there when all about him men were losing their heads.  I
guess he was trying to answer my question, but he made no sense
whatsoever.  Later, when I was supposed to be in bed, I went down the
hall for a drink of water and heard Atticus and Uncle Jack in the living
room: "I shall never marry, Atticus."

('Why?")

"I might have children."

Atticus said, "You've a lot to learn, Jack."

"I know.  Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon.  She
said I didn't understand children much and told me why.  She was quite
right.  Atticus, she told me how I should have treated her-oh dear, I'm
so sorry I romped on her."

Atticus chuckled.  "She earned it, so don't feel too remorseful." I
waited, on tenterhooks, for Uncle Jack to tell Atticus my side of it.
But he didn't.  He simply murmured, "Her use of bathroom invective
leaves nothing to the imagination.  But she doesn't know the meaning of
half she says-she asked me what a whore lady was......

"Did you tell her?"

"No, I told her about Lord Melbourne."

"Jack!  When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.
But don't make a production of it.  Children are children, but they can
spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.
No," my father mused, "you had the right answer this afternoon, but the
wrong reasons.  Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it
dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it.
Hotheadedness isn't.  Scout's got to learn to keep her head and learn
soon, with what's in store for her these next few months.  She's coming
along, though.  Jem's getting older and she follows his example a good
bit now.  All she needs is assistance sometimes."

"Atticus, you've never laid a hand on her."

"I admit that.  So far I've been able to get by with threats.  Jack, she
minds me as well as she can.  Doesn't come up to scratch half the time,
but she tries."

"That's not the answer," said Uncle Jack.

"No, the answer is she knows I know she tries.  That's what makes the
difference.  What bothers me is that she and Jem will have to absorb
some ugly things pretty soon.  I'm not worried about Jem keeping his
head, but Scout'd just as soon jump on someone as look at him if her
pride's at stake......

I waited for Uncle Jack to break his promise.  He still didn't.

"Atticus, how bad is this going to be?  You haven't had too much chance
to discuss it."

"It couldn't be worse, Jack.  The only thing we've got is a black man's
word against the Ewells'.  The evidence boils down to you-did-didn't.
The jury couldn't possibly be expected to take Tom Robinson's word
against the Ewells'-are you acquainted with the Ewells?"

Uncle Jack said yes, he remembered them.  He described them to Atticus,
but Atticus said, "You're a generation off.  The present ones are the
same, though."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"Before I'm through, I intend to jar the jury a bit-I think we'll have a
reasonable chance on appeal, though.  I really can't tell at this stage,
Jack.  You know, I'd hoped to get through life without a case of this
kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, 'You're It."

"Let this cup pass from you, eh?"

"Right.  But do you think I could face my children otherwise?  You know
what's going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can
get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all,
without catching Maycomb's usual disease.  Why reasonable people go
stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something
I don't pretend to understand....  I just hope that Jem and Scout come
to me for their answers instead of listening to the town.  I hope they
trust me enough.

...  Jean Louise?"

My scalp jumped.  I stuck my head around the corner.  "Sir?"

"Go to bed."

I scurried to my room and went to bed.  Uncle Jack was a prince of a
fellow not to let me down.  But I never figured out how Atticus knew I
was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he
wanted me to hear every word he said.

The Loudest Voice By: Qrace Paley,

There is a certain place where dumb, waiters boom, doors slam, dishes
crash; every window is a mother's mouth bidding the street shut up, go
skate somewhere else, come home.  My voice is the loudest.

There, my own mother is still as full of breathing as me and the grocer
stands up to speak to her.  "Mrs.  Abramowitz," he says, "people should
not be afraid of their children."

"Ah, Mr.  Bialik," my mother replies, "if you say to her or her father
'Ssh,' they say, 'In the grave it will be quiet."

"

"From Coney Island to the cemetery," says my papa.  "It's the same
subway; it's the same fare."

I am right next to the pickle barrel.  My pinky is making tiny
whirlpools in the brine.  I stop a moment to announce: "Campbell's
tomato soup.  Campbell's vegetable beef soup.  Campbell's S-c-otch broth
.  "Be quiet," the grocer says, "the labels are coming off."

"Please, Shirley, be a little quiet," my mother begs me.

In that place the whole street groans: Be quiet!  Be quiet!  but steals
from the happy chorus of my inside self not a little or a jot.

There, too, but just around the corner, is a red brick building that has
been old for many years.  Every morning the children stand before it in
double lines which must be straight.  They are not insulted.  They are
waiting anyway.

I am usually among them.  I am, in fact, the first, since I begin with
"A."

One cold morning the monitor tapped me on the shoulder.  "Go to room
409, Shirley Abramowitz," he said.  I did as I was told.  I went in a
hurry up a down staircase to room 409, which contained sixthgraders.  I
had to wait at the desk without wiggling until Mr. Hilton, their
teacher, had time to speak.

After five minutes he said, "Shirley?"

"What?" I whispered.

He said, "My!  My!  Shirley Abramowitz!  They told me you had a
particularly loud, clear voice and read with lots of expression.

Could that be true?"

"Oh yes," I whispered.

"In that case, don't be silly; I might very well be your teacher
someday.  Speak up, speak up."

"Yes," I shouted.

"More like it," he said.  "Now, Shirley, can you put a ribbon in your
hair or a bobby pin?  It's too messy."

"Yes!" I bawled.

"Now, now, calm down." He turned to the class.  "Children, not a sound.
Open at page 39.  Read till 52.  When you finish, start again." He
looked me over once more.  "Now, Shirley, you know, I suppose, that
Christmas is coming.  We are preparing a beautiful play.  Most of the
parts have been given out.  But I still need a child with a strong
voice, lots of stamina.  Do you know what stamina is?  You do?  Smart
kid.  You know, I heard you read 'The Lord is my shepherd' in assembly
yesterday.  I was very impressed.

Wonderful delivery.  Mrs.  Jordan, your teacher, speaks highly of you.
Now listen to me, Shirley Abramowitz, if you want to take the part and
be in the play, repeat after me, 'I swear to work harder than I ever did
before."

"

I looked to heaven and said at once, "Oh, I swear." I kissed my pinky
and looked at God.

"That is an actor's life, my dear," he explained.  "Like a soldier's,
never tardy or disobedient to his general, the director.

Everything," he said, "absolutely everything will depend on you."

That afternoon, all over the building, children scraped and scrubbed the
turkeys and the sheaves of corn off the schoolroom windows.  Good-bye
Thanksgiving.  The next morning a monitor brought red paper and green
paper from the office.  We made new shapes and hung them on the walls
and glued them to the doors.

The teachers became happier and happier.  Their heads were ringing like
the bells of childhood.  My best friend, Evie, was prone to evil, but
she did not get a single demerit for whispering.  We learned "Holy
Night" without an error.  "How wonderful!" said Miss Glace, the student
teacher.  "To think that some of you don't even speak the language!" We
learned "Deck the Halls" and "Hark!  The Herald Angels." They weren't
ashamed and we weren't embarrassed.

Oh, but when my mother heard about it all, she said to my father:
"Misha, you don't know what's going on there.  Cramer is the head of the
Tickets Committee."

"Who?" asked my father.  "Cramer?  Oh yes, an active woman."

"Active?  Active has to have a reason.  Listen," she said sadly, "I'm
surprised to see my neighbors making tra-la-la for Christmas."

My father couldn't think of what to say to that.  Then he decided:
"You're in America!  Clara, you wanted to come here.  In Palestine the
Arabs would be eating you alive.  Europe you had pogroms.

Argentina is full of Indians.  Here you got Christmas....  Some joke,
ha?"

"Very funny, Misha.  What is becoming of you?  If we came to a new
country a long time ago to run away from tyrants, and instead we fall
into a creeping pogrom, that our children learn a lot of lies, so what's
the joke?  Ach, Misha, your idealism is going away."

"So is your sense of humor."

"That I never had, but idealism you had a lot of."

"I'm the same Misha Abramovitch, I didn't change an iota.  Ask anyone."

"Only ask me," says my mama, may she rest in peace.  "I got the answer.

Meanwhile the neighbors had to think of what to say too.

Marty's father said: "You know, he has a very important part, my boy."

"Mine also," said Mr.  Sauerfeld.

"Not my boy!" said Mrs.  Klieg.  "I said to him no.  The answer is no.

When I say no!  I mean no!"

The rabbi's wife said, "It's disgusting!" But no one listened to her.
Under the narrow sky of God's great wisdom she wore a strawberry blonde
wig.

Every day was noisy and full of experience.  I was Right-Hand Man.

Mr.  Hilton said: "How could I get along without you, Shirley?"

He said: "Your mother and father ought to get down on their knees every
night and thank God for giving them a child like you."

He also said: "You're absolutely a pleasure to work with, my dear, dear
child."

Sometimes he said: "For God's sakes, what did I do with the script?

Shirley!  Shirley!  Find it."

Then I answered quietly: "Here it is, Mr.  Hilton." Once in a while,
when he was very tired, he would cry out: "Shirley, I'm just tired of
screaming at those kids.  Will you tell Ira Pushkov not to come in till
Lester points to that star the second time?"

Then I roared: "Ira Pushkov, what's the matter with you?  Dope!  Mr.
Hilton told you five times already, don't come in till Lester points to
that star the second time."

"Ach, Clara," my father asked, "what does she do there till six o'clock
she can't even put the plates on the table?"

"Christmas," said my mother coldly.

"Ho!  Ho!" my father said.  "Christmas.  What's the harm?  After all,
history teaches everyone.  We learn from reading this is a holiday from
pagan times also, candles, lights, even Chanukah.  So we learn it's not
altogether Christian.  So if they think it's a private holiday, they're
only ignorant, not patriotic.  What belongs to history, belongs to all
men.  You want to go back to the Middle Ages?  Is it better to shave
your head with a secondhand razor?  Does it hurt Shirley to learn to
speak up?  It does not.  So maybe someday she won't live between the
kitchen and the shop.  She's not a fool."

I thank you, Papa, for your kindness.  It is true about me to this day.
I am foolish but I am not a fool.

That night my father kissed me and said with great interest in my
career, "Shirley, tomorrow's your big day.  Congrats."

"Save it," my mother said.  Then she shut all the windows in order to
prevent tonsillitis.

In the morning it snowed.  On the street corner a tree had been deco,
rated for us by a kind city administration.  In order to miss its chilly
shadow our neighbors walked three blocks east to buy a loaf of bread.
The butcher pulled down black window shades to keep the colored lights
from shining on his chickens.  Oh, not me.  On the way to school, with
both my hands I tossed it a kiss of tolerance.

Poor thing, it was a stranger in Egypt.

I walked straight into the auditorium past the staring children.

"Go ahead, Shirley!" said the monitors.  Four boys, big for their age,
had already started work as propmen and stagehands.

Mr.  Hilton was very nervous.  He was not even happy.  Whatever he
started to say ended in a sideward look of sadness.  He sat slumped in
the middle of the first row and asked me to help Miss Glace.  I did
this, although she thought my voice too resonant and said, "Show off!"

Parents began to arrive long before we were ready.  They wanted to make
a good impression.  From among the yards of drapes I peeked out at the
audience.  I saw my embarrassed mother.

Ira, Lester, and Meyer were pasted to their beards by Miss Glace.

She almost forgot to thread the star on its wire, but I reminded her.  I
coughed a few times to clear my throat.  Miss Glace looked around and
saw that everyone was in costume and on line waiting to play his part.
She whispered, "All right .  Then:

Jackie Sauerfeld, the prettiest boy in first grade, parted the curtains
with his skinny elbow and in a high voice sang out:

Parents dear

We are here

To make a Christmas play in time.

It we give

In narrative

And illustrate with pantomime.

He disappeared.

My voice burst immediately from the wings to the great shock of Ira,
Lester, and Meyer, who were waiting for it but were surprised all the
same.  "I remember, I remember, the house where I was born......  Miss
Glace yanked the curtain open and there it was, the house an old
hayloft, where Celia Kornbluh lay in the straw with Cindy Lou, her
favorite doll.  Ira, Lester, and Meyer moved slowly from the wings
toward her, sometimes pointing to a moving star and sometimes ahead to
Cindy Lou.

It was a long story and it was a sad story.  I carefully pronounced all
the words about my lonesome childhood, while little Eddie Braunstein
wandered upstage and down with his shepherd's stick, looking for sheep.
I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except
by some women everybody hated.  Eddie was too small for that and Marty
Groff took his place, wearing his father's prayer shawl.  I announced
twelve friends, and half the boys in the fourth grade gathered round
Marty, who stood on an orange crate while my voice harangued.  Sorrowful
and loud, I declaimed about love and God and man, but because of the
terrible deceit of Abie Stock we came suddenly to a famous moment.
Marty, whose remembering tongue I was, waited at the foot of the cross.
He stared desperately at the audience.  I groaned, "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?" The soldiers who were sheikhs grabbed poor Marty
to pin him up to die, but he wrenched free, turned again to the
audience, and spread his arms aloft to show despair and the end.  I
murmured at the top of my voice, "The rest is silence, but as everyone
in this room, in this city-in this world-now knows, I shall have life
eternal."

That night Mrs.  Kornbluh visited our kitchen for a glass of tea.

"How's the Virgin?" asked my father with a look of concern.

"For a man with a daughter, you got a fresh mouth, Abramovitch."

"Here," said my father kindly, "have some lemon, it'll sweeten your
disposition."

They debated a little in Yiddish, then fell in a puddle of Russian and
Polish.  What I understood next was my father, who said, "Still and all,
it was certainly a beautiful affair, you have to admit, introducing us
to the beliefs of a different culture."

"Well, yes," said Mrs.  Kornbluh.  "The only thing .  .  .  you know
Charlie Turner-that cute boy in Celia's class-a couple others?  They got
very small parts or no part at all.  In very bad taste, it seemed to me.
After all, it's their religion."

"Ach," explained my mother, "what could Mr.  Hilton do?  They got very
small voices; after all, why should they holler?  The English language
they know from the beginning by heart.  They're blond like angels.  You
think it's so important they should get in the play?

Christmas ...  the whole piece of goods ...  they own it."

I listened and listened until I couldn't listen anymore.  Too sleepy, I
climbed out of bed and kneeled.  I made a little church of my hands and
said, "Hear, 0 Israel.  .  ." Then I called out in Yiddish, "Please,
good night, good night.  Ssh." My father said, "Ssh yourself," and
slammed the kitchen door.  I was happy.  I fell asleep at once.  I had
prayed for everybody: my talking family, cousins far away, passersby,
and all the lonesome Christians.  I expected to be heard.  My voice was
certainly the loudest.

The Doll By: Edna O'Brien,

Every Christmas there came a present of a doll from a lady I scarcely
knew.  She was a friend of my mother's, and though they only met rarely,
or accidentally at a funeral, she kept up the miraculous habit of
sending me a doll.  It would come on the evening bus shortly before
Christmas, and it added to the hectic glow of those days when everything
was charged with bustle and excitement.

We made potato stuffing, we made mince pies, we made bowls of trifle, we
decorated the windowsills with holly and with tinsel, and it was as if
untoward happiness was about to befall us.

Each year's doll seemed to be more beautiful, more bewitching, and more
sumptuously clad than the previous year's.  They were of both sexes.
There was a jockey in bright red and saffron, there was a Dutch drummer
boy in maroon velvet, there was a sleeping doll in a crinoline, a
creature of such fragile beauty that I used to fear for her when my
sisters picked her up clumsily or tried to make her flutter her
eyelashes.  Her eyes were suggestive of beads and small blue flowers,
having the haunting color of one and the smooth glaze of the other.  She
was named Rosalind.

My sisters, of course, were jealous and riled against the unfairness of
my getting a doll, whereas they only got the usual dull flannel sock
with tiny things in it, necessary things such as pencils, copybooks,
plus some toffees and a licorice pipe.  Each of my dolls was given a
name, and a place of rest, in a corner or on a whatnot, or in an empty
biscuit tin, and each had special conversations allotted to them,
special endearments, and if necessary special chastisements.  They had
special times for fresh air-a doll would be brought out and splayed on a
windowsill, or sunk down in the high grass and apparently abandoned.  I
had no favorites until the seventh doll came, and she was to me the
living representation of a princess.  She too was a sleeping doll, but a
sizable one, and she was dressed in a pale-blue dress, with a gauze
overdress, a pale-blue bonnet, and white kid button shoes.  My
sisters-who were older-were as smitten with her as 1.  She was uncanny.
We all agreed that she was almost lifelike and that with coaxing she
might speak.  Her flaxen hair was like a feather to finger, her little
wrists moved on a swivel, her eyelashes were black and sleek and the
gaze in her eyes so fetching that we often thought she was not an
inanimate creature, that she had a soul and a sense of us. Conversations
with her were the most intense and the most incriminating of all.

It so happened that the teacher at school harbored a dislike for me and
this for unfathomable reasons.  I loved lessons, was first with my
homework, always early for class, then always lighted the school fire,
raked the ashes, and had a basket full of turf and wood when she
arrived.  In fact, my very diligence was what annoyed her and she would
taunt me about it and proclaim what a "goody-goody" I was.  She made
jokes about my cardigan or my shoelaces or the slide in my hair, and to
make the other girls laugh, she referred to me as "It." She would say,
"It has a hole in its sock," or "It hasn't got a proper blazer," or "It
has a daub on its copybook." I believe she hated me.  If in an
examination I came first-and I usually didshe would read out everyone's
marks, leave mine until last, and say, "We know who swotted the most,"
as if I were in disgrace.  If at cookery classes I made pancakes and
offered her one, she would make a face as if I had offered her tripe or
strychnine.  She once got a big girl to give me fruit laxatives,
pretending that they were sweets, and made great fun when I had to go in
and out to the closets all day.  It was a cruel cross to bear.  When the
inspector came and praised me, she said that I was brainy but that I
lacked versatility.  In direct contrast she was lovely to my sisters and
would ask them occasionally how my mother was, and when was she going to
send over a nice pot of homemade jam or a slab cake.  I used to pray and
make novenas that one day she would examine her conscience and think
about how she wronged me and repent.

One day my prayers seemed on the point of being answered.  It was
November and already the girls were saving up for Christmas, and we knew
that soon there would be the turkey market and soon after hams and
candied peel in the grocery shop window.  She said that since we'd all
done so well in the catechism exam, she was going to get the infants to
act in the school play and that we would build a crib and stack it with
fresh hay and statues.  Somebody said that my doll would make a most
beautiful Virgin.  Several girls had come home with me to see the doll
and had been allowed to peep in at her in her box, which was lined with
silver chaff.  I brought her next day, and every head in the classroom
craned as the teacher lifted the lid of the black lacquered box and
looked in.

"She's passable," she said and told one of the girls to put the doll in
the cookery cupboard until such time as she was needed.  I grieved at
being parted from her, but I was proud of the fact that she would be in
the school play and be the cynosure of all.  I had made her a cloak, a
flowing blue cloak with a sheath of net over it and a little diamante
clasp.  She was like a creature of moonlight, shimmering, even on dark
wet days.  The cookery cupboard was not a fit abode for her, but what
could I do?

The play did not pass off without incident.  The teacher's cousin Milo
was drunk, belligerent, and offensive.  He called girls up to the fire
to pretend to talk to them and then touched the calves of their legs and
tickled the backs of their knees.  He called me up and asked would I
click.  He was an auctioneer from the city and unmarried.  The teacher's
two sons also came to look at the performance, but one of them left in
the middle.  He was strange and would laugh for no reason, and although
over twenty he called the teacher "Mammy." He had very bright red hair
and a peculiar stare in his eyes.  For the most part, the infants forgot
their lines, lost their heads, and the prompter was always late, so that
the wrong girls picked up her cues.  She was behind a curtain but could
be heard out on the street.  The whole thing was a fiasco.  My doll was
the star of the occasion and everyone raved about her.

Afterward there was tea and scones, and the teacher talked to those few
mothers who had come.  My mother had not come because at that time she
was unable to confront crowds and even dreaded going to Mass on Sundays
but believed that God would preserve her from the dizziness and
suffocations that she was suffering from.  After they had all left and a
few of us had done the washing up, I went to the teacher and to my
delight she gave me a wide genial smile.  She thanked me for the doll,
said that there was no denying but that the doll saved the play, and
then, as I reached out, she staved my hand with a ruler and laughed
heartily.

"You don't think I'm going to let you have her now, I've got quite fond
of her ...  the little mite," she said, and gave the china cheek a tap.
At home I was berserk.  My mother said the teacher was probably teasing
and that she would return the doll in a day or two.  My father said that
if she didn't she would have to answer to him, or else get a hammering.
The days passed and the holidays came, and not only did she not give me
my doll, but she took it to her own home and put it in the china cabinet
along with cups and ornaments.  Passing by their window, I would look
in.  I could not see her because the china cabinet was in a corner, but
I knew where she was, as the maid Lizzie told me.  I would press my
forehead to the window and call to the doll and say that I was thinking
of her and that rescue was being hatched.  Everyone agreed that it was
monstrous, but no one talked to the teacher, no one tackled her.

The truth is, they were afraid of her.  She had a bitter tongue, and
also, being superstitious, they felt that she could give us children
brains or take them away, as a witch might.  It was as if she could lift
the brains out of us with a forceps and pickle them in brine.  No one
did anything, and in time I became reconciled to it.  I asked once in a
fit of bravura and the teacher said wasn't I becoming impudent.  No
longer did I halt to look in the window of her house but rather crossed
the road, and I did not talk to Lizzie in case she should tell me
something upsetting.  Once, I was sent to the teacher's house with a
loin of pork and found her by the fire with her queer son, both of them
with their stockings down, warming themselves.  There were zigzags of
heat on their shins.  She asked if I wanted to go in and see the doll,
but I declined.  By then I was preparing to go away to boarding school
and I knew that I would be free of her forever, that I would forget her,
that I would forget the doll, forget most of what happened, or at least
remember it without a quiver.

The years go by and everything and everyone gets replaced.  Those we
knew, though absent, are yet merged inextricably into new folk, so that
each person is to us a sum of many others and the effect is of opening
box after box in which the original is forever hidden.

The teacher dies a slow death, wastes to a thread through cancer, yet
strives against it and says she is not ready.  I hear the amount of
money she left and her pitiable last words, but I feel nothing.

I feel none of the rage and none of the despair.  She does not matter to
me anymore.  I am on the run from them.  I have fled.  I live in a city.
I am cosmopolitan.  People come to my house, all sorts of people, and
they do feats like dancing, or jesting, or singing, inventing a sort of
private theater where we all play a part.  I too play a part.  My part
is to receive them and disarm them, ply them with food and drink, and
secretly be wary of them, be distanced from them.  Like them I smile,
and drift; like them I smoke or drink to induce a feverishness or a
pleasant wandering hallucination.  It was not something I cultivated. It
developed of its own accord, like a spore that breathes in the darkness.
So I am far from those I am with, and far from those I have left.  At
night I enjoy the farness.  In the morning I touch a table or a teacup
to make sure that it is a table or a teacup, and I talk to it, and I
water the flowers and I talk to them, and I think how tender flowers
are, and woods and woodsmoke and possibly how tender are my new friends,
but that like me they are intent on concealment.

None of us ever says where we come from or what haunts us.  Perhaps we
are bewildered or ashamed.

I go back.  Duty hauls me back to see the remaining relatives, and I
play the expected part.  I had to call on the teacher's son.  He was the
undertaker and was in charge of my aunt's burial.  I went to pay him, to
"fix up," as it is called.  His wife, whom I knew to be a bit scattered,
admitted me amid peals of laughter.  She said she always thought I had
jet black hair, as she ran down the hall calling his name.  His name is
Denis.  He shakes hands with me very formally, asks what kind of wreath
I want and if it should be heart-shaped, circular, or in the form of a
cross.  I leave it all to him.  There in the overstuffed china cabinet
is my confiscated doll, and if dolls can age, it certainly had.  Gray
and moldy, the dress and cloak are as a shroud, and I thought, If I was
to pick her up she would disintegrate.

"God, my mother was fond of her," he said, as if he were trying to tell
me that she had been fond of me, too.  Had he said so, I might have
challenged.  I was older now and it was clear to me that she had kept
the doll out of perversity, out of pique and jealousy.  In some way she
had divined that I would have a life far away from them and adventures
such as she herself would never taste.  Sensing my chill, he boasted
that he had not let his own children play with the doll, thereby
implying that she was a sacred object, a treasured souvenir.  He hauled
out a brandy bottle and winked, expecting me to say yes.  I declined.

A sickness had come over me, a sort of nausea for having cared so much
about the doll, for having let them maltreat me, and now for no longer
caring at all.  My abrupt departure puzzled him.  He did something
unto-ward.  He tried to kiss me.  He thought perhaps that in my world it
was the expected thing.  Except that the kiss was proffered as a
sympathy kiss, a kiss of condolence over my aunt's death.  His face had
the sour smell of a towel that he must have dried himself on, just
before he came to welcome me.  The kiss was clumsiness personified.  I
pitied him, but I could not stay, and I could not reminisce, and I could
not pretend to be the fast kisseasy woman he imagined me to be.

Walking down the street, where I walk in memory, morning noon and night,
I could not tell what it was, precisely, that reduced me to such
wretchedness.  Indeed, it was not death but rather the gnawing
conviction of not having yet lived.  All I could tell was that the stars
were as singular and as wondrous as I remembered them and that they
still seemed like a link, an enticement to the great heavens, and that
one day I would reach them and be absorbed into their glory, and pass
from a world that, at that moment, I found to be rife with cruelty and
stupidity, a world that had forgotten how to give.

Tomorrow...  I thought.  Tomorrow I shall be gone, and realized that I
had not lost the desire to escape or the strenuous habit of hoping.

On Christmas Day, Carolyn Sisson went early to her parents' house to
help her mother with the dinner.  Carolyn had been divorced two years
before, and last Christmas, coming alone, she had felt uncomfortable.
This year she had invited her lover, Kent Ballard, to join the family
gathering.  She had even brought him a present to put under the tree, so
he wouldn't feel left out.  Kent was planning to drive over from
Kentucky Lake by noon.  He had gone there to inspect his boat because of
an ice storm earlier in the week.  He felt compelled to visit his boat
on the holiday, Carolyn thought, as if it were a sad old relative in a
retirement home.

"We're having baked ham instead of turkey," Mom said.  "Your daddy never
did like ham baked, but whoever heard of fried ham on Christmas?  We
have that all year round and I'm burned out on it."

tcl love baked ham," said Carolyn.

"Does Kent like it baked?"

"I'm sure he does." Carolyn placed her gifts under the tree.  The number
of packages seemed unusually small.

"It don't seem like Christmas with drawed names," said Mom.

"Your star's about to fall off." Carolyn straightened the silver
ornament at the tip of the tree.

"I didn't decorate as much as I wanted to.  I'm slowing down.

Getting old, I guess." Mom had not combed her hair, and she was wearing
a work shirt and tennis shoes.

"YOU always try to do too much on Christmas, Mom."

Carolyn knew the agreement to draw names had bothered her mother.

But the four daughters were grown, and two had children.  Sixteen people
were expected today.  Carolyn herself could not afford to buy fifteen
presents on her salary as a clerk at J.  C.  Penney's, and her parents'
small farm had not been profitable in years.

Carolyn's father appeared in the kitchen, and he hugged her so tightly
she squealed in protest.

"That's all I can afford this year," he said, laughing.  As he took a
piece of candy from a dish on the counter, Carolyn teased him.

"You'd better watch your calories today."

"Oh, not on Christmas!"

It made Carolyn sad to see her handsome father getting older.  He was a
shy man, awkward with his daughters, and Carolyn knew he had been deeply
disappointed over her failed marriage, although he had never said so.
Now he asked, "Who bought these 'toes'?"

He would no longer say "nigger toes," his old name for the
chocolate-covered creams.

"Hattie Smoot brought those over," said Mom.  "I made a pants suit for
her last week," she said to Carolyn.  "She's the woman that had stomach
bypass?  "

"When PeeWee McClain had that, it didn't work and they had to fix him
back like he was," said Dad.  He offered Carolyn a piece of candy, but
she shook her head no.

Mom said, "I made Hattie a dress back last spring for her boy's
graduation, and she couldn't even find a pattern big enough.  I had to
'low a foot.  But after that bypass, she's down to a size twenty."

"I think we'll all need a stomach bypass after we eat this feast you're
fixing, said Carolyn.

"Where's Kent?" Dad asked abruptly.

"He went to see about his boat.  He said he'd be here." Carolyn looked
at the clock.  She felt uneasy about inviting Kent.  Everyone would be
scrutinizing him, as if he were some new character on a soap opera.
Kent, who drove a truck for the Kentucky Loose-Leaf Floor, was a
part-time student at Murray State.  He was majoring in accounting' When
Carolyn had started going with him, early in the summer, they had gone
sailing on his boat, which had "Joyce" painted on it.  Later, he painted
over the name, insisting he didn't love Joyce anymore, but he had never
said he loved Carolyn.  She did not know if she loved him.  Each seemed
to be waiting for the other to say it first.

While Carolyn helped her mother in the kitchen, Dad went to get her
grandfather, her mother's father.  Pappy, who had been disabled by a
stroke, was cared for by a live-in housekeeper who had gone home to her
own family for the day.  Carolyn diced apples and pears for fruit salad
while her mother shaped sweet-potato balls with marshmallow centers and
rolled them in crushed cornflakes.  On TV in the living room, "Days of
Our Lives" was beginning, but the Christmas tree blocked their view of
the television set.

,,Whose name did you draw, Mom?" Carolyn asked, as she began seeding the
grapes.

lim'S.7

"You put Jim's name in the hat?"

Mom nodded.  Jim Walsh was the man Carolyn's younger sister, Laura jean,
was living with in St.  Louis.  Laura Jean was going to an
interior-decorating school, and Jim was a textiles salesman she had met
in a class.  "I made him a shirt," Mom said.

"I'm surprised at you."

"Well, what was I to do?"

"I'm just surprised." Carolyn ate a grape and spit out the seeds.

"Emily Post says the couple should be offered the same room when they
visit."

"You know we'd never stand for that.  I don't think your dad's ever got
over her stacking up with that guy.

"You mean shacking up."

"Same thing." Mom dropped the potato masher, and the metal rattled on
the floor.  "Oh, I'm in such a tizzy," she said.

As the family began to arrive, the noise of the TV played against the
greetings, the slam of the storm door, the outside wind rushing in.
Carolyn's older sisters, Peggy and Iris, with their husbands and
children, were arriving all at once, and suddenly the house seemed
small.  Peggy's children Stevie and Cheryl, without even removing their
jackets, became involved in a basketball game on TV.

In his lap, Stevie had a Merlin electronic toy, which beeped randomly.
Iris and Ray's children, Deedee and Jonathan, went outside to look for
cats.

In the living room, Peggy jiggled her baby, Lisa, on her hip and said,
"You need you one of these, Carolyn."

"Where can I get one?" said Carolyn rather sharply.

Peggy grinned.  "At the gittin' place, I reckon."

Peggy's critical tone was familiar.  She was the only sister who had had
a real wedding.  Her husband, Cecil, had a Gulf franchise, and they
owned a motor-cruiser, a pickup truck, a camper, a station wagon, and a
new brick colonial home.  Whenever Carolyn went to visit Peggy, she felt
apologetic for not having a man who would buy her all these things, but
she never seemed to be attracted to anyone steady or ambitious.  She had
been wondering how Kent would get along with the men of the family.
Cecil and Ray were standing in a corner talking about gas mileage.
Cecil, who was shorter than Peggy and was going bald, always worked on
Dad's truck for free, and Ray usually agreed with Dad on politics to
avoid an argument.

Ray had an impressive government job in Frankfort.  He had coordinated a
ribbon-cutting ceremony when the toll road opened.

What would Kent have to say to them?  She could imagine him insisting
that everyone go outside later to watch the sunset.  Her father would
think that was ridiculous.  No one ever did that on a farm, but it was
the sort of thing Kent would think of.  Yet she knew that spontaneity
was what she liked in him.

Deedee and Jonathan, who were ten and six, came inside then and
immediately began shaking the presents under the tree.  All the children
were wearing new jeans and cowboy shirts, Carolyn noticed.

"Why are y'all so quiet?" she asked.  "I thought kids whooped and
hollered on Christmas."

"They've been up since four," said Iris.  She took a cigarette from her
purse and accepted a light from Cecil.  Exhaling smoke, she said to
Carolyn, "We heard Kent was coming." Before Carolyn could reply, Iris
scolded the children for shaking the packages.  She seemed nervous.

"He's supposed to be here by noon," said Carolyn.

"There's somebody now.  I hear a car."

"It might be Dad, with Pappy."

It was Laura jean, showing off Jim Walsh as though he were a splendid
Christmas gift she had just received.

"Let me kiss everybody!" she cried, as the women rushed toward her.

Laura Jean had not been home in four months.

"Merry Christmas!" Jim said in a booming, official-sounding voice,
something like a TV announcer, Carolyn thought.  He embraced all the
women and then, with a theatrical gesture, he handed Mom a bottle of
Rebel Yell bourbon and a carton of boiled custard, which he took from a
shopping bag.  The bourbon was in a decorative Christmas box.

Mom threw up her hands.  "Oh, no, I'm afraid I'll be a alkyholic."

"Oh, that's ridiculous, Mom," said Laura jean, taking Jim's coat.  "A
couple of drinks a day are good for your heart."

Jim insisted on getting coffee cups from a kitchen cabinet and mixing
some boiled custard and bourbon.  When he handed a cup to Mom, she
puckered up her face.

"Law, don't let the preacher in," she said, taking a sip.  "Boy, that
sends my blood pressure up."

Carolyn waved away the drink that Jim offered her.  "I don't start this
early in the day," she said, feeling confused.

Jim was a large, dark-haired man with a neat little beard, like a bird's
nest cupped on his chin.  He had a northern accent.  When he hugged her,
Carolyn caught a whiff of cologne, something sweet, like chocolate
syrup.  Last summer, when Laura Jean had brought him home for the first
time, she had made a point of kissing and hugging him in front of
everyone.  Dad had virtually ignored him.

Now Carolyn saw that Jim was telling Cecil that he always bought Gulf
gas.  Red-faced, Ray accepted a cup of boiled custard.

Carolyn fled to the kitchen and began grating cheese for potatoes all
gratin.  She dreaded Kent's arrival.

When Dad arrived with Pappy, Cecil and Jim helped set up the wheelchair
in a corner.  Afterward, Dad and Jim shook hands, and Dad refused Jim's
offer of bourbon.  From the kitchen, Carolyn could see Dad hugging Laura
Jean, not letting go.  She went into the living room to greet her
grandfather.

"They roll me in this buggy too fast," he said when she kissed his
forehead.

Carolyn hoped he wouldn't notice the bottle of bourbon, but she knew he
never missed anything.  He was so deaf people had given up talking to
him.  Now the children tiptoed around him, looking at him with awe.
Somehow, Carolyn expected the children to notice that she was alone,
like Pappy.

At ten minutes of one, the telephone rang.  Peggy answered and handed
the receiver to Carolyn.  "It's Kent," she said.

Kent had not left the lake yet.  "I just got here an hour ago," he told
Carolyn.  "I had to take my sister over to my mother's."

"Is the boat OK?"

"Yeah.  Just a little scraped paint.  I'll be ready to go in a little
while." He hesitated, as though waiting for assurance that the
invitation was real.  "This whole gang's ready to eat," Carolyn said.
"Can't you hurry?" She should have remembered the way he tended to get
sidetracked.  Once it took them three hours to get to Paducah, because
he kept stopping at antique shops.

After she hung up the telephone, her mother asked, "Should I put the
rolls in to brown yet?"

"Wait just a little., He's just now leaving the lake."

"When's this Kent feller coming?" asked Dad impatiently, as he peered
into the kitchen.  "It's time to eat."

"He's on his way," said Carolyn.

"Did you tell him we don't wait for stragglers?"

"No."

"When the plate rattles, we eat."

"I know."

"Did you tell him that?"

"No, I didn't!" cried Carolyn, irritated.

When they were alone in the kitchen, Carolyn's mother said to her, "Your
dad's not hisself today.  He's fit to be tied about Laura jean bringing
that guy down here again.  And him bringing that whiskey."

, "That was uncalled for," Carolyn agreed.  She had noticed that Mom had
set her cup of eggnog in the refrigerator.

"Besides, he's not too happy about that Kent Ballard you're running
around with."

"What's it to him?"

"You know how he always was.  He don't think anybody's good enough for
one of his little girls, and he's afraid you'll get mistreated again. He
don't think Kent's very dependable."

"I guess Kent's proving Dad's point."

Carolyn's sister Iris had dark brown eyes, unique in the family.

When Carolyn was small, she tried to say "Iris's eyes" once and called
them "Irish eyes," confusing them with a song their mother sometimes
sang, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." Thereafter, they always teased Iris
about her smiling Irish eyes.  Today Iris was not smiling.  Carolyn
found her in a bedroom smoking, holding an ashtray in her hand.

"I drew your name," Carolyn told her.  "I got you something I wanted
myself."

"Well, if I don't want it, I guess I'll have to give it to you."

"What's wrong with you today?"

"Ray and me's getting a separation," said Iris.

"Really?" Carolyn was startled by the note of glee in her response.

Actually, she told herself later, it was because she was glad her
sister, whom she saw infrequently, had confided in her.

"The thing of it is, I had to beg him to come today, for Mom and Dad's
sake.  It'll kill them.  Don't let on, will you?"

"I won't.  What are you going to do?"

"I don't know.  He's already moved out."

"Are you going to stay in Frankfort?"

"I don't know.  I have to work things out."

Mom stuck her head in the door.  "Well, is Kent coming or not?"

"He said he'd be here," said Carolyn.

"Your dad's about to have a duck with a rubber tail.  He can't stand to
wait on a meal."

"Well, let's go ahead then.  Kent can eat when he gets here." When Mom
left, Iris said, "Aren't you and Kent getting along?"

"I don't know.  He said he'd come today, but I have a feeling he doesn't
really want to."

"To hell with men." Iris laughed and stubbed out her cigarette.

"Just look at us-didn't we turn out awful?  First your divorce.  Now me.
And Laura jean bringing that guy down.  Daddy can't stand him.

Did you see the look he gave him?"

"Laura jean's got a lot more nerve than I've got," said Carolyn,
nod-ding.  "I could wring Kent's neck for being late.  Well, none of us
can do anything right-except Peggy."

"Daddy's precious little angel," said Iris mockingly.  "Come on, we'd
better get in there and help."

While Mom went to change her blouse and put on lipstick, the sisters
brought the food into the dining room.  Two tables had been put
together.  Peggy cut the ham with an electric knife, and Carolyn filled
the iced-tea glasses.

"Pappy gets buttermilk and Stevie gets Coke," Peggy directed her.

"I know," said Carolyn, almost snapping.

As the family sat down, Carolyn realized that no one ever asked Pappy to
'turn thanks" anymore at holiday dinners.  He was sitting there
expectantly, as if waiting to be asked.  Mom cut up his ham into small
bits.  Carolyn waited for a car to drive up, the phone to ring.  The TV
was still on.  "Y'all dig in," said Mom.  "Jim?

Make sure you try some of these dressed eggs like I fix."

"I thought your new boyfriend was coming," said Cecil to Carolyn.

"So did I" said Laura Jean.  "That's what you wrote me."

Everyone looked at Carolyn as she explained.  She looked away.

"You're looking at that pitiful tree," Mom said to her.  "I just know it
don't show up good from the road."

"No, it looks fine." No one had really noticed the tree.  Carolyn
seemedbe seeing it for the first time in years-broken redplastic
reindeer,
Styrofoam snowmen with crumbling top hats, silver walnuts, which she
remembered painting when she was about twelve.

Dad began telling a joke about some monks who had taken a vow of
silence.  At each Christmas dinner, he said, one monk was allowed to
speak.  "Looks like your vocal cords would rust out," said Cheryl. "Shut
up, Cheryl.  Granddaddy's trying to tell something," said Cecil.  "So
the first year it was the first monk's turn to talk, and you know what
he said?  He said, 'These taters is lumpy."

"

When several people laughed, Stevie asked, "Is that the joke?"

Carolyn was baffled.  Her father had never told a joke at the table in
his life.  He sat at the head of the table, looking out past the family
at the cornfield through the picture window.

"Pay attention, now," he said.  "The second year Christmas rolled around
again and it was the second monk's turn to say something.  He said, 'You
know, I think you're right.  The taters is lumpy."

Laura Jean and Jim laughed loudly.

"Reach me some light bread," said Pappy.  Mom passed the dish around the
table to him.

"And so the third year," Dad continued, "the third monk got to say
something.  What he said-" Dad was suddenly overcome with mirth what he
said was, 'If y'all don't shut up arguing about them taters, I'm going
to leave this place!"

"

After the laughter died, Mom said, "Can you imagine anybody not atalking
all year long?"

"That's the way monks are, Mom," said Laura Jean.  "Monks are economical
with everything.  They're not wasteful, not even with words."

"The Trappist monks are really an outstanding group," said Jim.

"And they make excellent bread.  No preservatives."

Cecil and Peggy stared at Jim.

"You're not eating, Dad," said Carolyn.  She was sitting between him and
the place set for Kent.  The effort at telling the joke seemed to have
taken her father's appetite.

"He ruined his dinner on nigger toes," said Mom.

"Dottie Barlow got a Barbie doll for Christmas and it's black," Cheryl
said.

,,Dottie Barlow ain't black, is she?" asked Cecil.

"No."

"That's funny," said Peggy.  "Why would they give her a black Barbie
doll?"

"She just wanted it."

Abruptly, Dad left the table, pushing back his plate.  He sat down in
the recliner chair in front of the TV.  The Blue-Gray game was
beginning, and Cecil and Ray were hurriedly finishing in order to join
him.  Carolyn took out second helpings of ham and Jell-O salad, feeling
as though she was eating for Kent in his absence.  Jim was taking
seconds of everything, complimenting Mom.  Mom apologized for not having
fancy napkins.  Then Laura Jean described a photography course she had
taken.  She had been photographing close-ups of car parts-fenders,
headlights, mud flaps.

"That sounds goofy," said one of the children, Deedee.

Suddenly Pappy spoke.  "Use to, the menfolks would eat first, and the
children separate.  The womenfolks would eat last, in the kitchen."

"You know what I could do with you all, don't you?"

said Mom, shaking her fist at him.  "I could set up a plank out in the
field for y'all to eat on." She laughed.

"Times are different now, Pappy," said Iris loudly.  "We're just as good
as the men."

"She gets that from television," said Ray, with an apologetic laugh.
Carolyn noticed Ray's glance at Iris.  just then Iris matter-of-factly
plucked an eyelash from Ray's cheek.  It was as though she had
momentarily forgotten about the separation.

Later, after the gifts were opened, Jim helped clear the tables.

Kent still had not come.  The baby slept, and Laura Jean, Jim, Peggy,
and Mom played a Star Trek board game at the dining room table, while
Carolyn and Iris played "Battlestar Galactica" with Cheryl and Deedee.
The other men were quietly engrossed in a football game, a blur of
sounds.  No one had mentioned Kent's absence, but after the children had
distributed the gifts, Carolyn refused to tell them what was in the lone
package left under the tree.  It was the most extravagantly wrapped of
all the presents, with an immense ribbon, not a stick-on bow.  An icicle
had dropped on it, and it reminded Carolyn of an abandoned float from a
parade.

At a quarter to three, Kent telephoned.  He was still at the lake.

"The gas stations are all closed," he said.  "I couldn't get any gas."

"We already ate and opened the presents," said Carolyn.

"Here I am, stranded.  Not a thing I can do about it."

Kent's voice was shaky and muffled, and Carolyn suspected he had been
drinking.  She did not know what to say, in front of the family.  She
chattered idly, while she played with a ribbon from a package.  The baby
was awake, turning dials and knobs on a Busy Box.

On TV, the Blues picked up six yards on an end sweep.  Carolyn fixed her
eyes on the tilted star at the top of the tree.  Kent was saying
something about Santa Claus.  "They wanted me to play Santy at Mama's
house for the littl'uns.  I said-you know what I said?  'Bah, humbug!"
Did I ever tell you what I've got against Christmas?"

"Maybe not." Carolyn's back stiffened against the wall.

"When I was little bitty, Santa Claus came to town.  I was about five.
I, was all fired up to go see Santy, and Mama took me, but we were late,
and he was about to leave.  I had to run across the courthouse square to
get to him.  He was giving away suckers, so I ran as hard as I could. He
was climbing up on the fire engine-are you listening?"

"Unh-huh." Carolyn was watching her mother, who was folding Christmas
paper to save for next year.

Kent said, "I reached up and pulled at his old red pants leg, and he
looked down at me, and you know what he said?"

"No, what?"

"He said, 'Piss off, kid."

"Really?"

"Would Ilie to you?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to hear the rest of my hard-luck story?"

"Not now."

"Oh, I forgot this was long-distance.  I'll call you tomorrow.  Maybe
I'll go paint the boat.  That's what I'll do!  I'll go paint it right
this minute." After Carolyn hung up the telephone, her mother said, "I
think my Oriental casserole was a failure.  I used the wrong kind of
mushroom soup.  It called for cream of mushroom and I used golden
mushroom."

"Won't you ever learn, Mom?" cried Carolyn.  "You always cook too much.
You make such a big deal-"

Mom said, "What happened with Kent this time?"

"He couldn't get gas.  He forgot the gas stations were closed."

"Jim and Laura Jean didn't have any trouble getting gas," said Peggy,
looking up from the game.

"We tanked up yesterday," said Laura Jean.

"Of course you did," said Carolyn distractedly.  "You always think
ahead."

"It's your time," Cheryl said, handing Carolyn the "Battlestar
Galac-tica" toy.  "I did lousy."

"Not as lousy as I did," said Iris.

Carolyn tried to concentrate on shooting enemy missiles raining through
space.  Her sisters seemed far away, like the spaceships.

She was aware of the men watching football, their hands in action as
they followed an exciting play.  Even though Pappy had fallen asleep,
with his blanket in his lap he looked like a king on a throne.  Carolyn
thought of the quiet accommodation her father had made to his
father-in-law, just as Cecil and Ray had done with Dad, and her
ex-husband had tried to do once.  But Cecil had bought his way in, and
now Ray was getting out.  Kent had stayed away.  Jim, the newcomer, was
with the women, playing Star Trek as if his life depended upon it.
Carolyn was glad now that Kent had not come.  The story he had told made
her angry, and his pity for his childhood make her think of something
Pappy had often said-"Christmas is for children." Earlier, she had
listened in amazement while Cheryl listed on her fingers the gifts she
had received that morning: a watch, a stereo, a nightgown, hot curls,
perfume, candles, a sweater, a calculator, a jewelry box, a ring.  Now
Carolyn saw Kent's boat as his toy, more important to him than the
family obligations of the holiday.

Mom was saying, "I wanted to make a Christmas tablecloth out of red
checks with green fringe.  You wouldn't think knit would do for a
table-cloth, but Hattie Smoot has the prettiest one."

"You can do incredible things with knit," said Jim with sudden
enthusiasm.  The shirt Mom had made him was bonded knit.

"Who's Hattie Smoot?" asked Laura Jean.  She was caressing the back of
Jim's neck, as though soothing his nerves.

Carolyn laughed when her mother began telling Jim and Laura Jean about
Hattie Smoot's operation.  Jim listened attentively, leaning forward
with his elbows on the table, and asked eager questions, his eyes as
alert as Pappy's.

"Is she telling a joke?" Cheryl asked Carolyn.

"No.  I'm not laughing at you, Mom," Carolyn said, touching her mother's
hand.  She felt relieved that the anticipation of Christmas had ended.
Still laughing, she said, "Pour me some of that Rebel Yell, Jim.  It's
time."

"I'm with you," Jim said, jumping up.

In the kitchen, Carolyn located a clean spoon while Jim washed some
cups.  Carolyn couldn't find the cup Mom had left in the refrigerator.
As she took out the carton of boiled custard, Jim said, "It must be a
very difficult day for you."

Carolyn was startled.  His tone was unexpectedly kind, genuine.  She was
struck suddenly by what he must know about her, because of his intimacy
with her sister.  She knew nothing about him.  When he smiled, she saw a
gold cap on a molar, shining like a Christmas ornament.  She managed to
say, "It can't be any picnic for you, either.  Kent didn't want to put
up with us."

"Too bad he couldn't get gas."

"I don't think he wanted to get gas."

"Then you're better off without him." When Jim looked at her, Carolyn
felt that he must be examining her resemblance to Laura Jean.

He said, "I think your family's great."

Carolyn laughed nervously.  "We're hard on you.  God, you're brave to
come down here like this."

"Well, Laura Jean's worth it."

They took the boiled custard and cups into the dining room.  As Carolyn
sat down, her nephew Jonathan begged her to tell what was in the gift
left under the tree.

"I can't tell," she said.

"Why not?"

"I'm saving it till next year, in case I draw some man's name."

"'I hope it's mine," said Jonathan.

Jim stirred bourbon into three cups of boiled custard, and gave one to
Carolyn and one to Laura Jean.  The others had declined.  Then he leaned
back in his chair-more relaxed now-and squeezed Laura Jean's hand.
Carolyn wondered what they said to each other when they were alone, in
St.  Louis.  She knew with certainty that they would not be economical
with words, like the monks in the story.  She longed to be with them, to
hear what they would say.  She noticed her mother picking at a hangnail,
quietly ignoring the bourbon.  Looking at the bottle's gift box, which
showed an old-fashioned scene, children on sleds in the snow, Carolyn
thought of Kent's boat again.  She felt she was in that snowy scene now
with Laura Jean and Jim, sailing in Kent's boat into the winter breeze,
into falling snow.  She thought of how silent it was out on the lake, as
though the whiteness of the snow were the absence of sound.

"Cheers!" she said to Jim, lifting her cup.

Where You'll Find Me By: Ann Beattie,

Friends keep calling my broken arm a broken wing.  It's the left arm,
now folded against my chest and kept in place with a blue scarf sling
that is knotted behind my neck, and it weighs too much ever to have been
winglike.  The accident happened when I ran for a bus.  I tried to stop
it from pulling away by shaking my shopping bags like maracas in the
air, and that's when I slipped on the ice and went down.  So I took the
train from New York City to Saratoga yesterday, instead of driving.  I
had the perfect excuse not to go to Saratoga to visit my brother at all,
but once I had geared up for it I decided to go through with the trip
and avoid guilt.  It isn't Howard I mind but his wife's two children-a
girl of eleven and a boy of three.  Becky either pays no attention to
her brother Todd or else she tortures him.  Last winter she used to
taunt him by stalking around the house on his heels, clomping close
behind him wherever he went, which made him run and scream at the same
time.  Kate did not intervene until both children became hysterical and
we could no longer shout over their voices.  "I think I like it that
they're physical," she said.  "Maybe if they enact some of their
hostility like this, they won't grow up with the habit of getting what
they want by playing mind games with other people." It seems to me that
they will not ever grow up but will burn out like meteors.

Howard has finally found what he wants: the opposite of domestic
tranquillity.  For six years, he lived in Oregon with a pale, passive
woman.  On the rebound, he married an even paler premed student named
Francine.

That marriage lasted less than a year, and then, on a blind date in Los
Angeles, he met Kate, whose husband was away on a business trip to
Denmark just then.  In no time, Kate and her daughter and infant son
moved in with him, to the studio apartment in Laguna Beach he was
sharing with a screenwriter.  The two men had been working on a script
about Medgar Evers, but when Kate and the children moved in they
switched to writing a screenplay about what happens when a man meets a
married woman with two children on a blind date and the three of them
move in with him and his friend.  Then Howard's collaborator got engaged
and moved out, and the screenplay was abandoned.  Howard accepted a
last-minute invitation to teach writing at an upstate college in New
York, and within a week they were all ensconced in a drafty Victorian
house in Saratoga.  Kate's husband had begun divorce proceedings before
she moved in with Howard, but eventually he agreed not to sue for
custody of Becky and Todd in exchange for child-support payments that
were less than half of what his lawyer thought he would have to pay. Now
he sends the children enormous stuffed animals that they have little or
no interest in, with notes that say, "Put this in Mom's zoo." A stuffed
toy every month or so-giraffes, a life-size German shepherd, an
overstuffed standing bear-and, every time, the same note.

The bear stands in one corner of the kitchen, and people have gotten in
the habit of pinning notes to it-reminders to buy milk or get the oil
changed in the car.  Wraparound sunglasses have been added.  Scarves and
jackets are sometimes draped on its arms.

Sometimes the stuffed German shepherd is brought over and propped up
with its paws placed on the bear's haunch, imploring it.

Right now, I'm in the kitchen with the bear.  I've just turned up the
thermostat-the first one up in the morning is supposed to do that-and am
dunking a tea bag in a mug of hot water.  For some reason, it's
impossible for me to make tea with loose tea and the tea ball unless I
have help.  The only tea bag I could find was Emperor's Choice.

I sit in one of the kitchen chairs to drink the tea.  The chair seems to
stick to me, even though I have on thermal long johns and a long flannel
nightgown.  The chairs are plastic, very nineteenfifties, patterned with
shapes that look sometimes geometric, sometimes almost human.  Little
things like malformed hands reach out toward triangles and squares.  I
asked.  Howard and Kate got the kitchen set at an auction, for thirty
dollars.  They thought it was funny.  The house itself is not funny.  It
has four fireplaces, wideboard floors, and high, dusty ceilings.  They
bought it with his share of an inheritance that came to us when our
grandfather died.

Kate's contribution to restoring the house has been transforming the
base-boards into faux marbre.  How effective this is has to do with how
stoned she is when she starts.  Sometimes the baseboards look like
clotted versions of the kitchen-chair pattern, instead of marble.  Kate
considers what she calls gparenting" to be a fulltime job.  When they
first moved to Saratoga, she used to give piano lessons.  Now she
ignores the children and paints the baseboards.

And who am I to stand in judgment?  I am a thirty-eight-year-old woman,
out of a job, on tenuous enough footing with her sometime lover that she
can imagine crashing emotionally as easily as she did on the ice.  It
may be true, as my lover, Frank, says, that having money is not good for
the soul.  Money that is given to you, that is.  He is a lawyer who also
has money, but it is money he earned and parlayed into more money by
investing in real estate.  An herb farm is part of this real estate.
Boxes of herbs keep turning up at Frank's office-herbs in foil, herbs in
plastic bags, dried herbs wrapped in cones of newspaper.  He crumbles
them over omelets, roasts, vegetables.  He is opposed to salt.  He
insists herbs are more healthful.  And who am I to claim to love a man
when I am skeptical even about his use of herbs?  I am embarrassed to be
unemployed.  I am insecure enough to stay with someone because of the
look that sometimes comes into his eyes when he makes love to me.  I am
a person who secretly shakes on salt in the kitchen, then comes out with
her plate, smiling, as basil is crumbled over the tomatoes.

Sometimes, in our bed, his fingers smell of rosemary or tarragon.

Strong smells.  Sour smells.  Whatever Shakespeare says, or whatever is
written in Culpeper's Complete Herbal, I cannot imagine that herbs have
anything to do with love.  But many brides-to-be come to the herb farm
and buy branches of herbs to stick in their bouquets.

They anoint their wrists with herbal extracts, to smell mysterious.

They believe that herbs bring them luck.  These days, they want tubs of
rosemary in their houses, not ficus trees.  "I got in right on the cusp
of the new world," Frank says.  He isn't kidding.

For the Christmas party tonight, there are cherry tomatoes halved and
stuffed with peaks of cheese, mushrooms stuffed with pureed tomatoes,
tomatoes stuffed with chopped mushrooms, and mushrooms stuffed with
cheese.  Kate is laughing in the kitchen.  "No one's going to notice,"
she mutters.  "No one's going to say anything."

"Why don't we put out some nuts?" Howard says.

"Nuts are so conventional.  This is funny," Kate says, squirting more
soft cheese out of a pastry tube.

"Last year we had mistletoe and mulled cider."

"Last year we lost our sense of humor.  What happened that we got all
hyped up?  We even ran out on Christmas Eve to cut a tree-"

"The kids," Howard says.

"That's right," she says.  "The kids were crying.  They were feeling
competitive with the other kids, or something."

"Becky was crying.  Todd was too young to cry about that," Howard says.

"Why are we talking about tears?" Kate says.  "We can talk about tears
when it's not the season to be jolly.  Everybody's going to come in
tonight and love the wreaths on the picture hooks and think this food is
so festive."

"We invited a new Indian guy from the Philosophy Department," Howard
says.  "American Indian-not an Indian from India."

"If we want, we can watch the tapes of Jewel in the Crown," Kate says.
"I'm feeling really depressed," Howard says, backing up to the counter
and sliding down until he rests on his elbows.  His tennis shoes are
wet.  He never takes off his wet shoes, and he never gets colds.

"Try one of those mushrooms," Kate says.  "They'll be better when
they're cooked, though."

"What's wrong with me?" Howard says.  It's almost the first time he's
looked at me since I arrived.  I've been trying not to register my
boredom and my frustration with Kate's prattle.

"Maybe we should get a tree," I say.

"I don't think it's Christmas that's making me feel this way," Howard
says.

" Well, snap out of it," Kate says.  "You can open one of your presents
early, if you want to."

"No, no," Howard says, "it isn't Christmas." He hands a plate to Kate,
who has begun to stack the dishwasher.  "I've been worrying that you're
in a lot of pain and you just aren't saying so," he says to me.  i'It's
just uncomfortable," I say.

"I know, but do you keep going over what happened, in your mind?

When you fell, or in the emergency room, or anything?"

"I had a dream last night about the ballerinas at Victoria Pool," I say.
"It was like Victoria Pool was a stage set instead of a real place, and
tall, thin ballerinas kept parading in and twirling and pirouetting.  I
was envying their being able to touch their fingertips together over
their heads.  " Howard opens the top level of the dishwasher and Kate
begins to hand him the rinsed glasses.

"You just told a little story," Howard says.  "You didn't really answer
the question."

"I don't keep going over it in my mind," I say.

"So you're repressing it," he says.

"Mom," Becky says, walking into the kitchen, "is it OK if Deirdre comes
to the party tonight if her dad doesn't drive here to pick her up this
weekend?"

"I thought her father was in the hospital," Kate says.  "Yeah, he was.
But he got out.  He called and said that it was going to snow up north,
though, so he wasn't sure if he could come."

"Of course she can come," Kate says.

"And you know what?" Becky says.

"Say hello to people when you come into a room," Kate says.  "At least
make eye contact or smile or something."

"I'm not Miss America on the runway, Mom.  I'm just walking into the
kitchen."

"You have to acknowledge people's existence," Kate says.  "Haven't we
talked about this?"

"Oh, hell-lo," Becky says, curtsying by pulling out the sides of an
imaginary skirt.  She has on purple sweatpants.  She turns toward me and
pulls the fabric away from her hipbones.  "Oh, hello, as if we've never
met," she says.

"Your aunt here doesn't want to be in the middle of this," Howard says.
"She's got enough trouble."

"Get back on track," Kate says to Becky.  "What did you want to say to
me?"

"You know what you do, Mom?" Becky says.  "You make an issue of
something and then it's like when I speak it's a big thing.

Everybody's listening to me."

Kate closes the door to the dishwasher.

"Did you want to speak to me privately?" she says.

"Nooo," Becky says, sitting in the chair across from me and sighing.  "I
was just going to say-and now it's a big deal-I was going to say that
Deirdre just found out that that guy she was writing all year is in
prison.  He was in prison all the time, but she didn't know what the
P.O.  box meant."

"What's she going to do?" Howard says.

"She's going to write and ask him all about prison," Becky says.

"That's good," Howard says.  "That cheers me up to hear that.  The guy
probably agonized about whether to tell her or not.  He probably thought
she'd hot-potato him."

"Lots of decent people go to prison," Becky says.

"That's ridiculous," Kate says.  "You can't generalize about convicts
any more than you can generalize about the rest of humanity."

"So?" Becky says.  "If somebody in the rest of humanity had something to
hide, he'd hide it, too, wouldn't he?"

"Let's go get a tree," Howard says.  "We'll get a tree."

"Somebody got hit on the highway carrying a tree home," Becky says.

"Really."

"You really do have your car to the ground in this town," Kate says.
"You kids could be the town crier.  I know everything before the paper
comes."

"It happened yesterday," Becky says.

"Christ," Howard says.  "We're talking about crying, we're talking about
death." He is leaning against the counter again.

"We are not," Kate says, walking in front of him to open the
refrigerator door.  She puts a plate of stuffed tomatoes inside.

"In your typical fashion, you've singled out two observations out of a
lot that have been made, and-"

"I woke up thinking about Dennis Bidou last night," Howard says to me.
"Remember Dennis Bidou, who used to taunt you?  Dad put me up to having
it out with him, and he backed down after that.  But I was always afraid
he'd come after me.  I went around for years pretending not to cringe
when he came near me.  And then, you know, one time I was out on a date
and we ran out of gas, and as I was walking to get a can of gas a car
pulled up alongside me and Dennis Bidou leaned out the window.  He was
surprised that it was me and I was surprised that it was him.  He asked
me what happened and I said I ran out of gas.  He said, 'Tough shit, I
guess,' but a girl was driving and she gave him a hard time.  She
stopped the car and insisted that I get in the back and they'd take me
to the gas station.  He didn't say one word to me the whole way there. I
remembered the way he looked in the car when I found out he was killed
in Nam-the back of his head on that ramrod-straight body, and a black
collar or some dark-colored collar pulled up to his hairline." Howard
makes a horizontal motion with four fingers, thumb folded under, in the
air beside his ear.

"Now you're trying to depress everybody," Kate says.

"I'm willing to cheer up.  I'm going to cheer up before tonight.  I'm
going up to that Lions Club lot on Main Street and get a tree.

Anybody coming with me?"

"I'm going over to Deirdre's," Becky says.

"I'll come with you, if you think my advice is needed," I say.

"For fun," Howard says, bouncing on his toes.  "For fun-not advice." He
gets my red winter coat out of the closet, and I back into it, putting
in my good arm.  Then he takes a diaper pin off the lapel and pins the
other side of the coat to the top of my shoulder, easing the pin through
my sweater.  Then he puts Kate's poncho over my head.  This is the
system, because I am always cold.

Actually, Kate devised the system.  I stand there while Howard puts on
his leather jacket.  I feel like a bird with a cloth draped over its
cage for the night.  This makes me feel sorry for myself, and then I do
think of my arm as a broken wing, and suddenly everything seems so sad
that I feel my eyes well up with tears.  I sniff a couple of times.  And
Howard faced down Dennis Bidou, for my sake!

My brother!  But he really did it because my father told him to.

Whatever my father told him to do he did.  He drew the line only at
smothering my father in the hospital when he asked him to.  That is the
only time I know of that he ignored my father's wishes.

"Get one that's tall enough," Kate says.  "And don't get one of those
trees that look like a cactus.  Get one with long needles that swoops."

"Swoops?" Howard says, turning in the hallway.

"Something with some fluidity," she says, bending her knees and making a
sweeping motion with her arm.  "You know-something beautiful."

Before the guests arrive, a neighbor woman has brought Todd back from
his play group and he is ready for bed, and the tree has been decorated
with a few dozen Christmas balls and some stars cut out of typing paper,
with paper-clip hangers stuck through one point.

The smaller animals in the stuffed-toy menagerie-certainly not the
bear-are under the tree, approx-imating the animals at the manger.

The manger is a roasting pan, with a green dinosaur inside.

"How many of these people who're coming do I know?" I say.

"You know ...  you know .  .  ." Howard is gnawing his lip.  He takes
another sip of wine, looks puzzled.  "Well, you know Koenig," he says.
"Koenig got married.  You'll like his wife.  They're coming separately,
because he's coming straight from work.  You know the Miners.  You
know-you'll really like Lightfoot, the new guy in the Philosophy
Department.  Don't rush to tell him that you're tied up with somebody.
He's a nice guy, and he deserves a chance."

"I don't think I'm tied up with anybody," I say.

"Have a drink-you'll feel better," Howard says.  "Honest to God.  I was
getting depressed this afternoon.  When the light starts to sink so
early, I never can figure out what I'm responding to.  I gray over, like
the after-noon, you know?"

"OK, I'll have a drink," I say.

"The very fat man who's coming is in A.A.," Howard says, taking a glass
off the bookshelf and pouring some wine into it.  "These were just
washed yesterday," he says.  He hands me the glass of wine.

"The fat guy's name is Dwight Kule.  The Jansons, who are also coming,
introduced us to him.  He's a bachelor.  Used to live in the Apple.
Mystery man.  Nobody knows.  He's got a computer terminal in his house
that's hooked up to some mysterious office in New York.

Tells funny jokes.  They come at him all day over the computer."

"Who are the Jansons?"

"You met her.  The woman whose lover broke into the house and did
caricatures of her and her husband all over the walls after she broke
off with him.  One amazing artist, from what I heard.  You know about
that, right?"

"No," I say, smiling.  "What does she look like?"

"You met her at the races with us.  Tall.  Red hair."

"Oh, that woman.  Why didn't you say so?"

"I told you about the lover, right?"

"I didn't know she had a lover."

"Well, fortunately she had told her husband, and they'd decided to patch
it up, so when they came home and saw the walls-I mean, I get the idea
that it was rather graphic.  Not like stumbling upon hieroglyphics in a
cave or something.  Husband told it as a story on himself: going down to
the paint store and buying the darkest can of blue paint they had to do
the painting-over, because he wanted it done with-none of this
three-coats stuff." Howard has another sip of wine.  "You haven't met
her husband," he says.  "He's an anesthesiologist."

"What did her lover do?"

"He ran the music store.  He left town."

"Where did he go?"

"Montpelier."

"How do you find all this stuff out?"

"Ask.  Get told," Howard says.  "Then he was cleaning his gun in
Montpelier the other day, and it went off and he shot himself in the
foot.  Didn't do any real damage, though."

"It's hard to think of anything like that as poetic justice," I say. "So
are the Jansons happy again?"

"I don't know.  We don't see much of them," Howard says.  "We're not
really involved in any social whirl, you know.  You only visit during
the holidays, and that's when we give the annual party."

"Oh, hell-lo," Becky says, sweeping into the living room from the front
door, bringing the cold and her girlfriend Deirdre in with her.  Deirdre
is giggling, head averted.  "My friends!  My wonderful friends!" Becky
says, trotting past, hand waving madly.  She stops in the doorway, and
Deirdre collides with her.  Deirdre puts her hand up to her mouth to
muffle a yelp, then bolts past Becky into the kitchen.

"I can remember being that age," I say.

"I don't think I was ever that stupid," Howard says.

"A different thing happens with girls.  Boys don't talk to each other
all the time in quite the same intense way, do they?  I mean, I can
remember when it seemed that I never talked but that I was always
confiding some-thing."

"Confide something in me," Howard says, coming back from flipping the
Bach on the stereo.

"Girls just talk that way to other girls," I say, realizing he's
serious.

"Gidon Kremer," Howard says, clamping his hand over his heart.

"God-tell me that isn't beautiful."

"How did you find out so much about classical music?" I say.  "By asking
and getting told?"

"In New York," he says.  "Before I moved here.  Before L.A., even.  I
just started buying records and asking around.  Half the city is an
unofficial guide to classical music.  You can find out a lot in New
York." He pours more wine into his glass.  "Come on," he says.

"Confide something in me." In the kitchen, one of the girls turns on the
radio, and rock and roll, played low, crosses paths with Bach's violin.
The music goes lower still.  Deirdre and Becky are laughing.

I take a drink, sigh, and nod at Howard.  "When I was in San Francisco
last June to see my friend Susan, I got in a night before I said I
would, and she wasn't in town," I say.  "I was going to surprise her,
and she was the one who surprised me.  It was no big deal.  I was tired
from the flight and by the time I got there I was happy to have the
excuse to check into a hotel, because if she'd been there we'd have
talked all night.  Acting like Becky with Deirdre, right?"

Howard rolls his eyes and nods.

"So I went to a hotel and checked in and took a bath, and suddenly I got
my second wind and I thought what the hell, why not go to the restaurant
right next to the hotel-or in the hotel, I guess it was-and have a great
dinner, since it was supposed to be such a great place."

"What restaurant?"

"Lltoile."

"Yeah," he says.  "What happened?"

"I'm telling you what happened.  You have to be patient.  Girls always
know to be patient with other girls."

He nods yes again.

"They were very nice to me.  It was about three-quarters full.  They put
me at a table, and the minute I sat down I looked up and there was a man
on a banquette across the room from me.  He was looking at me, and I was
looking at him, and it was almost impossible not to keep eye contact. It
just hit both of us, obviously.  And almost on the other side of the
curve of the banquette was a woman, who wasn't terribly attractive.  She
had on a wedding ring.  He didn't.

They were eating in silence.  I had to force myself to look somewhere
else, but when I did look up he'd look up, or he'd already be looking
up.  At some point he left the table.  I saw that in my peripheral
vision, when I had my head turned to hear a conversation on my right and
I was chewing my food.  Then after a while he paid the check and the two
of them left.  She walked ahead of him, and he didn't seem to be with
her.  I mean, he walked quite far behind her.  But naturally he didn't
turn his head.  And after they left I thought, That's amazing.  It was
really like kinetic energy.  just wham.  So I had coffee, and then I
paid my check, and when I was leaving I was walking up the steep steps
to the street and the waiter came up behind me and said, 'Excuse me.  I
don't know what I should do, but I didn't want to embarrass you in the
restaurant.  The gentleman left this for you on his way out." And he
handed me an envelope.  I was pretty taken aback, but I just said,
'Thank you,' and continued up the steps, and when I got outside I looked
around.  He wasn't there, naturally.  So I opened the envelope, and his
business card was inside.  He was one of the partners in a law firm. And
underneath his name he had written, 'Who are you?  Please call.  ' "

Howard is smiling.

"So I put it in my purse and I walked for a few blocks, and I thought,
Well, what for, really?  Some man in San Francisco?  For what?  A
one-night stand?  I went back to the hotel, and when I walked in the man
behind the desk stood up and said, 'Excuse me.

Were you just eating dinner?" and I said, 'A few minutes ago,' and he
said, 'Someone left this for you." It was a hotel envelope.  In the
elevator on the way to my room, I opened it, and it was the same
business card, with 'Please call' written on it."

"I hope you called," Howard says.

"I decided to sleep on it.  And in the morning I decided not to.  But I
kept the card.  And then at the end of August I was walking in the East
Village, and a couple obviously from out of town were walking in front
of me, and a punk kid got up off the stoop where he was sitting and said
to them, 'Hey--I want my picture taken with you." I went into a store,
and when I came out the couple and the punk kid were all laughing
together, holding these Polaroid snaps that another punk had taken.  It
was a joke, not a scam.  The man gave the kid a dollar for one of the
pictures, and they walked off, and the punk sat back down on the stoop.
So I walked back to where he was sitting, and I said, 'Could you do me a
real favor?  Could I have my picture taken with you, too?"

"

"What?" Howard says.  The violin is soaring.  He gets up and turns the
music down a notch.  He looks over his shoulder.  "Yeah?" he says.  "The
kid wanted to know why I wanted it, and I told him because it would
upset my boyfriend.  So he said yeah-his face lit up when I said
that-but that he really would appreciate two bucks for more film.  So I
gave it to him, and then he put his arm around me and really mugged for
the camera.  He was like a human boa constrictor around my neck, and he
did a Mick Jagger pout.  I couldn't believe how well the picture came
out.  And that night, on the white part on the bottom I wrote, 'I'm
somebody whose name you still don't know.  Are you going to find me?"
and I put it in an envelope and mailed it to him in San Francisco.  I
don't know why I did it.  I mean, it doesn't seem like something I'd
ever do, you know?"

"But how will he find you?" Howard says.

"I've still got his card," I say, shrugging my good shoulder toward my
purse on the floor.

"You don't know what you're going to do?" Howard says.  "I haven't
thought about it in months."

"How is that possible?"

"How is it possible that somebody can go into a restaurant and be hit by
lightning and the other person is, too?  It's like a bad movie or
some-thing."

"Of course it can happen," Howard says.  "Seriously, what are you going
to do?"

"Let some time pass.  Maybe send him something he can follow up on if he
still wants to."

"That's an amazing story," Howard says.

"Sometimes-well, I hadn't thought about it in a while, but at the end of
summer, after I mailed the picture, I'd be walking along or doing
what-ever I was doing and this feeling would come over me that he was
thinking

about me."

Howard looks at me strangely.  "He probably was," he says.  "He doesn't
know how to get in touch with you."

"You used to be a screenwriter.  What should he do?"

"Couldn't he figure out from the background that it was the Village?"

"I'm not sure."

"If he could, he could put an ad in the Voice."

"I think it was just a car in the background."

"Then you've got to give him something else," Howard says.

"For what?  You want your sister to have a one-night stan ?

"You make him sound awfully attractive," Howard says.

"Yeah, but what if he's a rat?  It could be argued that he was just
cocky, and that he was pretty sure that I'd respond.  Don't you think?"

"I think you should get in touch with him.  Do it in some amusing way if
you want, but I wouldn't let him slip away."

"I never had him.  And from the looks of it he has a wife."

"You don't know that."

"No," I say.  "I guess I don't know."

"Do it," Howard says.  "I think you need this," and when he speaks he
whispers-just what a girl would do.  He nods his head yes.  "Do it," he
whispers again.  Then he turns his head abruptly, to see what I am
staring at.  It is Kate, wrapped in a towel after her bath, trailing the
long cord of the extension phone with her.

"It's Frank," she whispers, her hand over the mouthpiece.  "He says he's
going to come to the party after all."

I look at her dumbly, surprised.  I'd almost forgotten that Frank knew I
was here.  He's only been here once with me, and it was clear that he
didn't like Howard and Kate.  Why would he suddenly decide to come to
the party?

She shrugs, hand still over the mouthpiece.  "Come here," she whispers.

I get up and start toward the phone.  "If it's not an awful imposition,"
she says, "maybe he could bring Deirdre's father with him.  He lives
just around the corner from you in the city."

"Deirdre's father?" I say.

"Here," she whispers.  "He'll hang up."

"Hi, Frank," I say, talking into the phone.  My voice sounds high,
false.  "I miss you," Frank says.  "I've got to get out of the city.  I
invited myself.  I assume since it's an annual invitation it's all
right, right?"

"Oh, of course," I say.  "Can you just hold on for one second?"

"Sure," he says.

I cover the mouthpiece again.  Kate is still standing next to me.

"I was talking to Deirdre's mother in the bathroom," Kate whispers. "She
says that her ex-husband's not really able to drive yet, and that
Deirdre has been crying all day.  If he could just give him a lift, they
could take the train back, but-"

"Frank?  This is sort of crazy, and I don't quite understand the
logistics, but I'm going to put Kate on.  We need for you to do us a
favor."

"Anything," he says.  "As long as it's not about Mrs. Joan
Wilde-Younge's revision of a revision of a revision of a spiteful will."
I hand the phone to Kate.  "Frank?" she says.

"You're about to make a new friend.  Be very nice to him, because he
just had his gallbladder out, and he's got about as much strength as
seaweed.  He lives on Seventy-ninth Street.

I am in the car with Howard, huddled in my coat and the poncho.  We are
on what seems like an ironic mission.  We are going to the 7Eleven to
get ice.  The moon is shining brightly, and patches of snow shine like
stepping-stones in the field on my side of the car.

Howard puts on his directional signal suddenly and turns, and I look
over my shoulder to make sure we're not going to be hit from behind.

"Sorry," he says.  "My mind was wandering.  Not that it's the bestmarked
road to begin with."

Miles Davis is on the tape deck-the very quiet kind of Miles Davis.

"We've got a second for a detour," he says.

"Why are we detouring?"

"Just for a second," Howard says.

"It's freezing," I say, dropping my chin to speak the words so my throat
will warm up for a second.  I raise my head.  My clavicle is colder.
"What you said about kinetic energy made me think about doing this,"
Howard says.  "You can confide in me and I can confide in you, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

"This," he says, turning onto property marked NO TRESPASSING.  The road
is quite rutted where he turns onto it, but as it begins to weave up the
hill it smooths out a little.  He is driving with both hands gripping
the wheel hard, sitting forward in the seat as if the extra inch, plus
the brights, will help him see more clearly.

The road levels off, and to our right is a pond.  It is not frozen, but
ice clings to the sides, like scum in an aquarium.  Howard clicks out
the tape, and we sit there in the cold and silence.  He turns off the
ignition.

"There was a dog here last week," he says.

I look at him.

"Lots of dogs in the country, right?" he says.

"What are we doing here?" I say, drawing up my knees.

"I fell in love with somebody," he says.

I had been looking at the water, but when he spoke I turned and looked
at him again.

"I didn't think she'd be here," he says quietly.  "I didn't even really
think that the dog would be here.  I just felt drawn to the place, I
guess-that's all.  I wanted to see if I could get some of that feeling
back if I came here.  You'd get it back if you called that man, or wrote
him.  It was real.  I could tell when you were talking to me that it was
real."

"Howard, did you say that you fell in love with somebody?  When?"

"A few weeks ago.  The semester's over.  She's graduating.  She's gone
in January.  A graduate student-like that?  A twenty-two-year-old kid.
One of my pal Lightfoot's philosophy students."

Howard lets go of the wheel.

When he turned the ignition off, he had continued to grip the wheel. Now
his hands are on his thighs.  We both seem to be examining his hands. At
least, I am looking at his hands so I do not stare into his face, and he
has dropped his eyes.

"It was all pretty crazy," he says.  "There was so much passion, so
fast.

Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I don't think I let on to her how much I
cared.  She saw that I cared, but she ...  she didn't know my heart kept
stopping, you know?  We drove out here one day and had a picnic in the
car-it would have been your nightmare picnic, it was so cold-and a dog
came wandering up to the car.  Big dog.

Right over there."

I look out my window, almost expecting that the dog may still be there.

"There were three freezing picnics.  This dog turned up at the last one.

She liked the dog--it looked like a mutt, with maybe a lot of golden
retriever mixed in.  I thought it was inviting trouble for us to open
the car door, because it didn't look like a particularly friendly dog.
But she was right and I was wrong.

Her name is Robin, by the way.  The minute she opened the door, the dog
wagged its tail.  We took a walk with it." He juts his chin forward. "Up
that path there," he says.  "We threw rocks for it.  A sure crowd
pleaser with your average lost-in-the-woods American dog, right?  I
started kidding around, calling the dog Spot.  When we were back at the
car, Robin patted its head and closed the car door, and it backed off,
looking very sad.  Like we were really ruining its day, to leave.  As I
was pulling out, she rolled down the window and said, 'Good-bye, Rover,'
and I swear its face came alive.  I think his name really was Rover."

"What did you do?" I say.

"You mean about the dog, or about the two of us?"

I shake my head.  I don't know which I mean.

"I backed out, and the dog let us go.  It just stood there.  I got to
look at it in the rearview mirror until the road dipped and it was out
of sight.

Robin didn't look back."

"What are you going to do?"

"Get ice," he says, starting the ignition.  "But that isn't what you
meant, either, is it?"

He backs up, and as we swing around toward our own tire tracks I turn my
head again, but there is no dog there, watching us in the moonlight.

Back at the house, as Howard goes in front of me up the flagstone
pathway, I walk slower than I usually do in the cold, trying to give
myself time to puzzle out what he makes me think of just then.  It comes
to me at the moment when my attention is diverted by a patch of ice I'm
terrified of slipping on.  He reminds me of that courthouse figure-I
don't know what it's called-the statue of a blindfolded woman holding
the scales of justice.

Bag of ice in the left hand, bag of ice in the right-but there's no
blindfold.

The door is suddenly opened, and what Howard and I see before us is
Koenig, his customary bandanna tied around his head, smiling welcome,
and behind him, in the glare of the already-begun party, the woman with
red hair holding Todd, who clutches his green dinosaur in one hand and
rubs his sleepy, crying face with the other.  Todd makes a lunge-not
really toward his father but toward wider spaces-and I'm conscious, all
at once, of the cigarette smoke swirling and of the heat of the house,
there in the entrance way, that turn the bitter-cold outdoor air silver
as it comes flooding in.  Messiah-Kate's choice of perfect music for the
occasion-isn't playing; someone has put on Judy Garland, and we walk in
just as she is singing, "That's where you'll find me."

The words hang in the air like smoke.

"Hello, hello, hello, hello," Becky calls, dangling one kneesocked leg
over the balcony as Deirdre covers her face and hides behind her.  "To
both of you, just because you're here, from me to you: a million-a
trillion-hellos.

Put Yourself in My Shoes By: RAYMOND CARVER

The telephone rang while he was running the vacuum cleaner.  He had
worked his way through the apartment and was doing the living room,
using the nozzle attachment to get at the cat hairs between the
cushions.  He stopped and listened and then switched off the vacuum.  He
went to answer the telephone.

"Hello," he said.  "Myers here."

"Myers," she said.  "How are you?  What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he said.  "Hello, Paula."

"There's an office party this afternoon," she said.  "You're invited.

Dick invited you."

"I don't think I can come," Myers said.

"Dick just this minute said get that old man of yours on the phone.  Get
him down here for a drink.  Get him out of his ivory tower and back into
the real world for a while.  Dick's funny when he's drinking.  Myers?"

"I heard you," Myers said.

Myers used to work for Dick.  Dick always talked of going to Paris to
write a novel, and when Myers had quit to write a novel, Dick had said
he would watch for Myers's name on the best-seller list.

"I can't come now," Myers said.

"We found out some horrible news this morning," Paula continued, as if
she had not heard him.  "You remember Larry Gudinas.  He was still here
when you came to work.  He helped out on science books for a while, and
then they put him in the field, and then they canned him?  We heard this
morning he committed suicide.  He shot himself in the mouth.  Can you
imagine?  Myers?"

"I heard you," Myers said.  He tried to remember Larry Gudinas and
recalled a tall, stooped man with wire,frame glasses, bright ties, and a
receding hairline.  He could imagine the jolt, the head snapping back.

"Jesus," Myers said.  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

"Come down to the office, honey, all right?" Paula said.

"Everybody is just talking and having some drinks and listening to
Christmas music.

Come down," she said.

Myers could hear it all at the other end of the line.  "I don't want to
come down," he said.  "Paula?" A few snowflakes drifted past the window
as he watched.  He rubbed his fingers across the glass and then began to
write his name on the glass as he waited.

"What?  I heard," she said.  "All right," Paula said.  "Well, then, why
don't we meet at Voyles for a drink?  Myers?"

"OK," he said.  "Voyles.  All right."

"Everybody here will be disappointed you didn't come," she said.

"Dick especially.  Dick admires you, you know.  He does.  He's told me
so.

He admires your nerve.  He said if he had your nerve he would have quit
years ago.  Dick said it takes nerve to do what you did.

Myers?"

"I'm right here," Myers said.  "I think I can get my car started.  If I
can't start it, I'll call you back."

"All right," she said.  "I'll see you at Voyles.  I'll leave here in
five minutes if I don't hear from you."

"Say hello to Dick for me," Myers said.

"I will," Paula said.  "He's talking about you."

Myers put the vacuum cleaner away.  He walked down the two flights and
went to his car, which was in the last stall and covered with snow.  He
got in, worked the pedal a number of times, and tried the starter.  It
turned over.  He kept the pedal down.

As he drove, he looked at the people who hurried along the sidewalks
with shopping bags.  He glanced at the gray sky, filled with flakes, and
at the tall buildings with snow in the crevices and on the window
ledges.  He tried to see everything, save it for later.  He was between
stories, and he felt despicable.  He found Voyles, a small bar on a
corner next to a men's clothing store.

He parked in back and went inside.  He sat at the bar for a time and
then carried a drink over to a little table near the door.

When Paula came in she said, "Merry Christmas," and he got up and gave
her a kiss on the cheek.  He held a chair for her.

He said, "Scotch?"

"Scotch," she said, then "Scotch over ice" to the girl who came for her
order.

Paula picked up his drink and drained the glass.

"I'll have another one, too," Myers said to the girl.  "I don't like
this place," he said after the girl had moved away.

"What's wrong with this place?" Paula said.  "We always come here."

"I .  just don't like it," he said.  "Let's have a drink and then go
someplace J else.  "

"Whatever you want," she said.

The girl arrived with the drinks.  Myers paid her, and he and Paula
touched glasses.

Myers stared at her.

"Dick says hello," she said.

Myers nodded.

Paula sipped her drink.  "How was your day today?"

Myers shrugged.

"What'd you do?" she said.

"Nothing," he said.  "I vacuumed."

She touched his hand.  "Everybody said to tell you hi." They finished
their drinks.

"I have an idea," she said.  "Why don't we stop and visit the Morgans
for a few minutes.  We've never met them, for God's sake, and they've
been back for months.  We could just drop by and say hello, we're the
Myerses.

Besides, they sent us a card.  They asked us to stop by during the
holidays.

They invited us.  I don't want to go home," she finally said and fished
in her purse for a cigarette.

Myers recalled setting the furnace and turning out all the lights before
he had left.  And then he thought of the snow drifting past the window.

"What about that insulting letter they sent telling us they heard we
were keeping a cat in the house?" he said.

"They've forgotten about that by now," she said.  "That wasn't anything
serious, anyway.  Oh, let's do it, Myers!  Let's go by."

"We should call first if we're going to do anything like that," he said.

"No," she said.  "That's part of it.  Let's not call.  Let's just go
knock on the door and say hello, we used to live here.  All right?
Myers?"

"I think we should call first," he said.

"It's the holidays," she said, getting up from her chair.  "Come on,
baby.  " She took his arm and they went out into the snow.  She
suggested they take her car and pick up his car later.  He opened the
door for her and then went around to the passenger's side.

Something took him when he saw the lighted windows, saw snow on the
roof, saw the station wagon in the driveway.  The curtains were open and
Christmas tree lights blinked at them from the window.

They got out of the car.  He held her elbow as they stepped over a pile
of snow and started up the walk to the front porch.  They had gone a few
steps when a large bushy dog hurtled around the corner of the garage and
headed straight for Myers.

"Oh, God," he said, hunching, stepping back, bringing his hands up.

He slipped on the walk, his coat flapped, and he fell onto the frozen
grass with the dread certainty that the dog would go for his throat. The
dog growled once and then began to sniff Myers's coat.

Paula picked up a handful of snow and threw it at the dog.  The porch
light came on, the door opened, and a man called, "Buzzy!"

Myers got to his feet and brushed himself off.

"What's going on?" the man in the doorway said.  "Who is it?

Buzzy, come here, fellow.  Come here!"

"We're the Myerses," Paula said.  "We came to wish you a merry
Christmas.  "

"The Myerses?" the man in the doorway said.  "Get out!  Get in the
garage, Buzzy.  Get, get!  It's the Myerses," the man said to the woman
who stood behind him trying to look past his shoulder.  "The Myerses,"
she said.  "Well, ask them in, ask them in, for heaven's sake." She
stepped onto the porch and said, "Come in, please, it's freezing.

I'm Hilda Morgan and this is Edgar.  We're happy to meet you.

Please come in.  1) They all shook hands quickly on the front porch.
Myers and Paula stepped inside and Edgar Morgan shut the door.  "Let me
have your coats.  Take off your coats," Edgar Morgan said.  "You're all
right?" he said to Myers, observing him closely, and Myers nodded.  "I
knew that dog was crazy, but he's never pulled anything like this.

I saw it.  I was looking out the window when it happened."

This remark seemed odd to Myers, and he looked at the man.  Edgar Morgan
was in his forties, nearly bald, and was dressed in slacks and a sweater
and was wearing leather slippers.

"His name is Buzzy," Hilda Morgan announced and made a face.

"It's Edgar's dog.  I can't have an animal in the house myself, but
Edgar bought this dog and promised to keep him outside."

"He sleeps in the garage," Edgar Morgan said.  "He begs to come in the
house, but we can't allow it, you know." Morgan chuckled.

"But sit down, sit down, if you can find a place with this clutter.
Hilda, dear, move some of those things off the couch so Mr.  and Mrs.
Myers can sit down."

Hilda Morgan cleared the couch of packages, wrapping paper, scissors, a
box of ribbons, bows.  She put everything on the floor.

Myers noticed Morgan staring at him again, not smiling now.

Paula said, "Myers, there's something in your hair, dearest."

Myers put a hand up to the back of his head and found a twig and put it
in his pocket.

"That dog," Morgan said and chuckled again.  "We were just having a hot
drink and wrapping some last-minute gifts.  Will you join us in a cup of
holiday cheer?  What would you like?"

"Anything is fine," Paula said.

"Anything," Myers said.  "We wouldn't have interrupted."

"Nonsense," Morgan said.  "We've been ...  very curious about the
Myerses.  You'll have a hot drink, sit?"

"That's fine," Myers said.

"Mrs.  Myers?" Morgan said.

Paula nodded.

"Two hot drinks coming up," Morgan said.  "Dear, I think we're ready
too, aren't we?" he said to his wife.  "This is certainly an occasion."

He took her cup and went out to the kitchen.  Myers heard the cup_ board
door bang and heard a muffled word that sounded like a curse.  Myers
blinked.  He looked at Hilda Morgan, who was settling herself into a
chair at the end of the couch.

"Sit down over here, you two," Hilda Morgan said.  She patted the arm of
the couch.  "Over here, by the fire.  We'll have Mr.  Morgan build it up
again when he returns." They sat.  Hilda Morgan clasped her hands in her
lap and leaned forward slightly, examining Myers's face.

The living room was as he remembered it, except that on the wall behind
Hilda Morgan's chair he saw three small framed prints.  In one print a
man in a vest and frock coat was tipping his hat to two ladies who held
parasols.  All this was happening on a broad concourse with horses and
carriages.

"How was Germany?" Paula said.  She sat on the edge of the cushion and
held her purse on her knees.

"We loved Germany," Edgar Morgan said, coming in from the kitchen with a
tray and four large cups.  Myers recognized the cups.

"Have you been to Germany, Mrs.  Myers?" Morgan asked.  "We want to go,"
Paula said.  "Don't we, Myers?  Maybe next year, next summer.  Or else
the year after.  As soon as we can afford it.

Maybe as soon as Myers sells something.  Myers writes."

"I should think a trip to Europe would be very beneficial to a writer,"
Edgar Morgan said.  He put the cups into coasters.

"Please help yourselves."

He sat down in a chair across from his wife and gazed at Myers.

"You said in your letter you were taking off work to write."

"That's true," Myers said and sipped his drink.

"He writes something almost every day," Paula said.

"Is that a fact?" Morgan said.  "That's impressive.  What did you write
today, may I ask?"

"Nothing," Myers said.

"It's the holidays," Paula said.

"You must be proud of him, Mrs.  Myers," Hilda Morgan said.  "I am,"
Paula said.

"I'm happy for you," Hilda Morgan said.

"I heard something the other day that might interest you," Edgar Morgan
said.  He took out some tobacco and began to fill a pipe.

Myers lighted a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray, then dropped
the match behind the couch.

"It's a horrible story, really.  But maybe you could use it, Mr. Myers."

Morgan struck a flame and drew on the pipe.  "Grist for the mill, you
know, and all that," Morgan said and laughed and shook the match.  "This
fellow was about my age or so.  He was a colleague for a couple of
years.  We knew each other a little, and we had good friends in common.
Then he moved out, accepted a position at the university down the way.
Well, you know how these things go sometimes-the fellow had an affair
with one of his students."

Mrs.  Morgan made a disapproving noise with her tongue.  She reached
down for a small package that was wrapped in green paper and began to
affix a red bow to the paper.  "According to all accounts, it was a
torrid affair that lasted for some months," Morgan continued.  "Right up
until a short time ago, in fact.  A week ago, to be exact.  On that
day-it was in the evening-he announced to his wife-they'd been married
for twenty years-he announced to his wife that he wanted a divorce.  You
can imagine how the fool woman took it, coming out of the blue like
that, so to speak.  There was quite a row.  The whole family got into
it.

She ordered him out of the house then and there.

But just as the fellow was leaving, his son threw a can of tomato soup
at him and hit him in the forehead.  It caused a concussion that sent
the man to the hospital.  His condition is quite serious." Morgan drew
on his pipe and gazed at Myers.

"I've never heard such a story," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "Edgar, that's
disgusting.  "

"Horrible," Paula said.

Myers grinned.

"Now there's a tale for you, Mr.  Myers," Morgan said, catching the grin
and narrowing his eyes.  "Think of the story you'd have if you could get
inside that man's head."

"Or her head," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "The wife's.  Think of her story.  To
be betrayed in such fashion after twenty years.  Think how she must
feel."

"But imagine what the poor boy must be going through," Paula said.

"Imagine, having almost killed his father."

"Yes, that's all true," Morgan said.  "But here's something I don't
think any of you has thought about.  Think about this for a moment.  Mr.
Myers, are you listening?  Tell me what you think of this.  Put yourself
in the shoes of that eighteen-year-old coed who fell in love with a
married man.  Think about her for a moment, and then you see the
possibilities for your story."

Morgan nodded and leaned back in the chair with a satisfied expression.

"I'm afraid I don't have any sympathy for her," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"I can imagine the sort she is.  We all know what she's like, that kind
preys on older men.  I don't have any sympathy for him, either-the man,
the chaser, no, I don't.  I'm afraid my sympathies in this case are
entirely with the wife and son."

"It would take a Tolstoy to tell it and tell it right," Morgan said. "No
less than a Tolstoy.  Mr.  Myers, the water is still hot."

"Time to go," Myers said.

He stood up and threw his cigarette into the fire.

"Stay," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "We haven't gotten acquainted yet.

You don't know how we have ...  speculated about you.  Now that we're
together at last, stay a little while.  It's such a pleasant surprise."

"We appreciated the card and your note," Paula said.

"The card?" Mrs.  Morgan said.

Myers sat down.

"We decided not to mail any cards this year," Paula said.  "I didn't get
around to it when I should have, and it seemed futile to do it at the
last minute.  "

"You'll have another one, Mrs. Myers?" Morgan said, standing in front of
her now with his hand on her cup.  "You'll set an example for your
husband."

"It was good," Paula said.  "It warms you."

"Right," Morgan said.  "It warms you.  That's right.  Dear, did you hear
Mrs.  Myers?  It warms you.  That's very good.  Mr. Myers?" Morgan said
and waited.  "You'll join us?"

"All right," Myers said and let Morgan take the cup.

The dog began to whine and scratch at the door.

"That dog.  I don't know what's gotten into that dog," Morgan said.  He
went to the kitchen and this time Myers distinctly heard Morgan curse as
he slammed the kettle onto a burner.

Mrs.  Morgan began to hum.  She picked up a half-wrapped package, cut a
piece of tape, and began sealing the paper.

Myers lighted a cigarette.  He dropped the match in his coaster.

He looked at his watch.

Mrs.  Morgan raised her head.  "I believe I hear singing," she said. She
listened.  She rose from her chair and went to the front window.  "It is
singing.  Edgar!" she called.

Myers and Paula went to the window.

"I haven't seen carolers in years," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "What is it?"
Morgan said.  He had the tray and cups.  "What is it?

What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, dear.  It's carolers.  There they are over there,
across the street," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"Mrs.  Myers," Morgan said, extending the tray.  "Mr.  Myers.

Dear."

"Thank you," Paula said.

"Muchas gracias," Myers said.

Morgan put the tray down and came back to the window with his cup.

Young people were gathered on the walk in front of the house across the
street, boys and girls with an older, taller boy who wore a muffler and
a topcoat.  Myers could see the faces at the window across the way-the
Ardreys-and when the carolers had finished, Jack Ardrey came to the door
and gave something to the older boy.  The group moved on down the walk,
flashlights bobbing, and stopped in front of another house.

"They won't come here," Mrs.  Morgan said after a time.  "What?

Why won't they come here?" Morgan said and turned to his wife.

"What a goddamned silly thing to say!  Why won't they come here?"

"I just know they won't," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"And I say they will," Morgan said.  "Mrs.  Myers, are those carolers
going to come here or not?  What do you think?  Will they return to
bless this house?  We'll leave it up to you."

Paula pressed closer to the window.  But the carolers were far down the
street now.  She did not answer.

"Well, now that all the excitement is over," Morgan said and went over
to his chair.  He sat down, frowned, and began to fill his pipe.  Myers
and Paula went back to the couch.  Mrs.  Morgan moved away from the
window at last.  She sat down.  She smiled and gazed into her cup.

Then she put the cup down and began to weep.

Morgan gave his handkerchief to his wife.  He looked at Myers.

Presently Morgan began to drum on the arm of his chair.  Myers moved his
feet.

Paula looked into her purse for a cigarette.  "See what you've caused?"

Morgan said as he stared at something on the carpet near Myers's shoes.

Myers gathered himself to stand.

"Edgar, get them another drink," Mrs.  Morgan said as she dabbed at her
eyes.  She used the handkerchief on her nose.  "I want them to hear
about Mrs.  Attenborough.  Mr.  Myers writes.  I think he might
appreciate this.

We'll wait until you come back before we begin the story."

Morgan collected the cups.  He carried them into the kitchen.

Myers heard dishes clatter, cupboard doors bang.  Mrs.  Morgan looked at
Myers and smiled faintly.

"We have to go," Myers said.  "We have to go.  Paula, get your coat."

"No, no, we insist, Mr.  Myers," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "We want you to
hear about Mrs.  Attenborough, poor Mrs.  Attenborough.  You might
appreciate this story, too, Mrs.  Myers.  This is your chance to see how
your husband's mind goes to work on raw material."

Morgan came back and passed out the hot drinks.  He sat down quickly.

"Tell them about Mrs.  Attenborough, dear," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"That dog almost tore my leg off," Myers said and was at once surprised
at his words.  He put his cup down.

"Oh, come, it wasn't that bad," Morgan said.  "I saw it."

"You know writers," Mrs.  Morgan said to Paula.  "They like to
exaggerate.  "

"The power of the pen and all that," Morgan said.

"That's it," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "Bend your pen into a plowshare, Mr.
Myers.  "

"We'll let Mrs.  Morgan tell the story of Mrs. Attenborough," Morgan
said, ignoring Myers, who stood up at that moment.  "Mrs.  Morgan was
intimately connected with the affair.

I've already told you of the fellow who was knocked for a loop by a can
of soup." Morgan chuckled.  "We'll let Mrs.  Morgan tell this one."

"You tell it, dear.  And Mr.  Myers, you listen closely," Mrs.  Morgan
said.

We have to go," Myers said.  "Paula, let's go."

"Talk about honesty," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"Let's talk about it," Myers said.  Then he said, "Paula, are you
coming?"

"I want you to hear this story," Morgan said, raising his voice.

"You will insult Mrs.  Morgan, you will insult us both, if you don't
listen to this story." Morgan clenched his pipe.

"Myers, please," Paula said anxiously.  "I want to hear it.  Then we'll
go.

Myers?  Please, honey, sit down for another minute."

Myers looked at her.  She moved her fingers, as if signaling him.

He hesitated, and then he sat next to her.

Mrs.  Morgan began.  "One afternoon in Munich, Edgar and I went to the
Dortmunder Museum.  There was a Bauhaus exhibit that fall, and Edgar
said the heck with it, let's take a day off-he was doing his research,
you see the heck with it, let's take a day off.  We caught a tram and
rode across Munich to the museum.  We spent several hours viewing the
exhibit and revisiting some of the galleries to pay homage to a few of
our favorites amongst the old masters.  just as we were to leave, I
stepped into the ladies' room.  I left my purse.  In the purse was
Edgar's monthly check from home that had come the day before and a
hundred and twenty dollars cash that I was going to deposit along with
the check.  I also had my identification cards in the purse.  I did not
miss my purse until we arrived home.  Edgar immediately telephoned the
museum authorities.  But while he was talking I saw a taxi out front.  A
well-dressed woman with white hair got out.  She was a stout woman and
she was carrying two purses.  I called for Edgar and went to the door.
The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Attenborough, gave me my purse, and
explained that she too had visited the museum that afternoon and while
in the ladies' room had noticed a purse in the trash can.  She of course
had opened the purse in an effort to trace the owner.  There were the
identification cards and such giving our local address.  She immediately
left the museum and took a taxi in order to deliver the purse herself.

Edgar's check was there, but the money, the one hundred twenty dollars,
was gone.  Nevertheless, I was grateful the other things were intact. It
was nearly four o'clock and we asked the woman to stay for tea.  She sat
down, and after a little while she began to tell us about herself.  She
had been born and reared in Australia, had married young, had had three
children, all sons, been widowed, and still lived in Australia with two
of her sons.  They raised sheep and had more than twenty thousand acres
of land for the sheep to run in, and many drovers and shearers and such
who worked for them at certain times of the year.  When she came to our
home in Munich, she was then on her way to Australia from England, where
she had been to visit her youngest son, who was a barrister.

She was returning to Australia when we met her," Mrs.  Morgan said. "She
was seeing some of the world in the process.  She had many places yet to
visit on her itinerary."

"Come to the point, dear," Morgan said.

"Yes.  Here is what happened, then.  Mr.  Myers, I'll go right to the
climax, as you writers say.  Suddenly, after we had had a very pleasant
conversation for an hour, after this woman had told about herself and
her adventurous life Down Under, she stood up to go.

As she started to pass me her cup, her mouth flew open, the cup dropped,
and she fell across our couch and died.  Died.  Right in our living
room.  It was the most shocking moment in our lives."

Morgan nodded solemnly.

"God," Paula said.

"Fate sent her to die on the couch in our living room in Germany," Mrs.
Morgan said.

Myers began to laugh.  "Fate ...  sent ...  her ...  to die ...  in ...
your ...  living ...  room?" he said between gasps.

"Is that funny, Sir?" Morgan said.  "Do you find that amusing?"

Myers nodded.  He kept laughing.  He wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve.

"I'm really sorry," he said.  "I can't help it.  That line 'Fate sent
her to die on the couch in our living room in Qermany." I'm sorry.  Then
what happened?"

he managed to say.  "I'd like to know what happened then."

"Mr.  Myers, we didn't know what to do," Mrs.  Morgan said.  "The shock
was terrible.  Edgar felt for her pulse, but there was no sign of life.

And she had begun to change color.  Her face and hands were turning
gray.

Edgar went to the phone to call someone.  Then he said, 'Open her purse,
see if you can find where she's staying." All the time averting my eyes
from the poor thing there on the couch, I took up her purse.  Imagine my
complete surprise and bewilderment, my utter bewilderment, when the
first thing I saw inside was my hundred twenty dollars, still fastened
with the paper clip.  I was never so astonished."

"And disappointed," Morgan said.  "Don't forget that.  It was a keen
disappointment.  " Myers giggled.

"If you were a real writer, as you say you are, Mr.  Myers, you would
not laugh," Morgan said as he got to his feet.  "You would not dare
laugh!

You would try to understand.  You would plumb the depths of that poor
soul's heart and try to understand.  But you are no writer, sir!" Myers
kept on giggling.

Morgan slammed his fist on the coffee table and the cups rattled in the
coasters.  "The real story lies right here, in this house, this very
living room, and it's time it was told!  The real story is here, Mr.
Myers," Morgan said.

He walked up and down over the brilliant wrapping paper that had
unrolled and now lay spread across the carpet.  He stopped to glare at
Myers, who was holding his forehead and shaking with laughter.

"Consider this for a possibility, Mr.  Myers!" Morgan screamed.
Consider!  A friend-let's call him Mr.  X-is friends with ...  with Mr.
and Mrs. Y, as well as Mr.  and Mrs.  Z.  Mr.  and Mrs.  Y and Mr.  and
Mrs.  Z do not know each other, unfortunately.  I say unfortunately
because if they had known each other this story would not exist because
it would never have taken place.  Now, Mr.  X learns that Mr.  and Mrs.
Y are going to Germany for a year and need someone to occupy their house
during the time they are gone.  Mr.  and Mrs.  Z are looking for
suitable accommodations, and Mr.  X tells them he knows of just the
place.  But before Mr.  X can put Mr. and Mrs.  Z in touch with Mr.  and
Mrs.  Y, the Ys have to leave sooner than expected.  Mr.  X, being a
friend, is left to rent the house at his discretion to anyone, including
Mr.  and Mrs.  Y-1 mean Z.  Now, Mr.  and Mrs....  Z move into the house
and bring a cat with them that Mr.  and Mrs.  Y hear about later in a
letter from Mr.  X.  Mr.  and Mrs.  Z bring a cat into the house even
though the terms of the lease have expressly forbidden cats or other
animals in the house because of Mrs.  Y's asthma.  The real story, Mr.
Myers, lies in the situation I've just described.  Mr.  and Mrs. Z-1
mean Mr. and Mrs.  Y's moving into the Zs' house, invading the Zs'
house, if the truth is to be told.  Sleeping in the Zs' bed is one
thing, but unlocking the Zs' private closet and using their linen,
vandalizing the things found there, that was against the spirit and
letter of the lease.  And this same couple, the Zs, opened boxes of
kitchen utensils marked 'Don't Open." And broke dishes when it was
spelled out, spelled out in that same lease, that they were not to use
the owners', the Zs' personal, I emphasize personal, possessions."

Morgan's lips were white.  He continued to walk up and down on the
paper, stopping every now and then to look at Myers and emit little
puffing noises from his lips.

"And the bathroom things, dear-don't forget the bathroom things," Mrs.
Morgan said.  "It's bad enough using the Zs' blankets and sheets, but
when they also get into their bathroom things and go through the little
private things stored in the attic, a line has to be drawn."

"That's the real story, Mr.  Myers," Morgan said.  He tried to fill his
pipe.  His hands trembled and tobacco spilled onto the carpet.  "That's
the real story that is waiting to be written."

( 4And it doesn't need Tolstoy to tell it," Mrs.  Morgan said.

"It doesn't need Tolstoy," Morgan said.

Myers laughed.  He and Paula got up from the couch at the same time and
moved toward the door.  "Good night," Myers said merrily.

Morgan was behind him.  "If you were a real writer, Sir, you would put
that story into words and not pussyfoot around with it, either." Myers
just laughed.  He touched the doorknob.

"One other thing," Morgan said.  "I didn't intend to bring this up, but
in light of your behavior here tonight, I want to tell you that I'm
missing my two-volume set of Jazz at the Philharmonic.

Those records are of great sentimental value.  I bought them in 1955.
And now I insist you tell me what happened to them!"

"In all fairness, Edgar," Mrs.  Morgan said as she helped Paula on with
her coat, "after you took inventory of the records, you admitted you
couldn't recall the last time you had seen those records."

"But I am sure of it now," Morgan said.  "I am positive I saw those
records just before we left, and now, now I'd like this writer to tell
me exactly what he knows of their whereabouts.  Mr.  Myers?" But Myers
was already outdoors, and taking his wife by the hand, he hurried her
down the walk to the car.  They surprised Buzzy.  The dog yelped in what
seemed fear and then jumped to the side.  "I insist on knowing!" Morgan
called.  "I am waiting, sir!" Myers got Paula into the car and started
the engine.  He looked again at the couple on the porch.

Mrs.  Morgan waved, and then she and Edgar Morgan went back inside and
shut the door.

Myers pulled away from the curb.

"Those people are crazy," Paula said.

Myers patted her hand.

"They were scary," she said.

He did not answer.  Her voice seemed to come to him from a great
distance.  He kept driving.  Snow rushed at the windshield.  He was
silent and watched the road.  He was at the very end of a story.

The Night of the Magi By: LEO ROSTEN

When Mr.  Parkhill noticed that Miss Mitnick, Mr.  Bloom, and Mr. Kaplan
were absent and heard a mysterious humming beneath the ordinary sounds
which preceded the start of a class session, he realized that it was
indeed the last meeting of the year and that Christmas was but a few
days off.

Every grade in the American Night Preparatory School for Adults each
year presented a Christmas gift to its teacher.  By now, Mr.  Parkhill
was quite familiar with the ritual.  Several nights ago, there must have
been a concerted dunning of those who had not yet contributed to the
collection.

Now the Gift Committee was probably engaged in last-minute shopping in
Mickey Goldstein's Arcade, debating the propriety of a pair of pajamas,
examining the color combination of shirts and ties, arguing whether Mr.
Parkhill, in his heart of hearts, would prefer fleece-lined slippers to
onyx cuff links.

Mr.  Parkhill cleared his throat.  "We shall concentrate on spelling
tonight.  " The students smiled knowingly, stealing glances at the three
empty chairs, exchanging sly nods and soft chuckles.  Mrs.  Moskowitz
directed a question to Mrs.  Tomasic, but Mr.  Blattberg's fierce
"Shah!" murdered the words on her very lips.  Rochelle Goldberg reached
for a chocolate, giggling, but swallowed the sound instead of the sweet
the moment Mr.  Perez shot her a scathing rebuke.  "We shall try to
cover-forty words before recess!"

Not one stalwart flinched.

Mr.  Parkhill always gave the class a brisk spelling drill during the
last session before Christmas: that kept all the conspirators busy; it
dampened their excitement over what would soon transpire; it involved no
speeches or discussion during which the precious secret might be
betrayed; above all, a spelling drill relieved Mr. Parkhill from
employing a rash of ruses to conceal his embarrassment.  "Is everyone
ready?"

A chorus worthy of Messiah choraled assent.

"The first word is-'bananas."

" Murmurs trailed off, smiles expired, as "bananas" sprouted their
letters on the arms of the chairs.  " 'Romance' .  .  ."

Pens scratched and pencils crunched as "romance" joined "bananas."

"'Fought,' the past tense of 'fight' .  .  .  'fought."' Now all brows
tightened (nothing so frustrated the fledglings as the gruesome coupling
of g and h) while the scholars wrestled with "fought."

" 'Groaning' .  .  ." Mr.  Parkhill heard himself sigh.  The class
seemed incomplete without its stellar student, Miss Mitnick, and
bereaved without its unique one, Hyman Kaplan.

(Mr.  Kaplan had recently announced that Shakespeare's finest moments
came in that immortal tale of star-crossed lovers, A Room in Joliet.)  "
'Charming' .  .  .  'horses' Mr.  Parkhill's mind was not really on
charming horses.  He could not help feeling uneasy as he envisaged what
soon would occur.  The moment the recess bell rang, the entire class
would dash out the door.  The committee would be waiting in the
corridor.  The class would cross-examine them so loudly that Mr.
Parkhill would get a fairly good idea of what the present was.  And as
soon as the bell pealed its surcease, the throng would pour in from the
corridor, faces flushed, eyes aglitter, surrounding one member of the
committee (the one carrying the Christmas package) to conceal the
fateful parcel from their master's view.

The class would come to order with untypical celerity.  Then, just as
Mr.  Parkhill resumed the spelling lesson, the chairman would rise,
apologize for interrupting, approach Mr.  Parkhill's desk, place the
package upon it, and blare out the well-prepared felicitations.  Mr.
Parkhill would pretend to be overwhelmed by surprise; he would utter a
few halting phrases.  His flock would smile, grin, fidget until the
bravest among them would exclaim, "Open it!" or "Look inside the
present!  " Whereupon, Mr.  Parkhill would untie the elaborate ribbons,
remove the wrapping from the box, lift the top, and-as his students
burbled with pleasure-he would pluck the gift from its cradle,
exclaiming "It's beautiful!" or "I shall certainly put this to good
use!"

or (most popular of all) "It's just what I wanted!"

The class would burst into a squall of applause, to which he would
respond with renewed thanks and a stronger counterfeit of spontaneous
thanksgiving.  (It was not always easy for Mr. Parkhill to carry off the
feigned surprise; it was even harder for him to pretend he was bowled
over by pleasure: One year the committee, chairmanned by Mr.  David
Natkowitz, had given him a porcelain nymph-a pixy executing a fandango
despite the barometer in her right hand and the thermometer in her
left.)  As Mr. Parkhill's remarks concluded, and the class's Don't
mention it!'s and communal fervor trailed off, the spelling drill would
resume and the session would drag on until the final bell.

'Accept' called Mr.  Parkhill.  "Notice, please, the word is 'accept ' .
.  .  not 'except'; be careful everyone; listen to the difference:
'except' ...  'cucumber' .  .  ."

And after the final bell rang, the whole class would cry "Merry
Christmas!  Happy New Year!" and crowd around him with tremendous smiles
to ask how he really liked the present, advising him that if it wasn't
just right in size and color (if the gift was something to wear), or in
shape and utility (if something to use), Mr. Parkhill could exchange it!
He didn't have to abide by the committee's choice.  He could exchange
the present-for anything!

That had been carefully arranged with Mickey Goldstein in person.

This was the ritual, fixed and unchanging, of the session before
Christmas.

'Nervous' 'goose' 'violets' The hand on the wall clock crawled toward
eight.  Mr.  Parkhill tried to keep his eyes away from the seats, so
telling in their vacancy, of Miss Mitnick, Mr.  Bloom, and Mr.  Kaplan.
In his mind's eye, he saw the three deputies in the last throes of
decision in Mr.  Goldstein's Arcade, torn by the competitive attractions
of an electric clock, a cane, spats, a "lifetime fountain pen." Mr.
Parkhill winced.  Twice already had "lifetime" fountain pens been
bestowed upon him, once with a "lifetime" propelling pencil to match.
Mr.  Parkhill had exchanged these indestructible gifts discreetly once
for a woolen vest, once for a fine pair of earmuffs.  Mr.  Parkhill
hoped it wouldn't be a fountain pen.

Or a smoking jacket!  He had never been able to understand why the
committee, in his second semester at the A.N.P.S.A had decided upon a
smoking jacket.  Mr.  Parkhill did not smoke.  He had exchanged it for a
pair of fur-lined gloves.  (That was when Mr.  Goldstein told him that
teachers were always changing the Christmas presents their classes gave
them: "Why don't those dumbbells maybe ask a teacher some questions in
advance, they could get a hint what that particular teacher really
wants?" Mr.  Goldstein had been quite indignant about such
foolhardiness.)  " 'Pancakes' .  .  .

'hospital' .  .  .  'commi-' " In the nick of time, as a dozen
apprehensive faces popped up, Mr.  Parkhill detoured disaster: _Ssion.
Commission'!  ...

The clock ticked away.

Mr.  Parkhill called off " 'Sardine' .  .  .  'exquisite' .  .  .

'palace' "-and at long last the bell trilled intermission.

The class stampeded out of the room, Mr.  Pinsky well in the lead.

Their voices resounded in the corridor and floated through the open
door.

Nathan P.  Nathan was playing a harmonica.  Mr.  Parkhill began to print
"bananas" on the blackboard; he would ask his pupils to correct their
own papers after the recess.  He tried to shut his ears to the babbling
forum outside the door, but the voices chattered like shrill sparrows.

"Hallo, Mitnick!"

"Bloom, what you chose?"

"Ees eet for wear?"

"So what did you got, Keplen?  Tell!"

Mr.  Parkhill heard Miss Mitnick's "We bought-" instantly squashed by
Mr.  Kaplan's stern "Mitnick!  Don't say!  Averybody comm don mit your
voices.  Titcher vill hear soch hollerink.  Be soft!

Qviet!" Mr.  Kaplan was born to command.

"Did you bought a Tsheaffer's Fountain Pan Sat, guaranteet for life,
like I said?" That was Mrs.  Moskowitz.  (Poor dear Mrs. Moskowitz; she
showed as little imagination in her benefactions as in her homework.)
"Moskovitz, mine Qott!" The stentor was Kaplan.

"why you don't use a lad spikker?!  Cless, lot's go to de odder and
fromm de hall!"

The voices of the beginners' grade dwindled as they marched to the odder
and" of the corridor, rather like the chorus in Aida (which, in fact,
Mr.  Nathan was playing, off-key) vanishing into pharaoh's wings.  Mr.
Parkhill printed "horses" on the board, then "accept.......  except,"
and he began to practice the murmur: "Thank you ...  all of you ... It's
just what I wanted!" Once he had forgotten to say "It's just what I
wanted!" and Miss Helga Pedersen, chairman of the committee that year,
had been hounded by her classmates well into the third week of January.

It seemed an hour before the gong summoned the scholars back to their
quarters.  They poured in en masse, restraining their excitement by
straining their expressions, resuming their seats with simulated
insipidity.

Mr.  Parkhill, printing "cucumber" on the board, did not turn to face
his congregation.  "Please compare your own spelling with mine " Came a
heated whispering: "Stand op, Mitnick!  " That was Mr. Kaplan.  "You
should stend op, too!"

"The whole committee," Mr.  Bloom rasped.

Apparently Miss Mitnick, a gazelle choked with embarrassment, could not
mobilize the fortitude to "stend op" with her comrades.

"A fine represantitif you'll gonna make!" frowned Mr.  Kaplan.

"You t'ink is for my sek I'm eskink?  Mitnick, stend op!"

"I can't," whinnied Miss Mitnick.

Mr.  Parkhill printed "violets."

"Lest call!" barked Mr.  Kaplan.  "Come op mit me an' Bloom!"

The anguished maiden's eyes were glazing.  Even Mr.  Nathan's cheerful
"Rosie!" fell on paralyzed ears.

"Class .  .  ." began Mr.  Parkhill.

A clarion voice cut through the air.  "Podden me, Mr.  Pockheel!"

It had come.

"Er-yes?" Mr.  Parkhill beheld Messrs.  Bloom and Kaplan standing side
by side in front of Miss Mitnick's chair.  Each was holding one side of
a long package, wrapped in green cellophane and tied with great red
ribbons.

A pair of tiny hands, their owner hidden behind the box, clutched the
bottom of the offering.

"De bends is Mitnick," explained Mr.  Kaplan.

Not for a second did Mr.  Parkhill avert his gaze from the tableau.

"Er-yes?"

"Lot go," Mr.  Kaplan whispered.

The hands of Mitnick disappeared.

The diminished committee advanced with the parcel.  Mr.  Kaplan's smile
was celestial; Mr.  Bloom's nostrils quivered.  Together, the staunch
duo thrust the package toward Mr.  Parkhill's chest as Mr.  Kaplan
proclaimed "Mr.  Pockheel, is mine beeg honor, as chairman fromm de
Buyinkan'-Deliverink-to-You-a-Prazent Committee, to prezant you mit dis
fine peckitch!"

Mr.  Bloom dropped back two paces (it resembled the changing of the
guard, so well had it been rehearsed) and stared into space.

Mr.  Parkhill stammered, "Oh, goodness.  Why, thank-" but Mr. Kaplan
rode over his words: "Foist, I have to say a few voids!" He half turned
to the audience.  "Mitnick, you still got time to join de committee!"

The maiden was inert.

"She fainted!" cried Mrs.  Yanoff.

This was not true.

"She is stage-fried!"

This, despite the solecism, was true.

Mr.  Kaplan shook his head in disgust and re-faced Mr.  Parkhill,
smoothed a paper extracted from his pocket, and read: "To our dear
titcher (dot's de beginnink): Ve are stendink on de adge of a beeg
holiday.  Ufcawss, is all kinds holidays in U.S.: holidays for politic,
holidays for religious, an' plain holidays.  In Fabruary, ve got judge
Vashington's boitday-a fine holiday.  Also Abram Lincohen's, iven
batter.  In July comms, netcheral, Fort July, de boitday of America de
beautiful.  .  .  .  Also ve have Labor Day, Denksgivink (for de
Peelgrims), an' for victory in de Voild Vide Var, Armistress Day." Mr.
Parkhill studied his chalk.

"Thank-"

"Make an end awreddy," growled Mr.  Bloom.

Mr.  Kaplan scorned impatience at such a moment.  "But arond dis time
year, ve have a different kind holiday, a spacial, movvellous time:
Chrissmas.

All hover de voild are pipple celebraking.  Becauss for sam pipple is
Chrissmas like for odder pipple Chanukah-de most secret holiday fromm de
whole bunch."

(" 'Sacred,' Mr.  Kaplan, 'sacred."

"Ven ve valkink don de stritts an' is snow on de floor an' all kinds
tarrible cold!" Mr. Kaplan's hand repelled winter's tribulations.  "Ven
ve see in all de chop vindows dose trees mit rad an' grin laktric lights
boinink ...  Ven de time comms for tellink fancy tales abot Sandy
Clawss-" (" 'Fairy tales......  ) "-flyink don fromm de Naut Pole on
rainemimals, an' climbink don de jimmies mit stockings for all de lettle
kits.  Ven ve hear de beautiful t'oughts of de tree Vise Guys, chasink a
star on de dasert to Bettelheim."

("Mister Kaplan!") "Ven pipple saying, 'Oh, Mary Chrissmas!  Oh, Heppy
Noo Yiss!  Oh, bast regotts!'--den ve all got a varm fillink in de hot,
for all humanity which should be brodders!  Ve know you got de fillink,
Mr.  Pockheel; I got de fillink; Caravello, Matsoukas, iven Mitnick"-Mr.
Kaplan was not one to let perfidy go unchastised-"got dot fillink!"

"I feel my feet dying," muttered Mr.  Bloom.

"An' vat dove call dis fillink?" cried Mr.  Kaplan.  "De Chrissmas
Spirits."

("'Spirit,' Mr.  Kaplan, 'spir-"') "Now I'll prezant de prazent."

The class leaned forward.  Mr.  Parkhill straightened his shoulders.

"Because you a foist-cless titcher, Mr.  Pockheel, an' ve all appreciate
how you explain de hoddest pots gremmer, spallink, pernonciation, which
ve know is planty hod to do mit greenhorns, ve all fait you should got a
semple of our-of our"-Mr.  Kaplan turned his page over hastily-"Aha!

-of our sentimental!  So in de name of de beginnis' grate of Amarican
Night Priparatory School for Edults, I'm prezantink de soprize prazent
to our vunderful titcher, lovely Mr.  Pockheel!"

(" 'Beloved,' Mr.  Kaplan .  .  .") A hush gripped the chamber.

Mr.  Parkhill tried to say, "Thank you, Mr.  Kaplan ...  Thank you,
class but the phrases seemed so timeworn, so shorn of meaning, they
stuck in his throat.  Without a word, he untied the big red ribbon,
unfolded the green cellophane wrapping, lifted the cover off the
package, fumbled with the inner maze of wrapping.  He raised the gift
from the box.  It was a smoking jacket.  A black and gold smoking
jacket.  Black velvet, the lapels a lustrous gold.  On the breast
pocket, an exotic ideograph sparkled.  And a dragon was embroidered all
across the front and back; its tongue flickered across the sleeves.
"Horyantal style," Mr.  Kaplan confided.

Mr.  Parkhill coughed.  The room seemed very warm.  Mr.  Bloom was
peering over Mr.  Kaplan's shoulder, mopping his bald head and clucking
like a rooster.  Mrs.  Moskowitz sat stupefied.  Moisteyed Olga Tarnova
moaned from the depths of one of her many passions.  "Th-thank you," Mr.
Parkhill succeeded in stammering.  "Thank you-all of you-very much."

Mr.  Bloom blared, "Hold it op everyone should see!"

Mr.  Kaplan turned on Mr.  Bloom.  "I'm de chairman!"

Rose Mitnick was bleating.

Miss Goldberg cracked a pistachio nut.

"I-I can't tell you how much I-appreciate your kindness." The dragon,
Mr.  Parkhill noted, had green eyes.

Mr.  Kaplan beamed.  "So plizz hold op de prazent all should see."
.  Parkhill raised high the jacket for all to behold.  The symphony of
admiring Oh!'s and Ah!'s was climaxed by Mr.  Kaplan's ecstatic "My!"

"It's-beautiful," said Mr.  Parkhill.

"Maybe you should torn arond de jecket," suggested Mr.  Kaplan.

As Mr.  Parkhill revolved the jacket slowly, the dragon writhed in the
folds.

"A voik of art!" sang Mr.  Pinsky.

"Maybe ve made a mistake?" whispered Hyman Kaplan.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Maybe you don't smoke.  Mitnick vorried abot dot.  But I sad, 'Ufcawss
a ticher smokes.  Not in cless, netcheral.  At home.  At least a pipe!"

"

"No, no, you didn't make a mistake.  I do-occasionally-smoke.  A pipe!"
Mr.  Parkhill cleared his larynx.

"Why-it's just what I wanted!"

The class burst into cheers.

"Hooray!" laughed Mr.  Trabish.

"I knew it!" boomed Mr.  Blattberg, whirling his grandson's tooth.

"Hoorah," growled Gus Matsoukas.

"Bravo!" chimed Miss Caravello.

"In Rossia we song in all the chaurches," droned Olga Tarnova.

"On differont day but."

"Vear it in de bast of helfl!" cried Mr.  Kaplan.

"Thank you, I will.  Class, you have been most generous.  Thank you."

"You welcome!" came the congregation's response.

It was over.

Mr.  Parkhill started to fold the dragon back into its lair.  Mr.  Bloom
marched to his seat, acknowledging the praises due a connoisseur who had
participated in such a choice.  But Mr. Kaplan stepped closer to Mr.
Parkhill's desk.

"Er-thank you, Mr.  Kaplan," said Mr.  Parkhill.

The chairman of the committee shuffled his feet and craned his neck
and-why, for the first time since Mr.  Parkhill had known him, Mr.
Kaplan was embarrassed.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Mr.  Parkhill anxiously.

Sotto voce, so that no ears but Mr.  Parkhill's could hear it, Mr.
Kaplan said, "Maybe mine spitch vas too long, or too formal.  But, Mr.
Pockheel, avery void I sad came fromm below mine heart!"

For all the unorthodox English, thought Mr.  Parkhill, Mr.  Kaplan had
spoken like one of the Magi.

A Christmas Carillon By: HORTENSE CALISHER

About four weeks before Christmas, Grorley, in combined shame and panic,
began to angle for an invitation to somewhere, anywhere, for Christmas
Day.  By this time, after six months of living alone in the little
Waverly Place flat to which he had gone as soon as he and his wife had
decided to separate, he had become all too well reacquainted with his
own peculiar mechanism in regard to solitude.  It was a mechanism that
had its roots in the jumbled lack of privacy of an adolescence spent in
the dark, four-room apartment to which his parents had removed
themselves and three children after his father's bankruptcy in '29.

Prior to that, Grorley's childhood had been what was now commonly
referred to as Edwardian-in a house where servants and food smells kept
their distance until needed, and there were no neurotic social concerns
about the abundance of either-a house where there was always plush under
the buttocks, a multiplicity of tureens and napery at table, lace on the
pillow, and above all that general expectancy of creature comfort and
spiritual order which novelists now relegated to the days before 1914.

That it had lasted considerably later, Grorley knew, since this had been
the year of his own birth, but although he had been fifteen when they
had moved, it was the substantial years before that had faded to
fantasy.  Even now, when he read or said the word reality, his mind
reverted to Sunday middays in the apartment house living room, where the
smudgy daylight was always diluted by lamps, the cheaply stippled walls
menaced the oversize furniture, and he, his father and brother and
sister, each a claustrophobe island of irritation, were a constant
menace to one another.  Only his mother, struggling alone in the kitchen
with the conventions of roast chicken and gravy, had perhaps achieved
something of the solitude they all had craved.  To Grorley even now, the
smell of roasting fowl was the smell of a special kind of Sunday death.

Only once before now had he lived alone, and then too it had been in the
Village, not far from where he presently was.  After his graduation from
City College he had worked a year, to save up for a master's in
journalism, and then, salving his conscience with the thought that he
had at least paid board at home for that period, he had left his family
forever.  The following year, dividing his time between small-time
newspaper job and classes, living in his twenty-seven-dollar-per-month
place off Morton Street, he had savored all the wonders of the single
door key opening on the quiet room, of the mulled book and the purring
clock, of the smug decision not to answer the phone or to let even the
most delightful invader in.  Now that he looked back on it, of course,
he recalled that the room had rung pretty steadily with the voices of
many such who had been admitted, but half the pleasure had been because
it had been at his own behest.  That had been a happy time, when he had
been a gourmet of loneliness, prowling bachelorstyle on the edge of
society, dipping inward when he chose.  Of all the habitations he had
had since, that had been the one whose conformations he remembered best,
down to the last, worn dimple of brick.  When he had house-hunted, last
June, he had returned instinctively to the neighborhood of that time.
Only a practicality born of superstition had kept him from hunting up
the very street, the very house.

He had had over two years of that earlier freedom, although the last
third of it had been rather obscured by his courtship of Eunice.  Among
the girl students of the Village there had been quite a few who,
although they dressed like ballerinas and prattled of art like painters'
mistresses, drew both their incomes and their morality from good, solid
middle-class families back home.  Eunice had been the prettiest and most
sought after of these, and part of her attraction for some, and
certainly for Grorley, had been that she seemed to be, quite honestly,
one of those rare girls who were not particularly eager to marry and
settle down.  Grorley had been so entranced at finding like feelings in
a girl-and in such a beautiful one-that he had quite forgotten that in
coaxing her out of her "freedom" he was persuading himself out of his
own.

He hadn't realized this with any force until the children came, two
within the first four years of the marriage.  Before that, in the first
fusion of love, it had seemed to Grorley that two could indeed live more
delightfully alone than one, and added to this had been that wonderful
release from jealousy which requited love brings-half the great comfort
of the loved one's presence being that, ipso facto, she is with no one
else.  During this period of happy, though enlarged privacy, Grorley
confided to Eunice some, though not all, of his feelings about family
life and solitude.

He was, he told her, the kind of person who needed to be alone a great
dealalthough this of course excepted her.  But they must never spend
their Sundays and holidays frowsting in the house like the rest of the
world, sitting there stuffed and droning, with murder in their hearts.
They must always have plans laid well in advance, plans which would keep
the two of them emotionally limber, so to speak, and en plein air. Since
these plans were always pleasant-tickets to the Philharmonic, with
after-theater suppers, hikes along the Palisades, fishing expeditions to
littleknown ponds back of the Westchester parkways, whose intricacies
Grorley, out of a history of Sunday afternoons, knew as well as certain
guides knew Boca Raton-Eunice was quite willing to accede.

In time she grew very tactful, almost smug, over Grorley's little
idiosyncrasy, and he sometimes heard her on the phone, fending people
off.  "Not Sunday.  Gordon and I have a thing about holidays, you know."
By this time, too, they had both decided that, although Grorley would
keep his now very respectable desk job at the paper, his real destiny
was to "write"; and to Eunice, who respected "imagination" as only the
unimaginative can, Grorley's foible was the very proper defect of a
noble intelligence.

But with the coming of the children, it was brought home to Grorley that
he was face-to-face with one of those major rearrangements of existence
for which mere tact would not suffice.

Eunice, during her first pregnancy' was as natural and unassuming about
it as a man could wish; she went on their Sunday sorties to the very
last and maintained their gallant privacy right up to the door of the
delivery room.  But the child of so natural a mother was bound to be
natural too.  It contracted odd fevers whenever it wished and frequently
on Sundays, became passionately endeared to their most expensive sitter
or would have none at all, and in general permeated their lives as only
the most powerfully frail of responsibilities can.  And when the second
one arrived, it did so, it seemed to Grorley, only to egg the other one
on.  There came a morning, the Christmas morning of the fourth year,
when Grorley, sitting in the odor of baked meat, first admitted that his
hydraheaded privacy was no longer a privacy at all.  He had created, he
saw, his own monster; sex and the devil had had their sport with him,
and he was, in a sense that no mere woman would understand, all too
heavily "in the family way." Looking at Eunice, still neat, still very
pretty, but with her lovely mouth pursed with maternity, her gaze sharp
enough for Kinder and Miche, but abstract apparently for him, he saw
that she had gone over to the enemy and was no longer his.  Eunice had
become "the family" too.

It was as a direct consequence of this that Grorley wrote the book which
was his making.  Right after that fatal morning, he had engaged a room
in a cheap downtown hotel (he and Eunice were living out in Astoria at
the time), with the intention, as he explained to Eunice, of writing
there after he left the paper, and coming home weekends.  He had also
warned her that, because of the abrasive effects of family life, it
would probably be quite some time before "the springs of reverie"-a
phrase he had lifted from Ellen Glasgow-would start churning.  His real
intention was, of course, to prowl, and for some weeks thereafter he
joined the company of those men who could be found, night after night,
in places where they could enjoy the freedom of not having gone home
where they belonged.

To his surprise, he found, all too quickly, that though his intentions
were of the worst, he had somehow lost the moral force to pursue them.
He had never been much for continuous strong drink, and that crude
savoir faire which was needed for the preliminaries to lechery seemed to
have grown creaky with the years.  He took to spending odd hours in the
newspaper morgue, correlating, in a halfhearted way, certain current
affairs that interested him.  After some months, he suddenly realized
that he had enough material for a book.  It found a publisher almost
immediately.  Since he was much more a child of his period than he knew,
he had hit upon exactly that note between disaffection and hope which
met response in the breasts of those who regarded themselves as
permanent political independents.  His book was an instant success with
those who thought of themselves as thinking for themselves (if they had
only had time for it).  Quick to capitalize upon this, Grorley's paper
gave him a biweekly column, and he developed a considerable talent for
telling men of goodwill, over Wednesday breakfast, the very thing they
had been saying to one another at Tuesday-night dinner.

Grorley spent the war years doing this, always careful to keep his
column, like his readers, one step behind events.  With certain minor
changes, he kept, too, that scheme of life which had started him
writing, changing only, with affluence, to a more comfortable hotel.  In
time also, that savoir faire whose loss he had mourned returned to him,
and his success at his profession erased any guilts he might otherwise
have had-a wider experience, he told himself, being not only necessary
to a man of his trade, but almost unavoidable in the practice of it.  He
often congratulated himself at having achieved, in a country which had
almost completely domesticated the male, the perfect pattern for a man
of temperament, and at times he became almost insufferable to some of
his married men friends, when he dilated on the contrast between his
"Continental" way of life and their own.

For by then, Grorley had reversed himself-it was his weekends and
holidays that were now spent cozily en famille.  It was pleasant, coming
back to the house in Tarrytown on Friday evenings, coming back from the
crusades to find Eunice and the whole household decked out, literally
and psychologically, for his return.  One grew sentimentally fond of
children whom one saw only under such conditions-Grorley's Saturdays
were now spent, as he himself boasted, "on all fours," in the
rejuvenating air of the skating rinks, the museums, the woods, and the
zoos.  Sundays and holidays he and Eunice often entertained their
relatives, and if, as the turkey browned, he had a momentary twinge of
his old mal de famille, he had but to remember that his hat was, after
all, only hung in the hall.

It was only some years after the war that Eunice began to give trouble.

Before that, their double menage had not been particularly
unusual-almost all the households of couples their age had been upset in
one way or another, and theirs had been more stable than many.  During
the war years Eunice had had plenty of company for her midweek evenings;
all over America women had been managing bravely behind the scenes.  But
now that families had long since paired off again, Eunice showed a
disquieting tendency to want to be out in front.

"No, you'll have to come home for good," she said to Grorley, at the end
of their now frequent battles.  "I'm tired of being a short-order wife."

"The trouble with you," said Grorley, "is that you've never adjusted to
postwar conditions."

"That was your nineteen forty-six column," said Eunice.  "If you must
quote yourself, pick one a little more up-to-date." Removing a
jewelencrusted slipper toe from the fender, she made a feverish circle
of the room, the velvet panniers of her house gown swinging dramatically
behind her.  She was one of those women who used their charge accounts
for retaliation.  With each crisis in their deteriorating relationship,
Grorley noted gloomily, Eunice's wardrobe had improved.

"Now that the children are getting on," he said, "you ought to have
another interest.  A hobby."

Eunice made a hissing sound.  "Nineteen forty-seven!" she said.

In the weeks after, she made her position clear.  Men, she told him,
might have provided the interest he suggested, but when a woman had made
a vocation of one, it wasn't easy to start making a hobby of several. It
was hardly much use swishing out in clouds of Tabu at seven, if one had
to be back to feel Georgie's forehead at eleven.  Besides, at their age,
the only odd men out were likely to be hypochondriacs, or bachelors
still dreaming of mother, or very odd men indeed.

"All the others," she said nastily, "are already on somebody else's
hearth rug.  Or out making the rounds with you." Worst of all, she
seemed to have lost her former reverence for Grorley's work.  If he'd
been a novelist or a poet, she said (she even made use of the sticky
word creative), there'd have been more excuse for his need to go off
into the silence.  As it was, she saw no reason for his having to be so
broody over analyzing the day's proceedings at the U.N.  If he wanted an
office, that should take care of things very adequately.  But if he did
not wish to live with her, then he could not go on living with her.
"Mentally," she said, "you're still in the Village.  Maybe you better go
back there."

Things were at this pass when Grorley's paper sent him to London, on an
assignment that kept him there for several months.  He was put up for
membership in one or two exclusively masculine clubs, and in their
leonine atmosphere his outraged vanity--(creative indeed!)-swelled anew.
Finally, regrettably near the end of his stay, he met up with a
redheaded young woman named Vida, who worked for a junior magazine by
day, wrote poetry by night, and had once been in America for three
weeks.  She and Grorley held hands over the mutual hazards of the
"creative" life, and on her lips the word was like a caress.  For a
woman, too, she was remarkably perceptive about the possessiveness of
other women.

"Yes, quite," she had said.  "Yes, quite."

When she and Grorley made their final adieu in her Chelsea flat, she
held him, for just a minute, at arm's length.  "I shall be thinking of
you over there, in one of those ghastly, what do you call them, living
rooms, of yours.

Everybody matted together, and the floor all over children-like beetles.

Poor dear.  I should think those living rooms must be the curse of the
American family.  Poor, poor dear."

On his return home in June, Grorley and Eunice agreed on a sixmonths'
trial separation prior to a divorce.  Eunice showed a rather unfeeling
calm in the lawyer's office, immediately afterward popped the children
in camp, and went off to the Gaspe with friends.  Grorley took a sublet
on the apartment in Waverly Place.  It was furnished in a monastic
modern admirably suited to the novel he intended to write, that he had
promised Vida to write.

He had always liked summers in town, when the real aficionados of the
city took over, and now this summer seemed to him intoxicating, flowing
with the peppery currents of his youth.  In the daytime his freedom
slouched unshaven; in the evenings the streets echoed and banged with
life, and the moon made a hot harlequinade of every alley.  He revisited
the San Remo, Julius's, Chumley's, Jack Delaney's, and all the little
Italian bars with backyard restaurants, his full heart and wallet
carrying him quickly into the camaraderie of each.  Occasionally he
invited home some of the remarkables he met on his rounds-a young
Italian bookie, a huge Saint Bernard of a woman who drove a taxi and had
once lived on a barge on the East River, an attenuated young couple from
Chapel Hill, who were honeymooning at the New School.  Now and then a
few of his men friends from uptown joined him in a night out.  A few of
these, in turn, invited him home for the weekend, but although he kept
sensibly silent on the subject of their fraternal jaunts, he detected
some animus in the hospitality of their wives.

By October, Grorley was having a certain difficulty with his weekends.

His list of bids to the country was momentarily exhausted, and his own
ideas had begun to flag.  The children, home from camp, had aged
suddenly into the gang phase; they tore out to movies and jamborees of
their own, were weanable from these only by what Grorley could scrape up
in the way of rodeos and football games, and assumed, once the
afternoon's treat was over, a faraway look of sufferance.  Once or
twice, when he took them home, he caught himself hoping that Eunice
would ask him in for a drink, a chat that might conceivably lead to
dinner, but she was always out, and Mrs. Lederer, the housekeeper,
always pulled the children in as if they were packages whose delivery
had been delayed, gave him a nasty nod, and shut the door.

For a few weekends he held himself to his desk, trying to work up a
sense of dedication over the novel, but there was no doubt that it was
going badly.  Its best juice had been unwisely expended in long,
analytic letters to Vida, and now, in her airmail replies, which bounced
steadily and enthusiastically over the Atlantic, it began to seem more
her novel than his.  The Sunday before Thanksgiving, he made himself
embark on a ski train to Pittsfield, working up a comforting sense of
urgency over the early rising and the impedimenta to be checked.  The
crowd on the train was divided between a band of Swiss and German
perfectionists who had no conversation, and a horde of young couples,
rolling on the slopes like puppies, who had too much.  Between them,
Grorley's privacy was respected to the point of insult.  When he
returned that night, he tossed his gear into a corner, where it wilted
damply on his landlord's blond rug, made himself a hot toddy-with a
spasm of self-pity over his ability to do for himself-and sat down to
face his fright.  For years, his regular intervals at home had been like
the chewed coffee bean that renewed the wine taster's palate.

He had lost the background from which to rebel.

Thanksgiving Day was the worst.  The day dawned oyster-pale and stayed
that way.  Grorley slept as late as he could, then went out for a walk.

The streets were slack, without the twitch of crowds, and the houses had
a tight look of inner concentration.  He turned toward the streets which
held only shops, and walked uptown as far as Rockefeller Center.  The
rink was open, with its usual cast of characters-ricocheting children, a
satiny, professional twirler from the Ice Show, and several solemn old
men who skated upright in some Euclidean absorption of their own. Except
for a few couples strolling along in the twin featurelessness of love,
the crowd around the rink was typecast too.  Here, it told itself, it
participated in life; here in this flying spectacle of flag and stone it
could not possibly be alone.  With set, shy smiles, it glanced sideways
at its neighbors, rounded its shoulders to the wind, turned up its
collar, and leaned closer to the musical bonfire of the square.  Grorley
straightened up, turned on his heel, smoothed down his collar, and
walked rapidly toward Sixth Avenue.  He filled himself full of ham and
eggs in one of the quick-order places that had no season, taxied home,
downed a drink, swallowed two Seconal tablets, and went to bed.

The next morning, seated at his desk, he took a relieved look at the
street.  People were hard at their normal grind again; for a while the
vacuum was past.  But Christmas was not going to catch him alone.  He
picked up the phone.  At the end of the day he was quite heartened.
Although he had not yet turned up an invitation for Christmas Day, he
had netted himself a cocktail party (which might easily go on to dinner)
for two days before, a bid to an eggnog party on New Year's Day, and one
weekend toward the middle of December.  A lot of people did things
impromptu.  A phone call now and then would fix him up somehow.

But by Christmas week he was haggard.  He had visualized himself as
bidden to share, in a pleasantly avuncular capacity, some close friend's
family gathering; he had seen himself as indolently and safely centered,
but not anchored, in the bright poinsettia of their day.  Apparently
their vision of him was cast in a harsher mold; they returned his
innuendos with little more than a pointed sympathy.  Only two
propositions had turned up, one from a group of men, alone like himself
for one reason or another, who were forming a party at an inn in the
Poconos, and one from a waiflike spinster-"Last Christmas was my last
one with dear Mother"-who offered to cook dinner for him in her
apartment.  Shuddering, he turned down both of these.  The last thing he
wanted to do on that day was to ally himself with waits of any
description; on that day he very definitely wanted to be safely inside
some cozy family cocoon, looking out at them.

Finally, the day before Christmas, he thought of the Meechers.

Ted was that blue-ribbon bore, the successful account executive who
believed his own slogans, and his wife, a former social worker, matched
him in her own field.  Out of Ted's sense of what was due his position
in the agency and Sybil's sense of duty to the world, they had created a
model home in Chappaqua, equipped with four children, two Bedlingtons, a
games room, and a part-time pony.

Despite this, they were often hard up for company, since most people
could seldom be compelled twice to their table, where a guest was the
focus of a constant stream of self-congratulation from either end.
Moreover, Ted had wormed his way into more than one stag party at
Grorley's, and could hardly refuse a touch.  And their Christmas,
whatever its other drawbacks, would be a fourcolor job, on the best
stock.

But Ted's voice, plum-smooth when he took the phone from his secretary,
turned reedy and doubtful when he heard Grorley's inquiry.  "Uh-oh!

'Fraid that puts me on the spot, fella.  Yeah.  Kind of got it in the
neck from Sybil, last time I came home from your place.  Yeah.

Had a real old-fashioned hassle.  Guess I better not risk reminding her
just yet.  But, say!  How about coming up here right now, for the office
party?"

Grorley declined, and hung up.  Off-campus boy this time of year, that's
what I am, he thought.  He looked at his mantelpiece crowded with its
reminders-greetings from Grace and Bill, Jane and Tom, Peg and Jack,
Etcetera and Mrs.  Etcetera.  On top of the pile was another airmail
from Vida, received that morning, picture enclosed.  Saris the red in
the hair, without the thrush tones of the assenting voice, she looked a
little long in the teeth.  Her hands and feet, he remembered, were
always cold.  Somehow or other, looking at the picture, he didn't think
that central heating would improve them.  "The living room is the
curse," she'd said.  That's it, he thought; that's it.  And this, Vida,
is the season of the living room.

He looked down into the street.  The Village was all right for the
summer, he thought.  But now the periphery of the season had changed. In
summer, the year spins on a youth-charged axis, and a man's muscles have
a spurious oil.  But this is the end toward which it spins.  Only three
hundred days to Christmas.  Only a month-a week.  And then, every year,
the damned day itself, catching him with its holly claws, sounding its
platitudes like carillons.

Down at the corner, carols bugled steamily from a mission soup kitchen.
There's no escape from it, he thought.  Turn on the radio, and its
alleluia licks you with tremolo tongue.  In every store window flameth
house gown, nuzzleth slipper.  In all the streets the heavenly shops
proclaim.  The season has shifted inward, Grorley, and you're on the
outside, looking in.

He moved toward the phone, grabbed it, and dialed the number before he
remembered that you had to dial the code for Tarrytown.

He replaced the receiver.  Whatever he had to say, and he wasn't quite
sure what, or how, it wasn't for the ears of the kids or the Lederer
woman.  He jammed on his hat.  Better get there first, get inside the
door.

Going up to Grand Central in the cab, he pressed his face against the
glass.  Everything had been taken care of weeks ago-the kids had been
sent their two-wheelers, and he had mailed Eunice an extralarge
check-one he hadn't sent through the lawyer.  But at five o'clock, Fifth
Avenue still shone like an enormous blue sugarplum revolving in a
tutti-frutti rain of light.

Here was the season in all its questionable glory-the hallmarked joy of
giving, the good will diamante'.  But in the cosmetic air, people raised
tinted faces, walked with levitated step.

In the train, he avoided the smoker and chose an uncrowded car up front.
At his station, he waited until all the gleaming car muzzles pointed at
the train had picked up their loads and gone, then walked through the
main street which led to his part of town.

All was lighted up here too, with a more intimate, household shine.  He
passed the pink damp of a butcher's, the bright fuzz of Woolworth's.
"Sold out!" said a woman, emerging: " 's try the A & P." He walked on,
invisible, his face pressed to the shop window of the world.

At Schlumbohn's Credit jewelry Corner he paused, feeling for the wallet
filled with cash yesterday for the still-not-impossible yes over the
phone.  This was the sort of store that he and Eunice, people like them,
never thought of entering.  It sold watches pinned to cards, zircons,
musical powder boxes, bracelets clasped with fat ten-carat hearts, raja
pearl necklaces and truelove bluewhite diamonds.  Something for
Everybody, it said.

He opened the door.

Inside, a magnetic salesgirl nipped him toward her like a pin.  He had
barely stuttered his wants before he acquired an Add-a-Pearl necklace
for Sally, two Genuine Pinseal handbags for his mother-inlaw and Mrs.
Lederer, and a Stag-horn knife with three blades, a nail file, and a
corkscrew for young George.  He had left Eunice until last, but with
each purchase, a shabby, telephoning day had dropped from him.  Dizzy
with participation, he surveyed the mottoed store.

"Something ...  something for the wife," he said.

"Our lovely Lifetime Watch, perhaps?  Or Something in Silver, for the
House?" The clerk tapped her teeth, gauging him.

He leaned closer, understanding suddenly why housewives, encysted in
lonely houses, burbled confidences to the grocer, made an audience of
the milkman.  "We've had a-little tiff."

"Aw-w, " said the clerk, adjusting her face.  "Now ...  let me see......
She kindled suddenly, raised a sibylline finger, beckoned him farther
down the counter, and drew out a tray of gold charms.

Rummaging among them with a long, opalescent nail, she passed over
minute cocktail shakers, birdcages, tennis rackets, a tiny scroll
bearing the words, "If you can see this, you're too darn close," and
seized a trinket she held up for view.  A large gold shamrock, hung on a
chain by a swivel through its middle, it bore the letter I on its upper
leaf, on its nether one the letter U.  She reversed it.  L-O-V-E was
engraved across the diameter of the other side.

The clerk spun it with her accomplished nail.  "See?" she said.

"Spin it!  Spin it and it says I LOVE U!"

"Hmmm .  .  ." said Grorley, clearing his throat.  "Well ...  guess you
can't fob some women off with just a diamond bracelet." She tittered
dutifully.  But, as she handed it_ to him with his other packages and
closed the glass door behind him, he saw her shrug something, laughing,
to another clerk.  She had seen that he was not Schlumbohn's usual,
after all.

As he walked up his own street he felt that he was after all hardly
anybody's usual, tonight.  It was a pretty street, of no particular
architectural striving.  Not a competitive street, except sometimes in
summer, on the subject of gardens.  And, of course, now.  In every house
the tree was up and lighted, in the window nearest the passerby.  Here
was his own, with the same blue lights that had lasted, with some
tinkering on his part, year after year.  Eunice must have had a man in
to fix them.

He stopped on the path.  A man in.  She was pretty, scorned, andhe had
cavalierly assumed-miserable.  He had taken for granted that his family,
in his absence, would have remained reasonably static.

They always had.

He'd been thinking of himself.  Silently, he peeled off another layer of
self-knowledge.  He still was.

He walked up the steps wondering what kind of man might rise to be
introduced, perhaps from his own armchair.  One of her faded,
footballish resurrections from Ohio State U, perhaps: Gordon, this is
Jim jerk, from home.  Or would she hand it to him at once?

Would it be: Dear, this is Gordon.

The door was unlocked.  He closed it softly behind him and stood
listening.  This was the unmistakable quiet of an empty house-as if the
secret respiration of all objects in it had just stopped at his
entrance.  The only light downstairs was the glowing tree.  He went up
the stairs.

In the bedroom, the curtains were drawn, the night light on.  The bed
was piled with an abandoned muddle of silver wrappings, tissue paper,
ribbons.  He dropped the presents on the bed, tossed his hat after them,
let his coat slip down on the familiar chair, and parted the curtains.
It had a good view of the river, his house .  He stood there, savoring
it.

He was still there when a car door slammed and the family came up the
path.  The Christmas Eve pantomime, of course, held every year at the
village hall.  Georgie had on one of those white burnooses they always
draped the boys in, and Sally, in long dress and caned hat, seemed to be
a medieval lady.  He saw that this year she had the waist for it. Eunice
and Mrs.  Lederer walked behind them.

He tapped on the glass.

They raised their faces in tableau.  The children waved, catcalled, and
disappeared through the downstairs door.  Mrs. Lederer followed them.

Below, Eunice stared upward, in the shine from the tree window.

Behind him, he heard that sound made only by children-the noise of
bodies falling up a staircase.  As they swarmed in on him, she
disappeared.

"You shoulda been to the hall," said Georgie, seizing him.

"Christmas at King Arthur's court.  I was a knight."

"Was it corny!" said Sally, from a distance.  She caught sight of
herself in a pier glass.  "I was Guinevere."

"Had to do some last-minute shopping," said Grorley.

"I saw my bike!" said Georgie.  "It's in the cellar."

"Oh ...

Georgie!" said Sally.

"Well, I couldn't help seeing it."

"Over there are some Christmas Eve presents," said Grorley.

"Open now?" they said.  He nodded.  They fell upon them.

"Gee," said Georgie, looking down at the knife.  "Is that neat!"

From his tone it was clear that he, at least, was Schlumbohn's usual.
"Oh, Dad!" Sally had the necklace around her neck.

She raised her arms artistically above her head, in the fifth position,
minced forward, and placed their slender wreath around Grorley-'s neck.
As she hung on him, sacklike, he felt that she saw them both, a tender
picture, in some lurking pier glass of her mind.

The door opened, and Eunice came in.  She shut it behind her with a "not
before the servants" air, and stood looking at him.  Her face was
blurred at the edges; she hadn't decked herself out for anybody.  She
looked the way a tired, pretty woman, of a certain age and
responsibilities, might look at the hour before dinner, at the moment
when age and prettiness tussle for her face, and age momentarily has
won.

"Look what I got!" Georgie brandished the knife.

"And mine!" Sally undulated herself.  "Mums!  Doesn't it just go!" She
stopped, looking from father to mother, her face hesitant but shrewd.

"Open yours, Mums.  Go on."

"Later," said Eunice.  "Right now I think Mrs.  Lederer wants you both
to help with the chestnuts."

"No fair, no fair," said Georgie.  "You saw ours."

"Do what your mother says," said Grorley.  The paternal phrase, how it
steadied him, was almost a hearthstone under his feet.

"Oh, well," said Eunice, wilting toward the children, as she invariably
did when he was stern with them.  Opening the package he indicated, she
drew out the bauble.  Georgie rushed to look at it, awarded it a quick,
classifying disinterest, and returned to his knife.  "Oo-I know how to
work those!  Margie's sister has one," said Sally.

She worked it.  "If that isn't corny!" she gurgled.  Eunice's head was
bent over the gift.  Sally straightened up, gave her and Grorley a
swift, amending glance.  "But cute!" she said.  She flushed.  Then, with
one of the lightning changes that were the bane of her thirteen years,
she began to cry.  "Honestly, it's sweet!" she said.  Grorley looped an
arm around her, gave her a squeeze and a kiss.  "Now, shoo," he said.
"Both of you."

When he turned back to the room, Eunice was looking out the window, chin
up, her face not quite averted.  Recognizing the posture, he quailed. It
was the stance of the possessor of the stellar role-of the nightingale
with her heart against the thorn.

It was the stance of the woman who demands her scene.

He sighed, rat-tatted his fingers on a tabletop.  "Well," he said.

"Guess this is the season the corn grows tall."

A small movement of her shoulder.  The back of her head to him.

Now protocol demanded that he talk, into her silence, dredging his
self-abasement until he hit upon some remark which made it possible for
her to turn, to rend it, to show it up for the heartless, illogical,
tawdry remark that it was.  He could repeat a list of the game birds of
North America, or a passage from the Congressional Record.  The effect
would be the same.

"Go on," he said, "get it over with.  I deserve it.  I just want you to
know ...  mentally, I'm out of the Village."

She turned, head up, nostrils dilated.  Her mouth opened.  "Get it ov-!"
Breath failed her.  But not for long.

Much later, they linked arms in front of the same window.  Supper had
been eaten, the turkey had been trussed, the children at last persuaded
into their beds.  That was the consolatory side of family life, Grorley
thoughtthe long, Olympian codas of the emotions were cut short by the
niggling detail.  Women thought otherwise, of course.  In the past, he
had himself.

Eunice began clearing off the bed.  "What's in those two?

Father's and Mother's?"

"Oh Lord.  I forgot Father."

"Never mind.  I'll look in the white-elephant box." The household
phrase-how comfortably it rang.  She looked up.  "What's in these then?"

"For Mother and Mrs.  Lederer.  Those leather satchel things.

Pinseal.  "

"Both the same, I'll bet."

He nodded.

Eunice began to laugh.  "Oh, Lord.  How they'll hate it." She continued
to laugh, fondly, until Grorley smirked response.  This, too, was
familiar.

Masculine gifts: the inappropriateness thereof.

But Eunice continued to laugh, steadily, hysterically, clutching her
stomach, collapsing into a chair.  "It's that hat," she said.

"It's that s-specimen of a hat!"

Grorley's hat lay on the bed, where he had flung it.  Brazenly dirty,
limp denizen of bars, it reared sideways on a crest of tissue paper, one
curling red whorl of ribbon around its crown.

"L-like something out of Hogarth," she said.  "The R-rounder's Return. "
Grorley forced a smile.  "You can buy me another."

"Mmmm .  .  .  for Christmas." She stopped laughing.  "You know I think
that's what convinced me-your coming back tonight.  Knowing you-that
complex of yours.  Suppose I felt if you meant to stand us through the
holidays, you meant to stand us for good."

Grorley coughed, bent to stuff some paper into the wastebasket.

In fancy, he was stuffing in a picture too, portrait of Vida, woman of
imagination, outdistanced forever by the value of a woman who had none.
Eunice yawned.  "Oh ...  I forgot to turn out the tree.  "I'll go down."

"Here, take this along." She piled his arms with crushed paper.

In grinning afterthought, she clapped the hat on his head.

He went to the kitchen and emptied his arms in the bin.  The kitchen was
in chaos, the cookery methods of alt Wien demanding that each meal rise
like a phoenix, from a flaming muddle belowstairs.  Tomorrow, as Mrs.
Lederer mellowed with wine, they would hear once again of her
grandfather's house, where the coffee was not even roasted until the
guests' carriages appeared in the driveway.

In the dining room, the table was set in state, from damask to silver
nut dishes.  Father would sit there.  He was teetotaler, but
anecdotalism signs no pledge.  His jousts as purchasing agent for the
city of his birth now left both narrator and listener with the
impression that he had built it as well.  'they would hear from Mother
too.  It was unfortunate that her bit of glory-her grandfather had once
attended Grover Cleveland-should have crystallized itself in that one
sentence so shifty for false teeth-"Yes, my father was a physician, you
know."

Grorley sighed and walked into the living room.  He looked out, across
the flowing blackness of the river.  There to the south, somewhere in
that jittering corona of yellow lights, was the apartment.  He shuddered
pleasurably, thinking of all the waifs in the world tonight.  His own
safety was too new for altruism; it was only by a paring of luck as thin
as this pane of glass that he was safely here-on the inside, looking
out.

Behind him, the tree shone-that trompe Foeil triumphant-yearly symbol of
how eternally people had to use the spurious to catch at the real.

If there was an angel at the top, then here was the devil at its base
that, at this season, anybody who opened his eyes and ears too wide
caught the poor fools, caught himself, hard at it.  Home is where the
heart ...  the best things in life are ...  spin it and it says I LOVE
U.

Grorley reached up absently and took off his hat.  This is middle age,
he thought.  Stand still and hear the sound of it, bonging like
carillons, the gathering sound of all the platitudes, sternly coming
true.

He looked down at the hat in his hand.  It was an able hat; not every
hat could cock a snook like that one.  From now on, he'd need every ally
he could muster.  Holding it, he bent down and switched off the tree. He
was out of the living room and halfway up the stairs, still holding it,
before he

turned back.  Now the house was entirely dark, but he needed no light
other

r than the last red sputter of rebellion in his heart.  He crept down,
felt along the wall, clasped a remembered hook.  Firmly, he hung his hat
in the hall.

Then he turned and went back up the stairs.

Long Distance By: JANE SMILEY

Kirby Christianson is standing under the shower, fiddling with the
hot-water spigot and thinking four apparently simultaneous thoughts:
that there is never enough hot water in this apartment, that there was
always plenty of hot water in Japan, that Mieko will be here in four
days, and that he is unable to control Mieko's expectations of him in
any way.  The thoughts of Mieko are accompanied by a feeling of anxiety
as strong as the sensation of the hot water, and he would like the water
to flow through him and wash it away.  He turns from the shower head and
bends backward, so that the stream can pour over his face.  When he
shuts off the shower, the phone is ringing.  A sense that it has been
ringing for a long time-can a mechanical noise have a quality of
desperation?-propels him naked and dripping into the living room.

He picks up the phone and his caller, as he has suspected, is Mieko.
Perhaps he is psychic; perhaps this is only a coincidence; or perhaps no
one else has called him in the past week or so.

The connection has a crystalline clarity that tricks him into not
allowing for the satellite delay.  He is already annoyed after the first
hello.  Mieko's voice is sharp, high, very Japanese, although she speaks
superb English.  He says, "Hello, Mieko," and he sounds annoyed, as if
she calls him too much, although she has only called once to give him
her airline information and once to change it.  Uncannily attuned to the
nuances of his voice, she says, "Oh, Kirby," and falls silent.  Now
there will be a flurry of tedious apologies, on both sides.  He is
tempted to hang up on her, call her back, and blame his telephone-faulty
American technology.  But he can't be certain that she is at home.  So
he says, "Hello, Mieko?  Hello, Mieko?  Hello, Mieko?" more and more
loudly, as if her voice were fading.  His strategy works.  She shouts,
"Can you hear me, Kirby?  I can hear you, Kirby." He holds the phone
away from his ear.  He says, "That's better.  Yes, I can hear you now."

"Kirby, I cannot come.  I cannot go through with my plan.  My father has
lung cancer, we learned this morning."

He has never met the father, has seen the mother and the sister only
from a distance, at a department store.

"Can you hear me, Kirby?"

"Yes, Mieko.  I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything.  I have said to my mother that I am
happy to stay with her.  She is considerably relieved."

"Can you come later, in the spring?"

"My lie was that this Melville seminar I was supposed to attend would be
offered just this one time, which was why I had to go now."

"I'm sorry."

"I know that I am only giving up pleasure.  I know that my father might
die."

As she says this, Kirby is looking out his front window at the snowy
roof of the house across the street, and he understands at once from the
hopeless tone of her voice that to give up the pleasure that Mieko has
promised herself is harder than to die.

He understands that in his whole life he has never given up a pleasure
that he cherished as much as Mieko cherished this one.

He understands that in a just universe the father would rather die alone
than steal such a pleasure from his daughter.  All these thoughts occur
simultaneously and are accompanied by a lifting of the anxiety he felt
in the shower.  She isn't coming.  She is never coming.  He is off the
hook.  He says, "But it's hard for you to give it up, Mieko.  It is for
me, too.  I'm sorry."

The sympathetic tones in his voice wreck her self-control, and she
begins to weep.  In the five months that Kirby knew Mieko in Japan, and
in the calls between them since, she has never shed a tear, hardly ever
let herself be caught in a low moment, but now she weeps with absolute
abandon, in long, heaving sobs, saying, "Oh, oh, oh," every so often.
Once, the sounds fade, as if she has put down the phone, but he does not
dare hang up, does not even dare move the phone from one ear to the
other.  This attentive listening is what he owes to her grief, isn't it?
If she had come and he had disappointed her, as he would have, this is
how she would have wept in solitude after swallowing her disappointment
in front of him.  But this is her father's doing, not his.  He can give
her a little company after all.  He presses the phone so hard to his ear
that it hurts.  The weeping goes on for a long time and he is afraid to
speak and interfere with what will certainly be her only opportunity to
give way to her feelings.  She gives one final wailing "Ohhh" and then
begins to cough and choke.  Finally she quiets, and then sighs.  After a
moment of silence, she says, "Kirby, you should not have listened."

"How could I hang up?"

"A Japanese man would have."

"You sound better, if you are back to comparing me with Japanese men."

"I am going to hang up now, Kirby.  I am sorry not to come.

Good-bye."

"Don't hang up."

"Good-bye."

"Mieko?"

"Good-bye, Kirby."

"Call me!  Call me again!" He is not sure that she hears him.  He looks
at the phone and then puts it on the cradle.

Two hours later he is on the highway.  This is, after all, two days
before Christmas, and he is on his way to spend the holidays with his
two brothers and their wives and children, whom he hasn't seen in years.
He has thought little about this visit, beyond buying a few presents.
Mieko's coming loomed, imposing and problematic.  They had planned to
drive out West together-she paid an extra fare so that she could land in
Minneapolis and return from San Francisco-and he had looked forward to
seeing the mountains again.  They had made reservations on a bus that
carries tourists into Yellowstone National Park in the winter, to look
at the smoky geysers and the wildlife and the snow.  The trip would have
seemed very American to her.  Buffalo and men in cowboy boots and hats.
But it seemed very Japanese to him--deep snow, dark pines, sharp
mountains.

The storm rolls in suddenly, the way it sometimes does on 1-35 in Iowa,
startling him out of every thought except alertness.  Snow swirls
everywhere, blotting out the road, the other cars, sometimes even his
own front end.  The white of his headlights reflects back at him, so
that he seems to be driving into a wall.

He can hardly force himself to maintain thirty-five miles an hour,
although he knows he must.  To stop would be to invite a rear-end
collision.  And the shoulder of the road is invisible.  Only the white
line, just beside the left front corner of the car, reveals itself
intermittently as the wind blows the snow off the pavement.

He ejects the tape he is playing and turns on the radio, to the state
weather station.  He notices that his hand is shaking.  He could be
killed.  The utter blankness of the snowy whirl gives him a way of
imagining what it would be like to be dead.  He doesn't like the
feeling.

He remembers reading two winters ago about an elderly woman whose son
dropped her off at her apartment.  She discovered that she had forgotten
her key, and with the wind-chill factor at eighty below zero, she froze
before she got to the manager's office.  The winter before that a kid
who broke his legs in a snowmobile accident crawled three miles to the
nearest farmhouse, no gloves, only a feed cap on his head.  Twenty
below, thirty below-the papers always make a big deal of the
temperature.  Including wind chill, seventy, a hundred below.  Kirby
carries a flashlight, a down sleeping bag, a sweatshirt that reads
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, gloves and mittens.  His car has new tires,
front-wheel drive, and plenty of antifreeze.  He has a Thermos of
coffee.  But the horror stories roll through his mind anyway.  A family
without boots or mittens struggles two miles to a McDonald's through
high winds, blowing snow, thirty below.

Why would they travel in that weather?  Kirby always thinks when he
reads the papers, but of course they do.  He does.  Always has.

A gust takes the car, just for a second, and Kirby grips the wheel more
tightly.  The same gust twists the enveloping snow aloft and reveals the
Clear Lake rest stop.  Kirby is tempted to stop, tempted not to.  He
has, after all, never died before, and he has driven through worse than
this.  He passes the rest stop.

Lots of cars are huddled there; but then, lots of cars are still on the
highway.  Maybe the storm is letting up.

As soon as he is past the rest stop, he thinks of Mieko, her weeping.

She might never weep like that again, even if she heard of his death.
The connection in her mind between the two of them, the connection that
she allowed to stretch into the future despite all his admonitions and
all her resolutions, is broken now.  Her weeping was the sound of its
breaking.  And if he died here, in the next ten minutes, how would she
learn of it?  His brothers wouldn't contact her, not even if she were
still coming, because they didn't know she had planned to come.  And if
she were ever to call him back, she would get only a disconnect message
and would assume that he had moved.  He can think of no way that she
could hear of his death, even though no one would care more than she
would.  These thoughts fill him with self-pity, but at least they drive
out the catalog of horror: station wagon skids into bridge abutment, two
people killed, two paralyzed from the neck down, mother survives
unharmed, walks to nearby farmhouse.  Kirby weighs the boredom and good
fellowship he will encounter sitting out the storm at a truck stop
against possible tragedy.  Fewer cars are on the road, more are
scattered on the median strip.  Inertia carries him onward.  He is
almost to Minnesota, after all, where they really know how to take care
of the roads.  He will stop at the tourist center and ask about
conditions.

But he drives past the tourist center by mistake, lost in thought.

He decides to stop in Faribault.  But by then the snow seems to be
tapering off.

Considering the distance he has traveled, Minneapolis isn't far now.  He
checks the odometer.  Only fifty miles or so.  An hour and a half away,
at this speed.  His mind eases over the numbers with customary
superhighway confidence, but at once he imagines himself reduced to
walking, walking in this storm, with only a flashlight, a Thermos of
coffee, a University of Nebraska sweatshirt-and the distance swells to
infinity.  Were he reduced to his own body, his own power, it might be
too far to walk just to find a telephone.

For comfort he calls up images of Japan and southern China, something he
often does.  These images are the one tangible gift of his travels.  So
many human eyes have looked upon every scene there for so many aeons
that every sight has an arranged quality: a flowering branch in the
foreground, a precipitous Mountainside in the background, a small bridge
between.  A path, with two women in red kimonos, that winds up a
hillside.

A white room with pearly rice-paper walls and a futon on the matcovered
floor, branches of cherry blossoms in a vase in the corner.

They seem like postcards, but they are scenes he has actually looked
upon: on a three-day trip out of Hong Kong into southern China, with
some other teachers from his school on a trip to Kyoto, and at Akira's
house.  Akira was a fellow teacher at his school who befriended him. His
house had four rooms, two Japanese style and two Western style.  He
remembers, of course, other scenes of Japan-acres of buses, faces
staring at his Westernness, the polite but bored rows of students in his
classroom-when he is trying to decide whether to go back there.  But
these are not fixed, have no power; they are just memories, like
memories of bars in Lincoln or the pig houses on his grandfather's farm.

And so, he survives the storm.  He pulls into the driveway of Harold's
new house, one he has not seen, though it is in a neighborhood he
remembers from junior high school.  The storm is over.  Harold has his
snowblower out and is making a path from the driveway to his front door.
With the noise and because his back is turned, he is unaware of Kirby's
arrival.  Kirby stops the car, stretches, and looks at his watch.  Seven
hours for a four-hour trip.  Kirby lifts his shoulders and rotates his
head, but does not beep his horn just yet.  The fact is that he has
frightened himself with the blinding snow, the miles of slick and
featureless landscape, thoughts of Japan, and the thousands and
thousands of miles between here and there.  His car might be a marble
that has rolled, only by luck, into a safe corner.  He presses his
fingers against his eyes and stills his breathing.

Harold turns around, grins, and shuts off the snowblower.  It is a
Harold identical to the Harold that Kirby has always known.  Same bright
snowflake ski hat, same bright ski clothing.  Harold has spent his whole
life skiing and ski jumping.  His bushy beard grows up to the hollows of
his eyes; and when he leans into the car his mustache is, as always,
crusted with ice.

"Hey!" he says.  He backs away, and Kirby opens the car door.

"Made it!" Kirby says.  That is all he will say about the trip.

The last thing he wants to do is start a discussion about near misses.
Compared with some of Harold's near misses, this is nothing.  In fact,
near misses on the highway aren't worth mentioning unless a lot of
damage has been done to the car.  Kirby knows of near misses that Harold
has never dared to describe to anyone besides him, because they show a
pure stupidity that even Harold has the sense to be ashamed of.  At
dinner, over sweet and savory Nordic fare that Kirby is used to but
doesn't much like, the people around the table, his relatives, waver in
the smoky candlelight, and Kirby imagines that he can feel the heat of
the flames on his face.  The other people at the table seem unfamiliar.
Leanne, Harold's wife, he has seen only once, at their wedding.  She is
handsome and selfpossessed-looking, but she sits at the corner of the
table, like a guest in her own house.  Eric sits at the head, and Mary
Beth, his wife, jumps up and down to replenish the food.  This
assumption of primogeniture is a peculiarity of Eric's that has always
annoyed Kirby, but even aside from that they have never gotten along.
Eric does his bestearnest handshake and smile each time they meet, two
newsy letters every year, pictures of the children (known between Harold
and Kirby as "the little victims").  Eric has a PhD.

from Columbia in American history, but he does not teach.  He writes for
a conservative think tank, articles that appear on the op-ed pages of
newspapers and in the think tank's own publications.  He specializes in
"the family." Kirby and Harold have made countless jokes at Eric's
expense.  Kirby knows that more will be made this trip, if only in the
form of conspiratorial looks, rolling eyes.  Eric's hobby-Mary Beth's,
too, for they share everything-is developing each nuance of his
Norwegian heritage into a fully realized ostentation.  Mary Beth is
always busy, usually baking.  That's all Kirby knows about her, and all
he cares to know.

Across the table Anna, their older daughter, pale, blue-eyed, cool,
seems to be staring at him, but Kirby can hardly see her.  He is
thinking about Mieko.  Kirby looks at his watch.  It is very early
morning in Osaka.

She is probably about to wake up.  Her disappointment will have receded
hardly a particle, will suck her down as soon as she thuds into
consciousness.  "Oh, oh, oh": he can hear her cries as clearly as if
they were still vibrating in the air.  He is amazed at having heard such
a thing, and he looks carefully at the women around the table.  Mieko
would be too eager to please here, always looking after Mary Beth and
Leanne, trying to divine how she might be helpful.  Finally, Mary Beth
would speak to her with just a hint of sharpness, and Mieko would be
crushed.  Her eyes would seek Kirby's for reassurance, and he would have
none to give.  She would be too little, smaller even than Anna, and her
voice would be too high and quick.

These thoughts give him such pain that he stares for relief at Kristin,
Eric's youngest, age three, who is humming over her dinner.  She is
round-faced and paunchy, with dark hair cut straight across her forehead
and straight around her collar.  From time to time she and Leanne
exchange merry glances.

Harold is beside him; that, at least, is familiar and good, and it
touches Kirby with a pleasant sense of expectation, as if Harold, at any
moment, might pass him a comic book or a stick of gum.  In fact, Harold
does pass him something-an icy cold beer, which cuts the sweetness of
the food and seems to adjust all the figures around the table so that
they stop wavering.

Of course his eyes open well before daylight, but he dares not move.

He is sharing a room with Harold the younger, Eric's son, whose bed is
between his and the door.  He worries that if he gets up he will stumble
around and crash into walls and wake Harold.  The digits on the clock
beside Harold's bed read 5:37, but when Kirby is quiet he can hear
movement elsewhere in the house.  When he closes his eyes the footsteps
present themselves as a needle and thread, stitching a line through his
thoughts.  He has just been driving.  His arms ache from gripping the
wheel.  The car slides diagonally across the road, toward the median. It
slides and slides, through streams of cars, toward a familiar exit, the
Marshalltown exit, off to the left, upward.  His eyes open again.

The door of the room is open, and Anna is looking in.  After a moment
she turns and goes away.  It is 6:02.  Sometime later Leanne passes with
Isaac, the baby, in her arms.

Kirby cannot bear to get up and face his brothers and their families. As
always, despair presents itself aesthetically.  The image of Harold and
Leanne's living room, matching plaid wing chairs and couch, a triple row
of wooden pegs by the maple front door, seems to Kirby the image of the
interior of a coffin.  The idea of spending five years, ten years, a
lifetime, with such furniture makes him gasp.  But his own apartment,
armchair facing the television, which sits on a spindly coffee table, is
worse.

Mary Beth and Eric's place, where he has been twice, is the worst,
because it's pretentious; they have antique wooden trunks and
high-backed benches painted blue with stenciled flowers in red and
white.  Everything, everything, they own is blue and white, or white
with blue, and Nordic primitive.  Now even the Japanese images he calls
up are painful.  The pearly white Japanese-style room in Akira's house
was bitterly cold in the winter, and he spent one night there only
half-sleeping, his thighs drawn to his chest, the perimeters of the bed
too cold even to touch.  His head throbbing, Kirby lies pinned to the
bed by impossibility.  He literally can't summon up a room, a stick of
furniture, that he can bear to think of.  Harold the younger rolls over
and groans, turning his twelve-year-old face toward Kirby's.  His mouth
opens and he breathes noisily.  It is 6:27.

At breakfast, Leanne sets a bowl of raisin bran before him, and he is
struck by the elasticity of her motion.  She smiles, so cool and kind
that Kirby is suddenly daunted.  Ten minutes later, when Anna enters the
kitchen in her bathrobe, yawning, he recalls, suddenly, her appearance
in the doorway to his room.  Fifth grade.  Only fifth grade.  He can see
that now, but the night before, and in the predawn darkness, she had
seemed older, more threatening, the way girls get at fourteen and
fifteen.  "Cereal, sweetie?" Leanne says, and Anna nods, scratching. She
sits down without a word and focuses on the back of the Cheerios box.
Kirby decides that he was dreaming and puts the incident out of his
mind; but, "sweetie"-he would like for Leanne to call him that.

Harold, of course, is at his store, managing the Christmas rush, and the
house is less festive in his absence.  Eric has sequestered himself in
Leanne's sewing room, with his computer, and as soon as Anna stands up
from breakfast, Mary Beth begins to arrange the day's kitchen schedule.
Kirby rinses his cup and goes into the living room.  It is nine in the
morning, and the day stretches before him, empty.  He walks through the
plaid living room to the window, where he regards the outdoor
thermometer.  It reads four degrees below zero.  Moments later it is
five degrees below zero.

Moments after that he is standing beside Harold's bar, pouring himself a
glass of bourbon.  He has already drunk it when Anna appears in the
doorway, dressed now, and staring at him again.

She makes him think of Mieko again-though the child is blond and
self-contained, she is Mieko's size.

Last evening, when he was thinking of Mieko, he was looking at Anna.  He
says, attempting jovial warmth, "Good morning, Anna.  Why do you keep
staring at me?"

She is startled.  "I don't.  I was looking at the bookshelves."

"But you stared at me last night, at dinner.  And you came to the door
of my room early this morning.  I know because I was awake."

"No, I didn't." But then she softens, and says with eager curiosity,
"Are you a socialist?"

While Kirby is trying not to laugh, he hears Mary Beth sing from the
kitchen.  "Anna?  Your brother is going sledding.  You want to go?" Anna
turns away before Kirby can answer and mounts the stairs.  A "No!"
floats, glassy and definite, from the second floor.

Kirby sits down in one of the plaid armchairs and gazes at an
arrangement of greenery and shiny red balls and candles that sits on a
table behind the couch.  He gazes and gazes, contemplating the notion of
Eric and Mary Beth discussing his politics and his life.  He is
offended.  He knows that if he were to get up and do something he would
stop being offended, but he gets up only to pour himself another drink.
It is nearly ten.  Books are around everywhere, and Kirby picks one up.

People keep opening doors and coming in, having been elsewhere.

Harold comes home for lunch, Leanne and Isaac return from the grocery
store and the hardware store, Harold the younger stomps in, covered with
snow from sledding, eats a sandwich, and stomps out again.  Eric opens
the study door, takes a turn through the house, goes back into the study
again.

He does this three times, each time failing to speak to Kirby, who is
sitting quietly.  Perhaps he does not see him.  He is an old man, Kirby
thinks, and his ass has spread considerably in the past four years; he
is thirty-six going on fifty, round-shouldered, wearing slacks rather
than jeans.  What a jerk.

But then Kirby's bad mood twists into him, and he lets his head drop on
the back of his chair.  What is a man?  Kirby thinks.  What is a man,
what is a man?  It is someone, Eric would say, who votes, owns property,
has a wife, worries.  It is someone, Harold would say, who can chop wood
all day and fuck all night, who can lift his twenty-five-pound son above
his head on the palm of his hand.  After lunch the men have all vanished
again, even Isaac, who is taking a nap.  In various rooms the women do
things.  They make no noise.  Harold's house is the house of a wealthy
man, Kirby realizes.  It is large enough to be silent and neat most of
the time, the sort of house Kirby will never own.  It is Harold and Eric
who are alike now.  Only Kirby's being does not extend past his
fingertips and toes to family, real estate, reputation.

Sometime in the afternoon, when Kirby is still sitting quietly and his
part of the room is shadowed by the movement of the sun to the other
side of the house, Kristin comes in from the kitchen, goes straight to
the sofa, pulls off one of the cushions, and begins to jump repeatedly
from the cushion to the floor.  When he says, "Kristin, what are you
doing?" she is not startled.  She says, "Jumping."

"Do you like to jump?"

She says, "It's a beautiful thing to do," in her matter-of-fact, deep,
three-year-old voice.  Kirby can't believe she knows what she is saying.
She jumps three or four more times and then runs out again.  At dinner
she is tired and tiresome.  When Eric tells her to eat a bite of her
meat (ham cooked with apricots), she looks him right in the face and
says, "No."

"One bite," he says.  "I mean it."

"No.  I mean it." She looks up at him.  He puts his napkin on the table
and pushes back his chair.  In a moment he has swept her through the
doorway and up the stairs.  She is screaming.  A door slams and the
screaming is muffled.  When he comes down and seats himself, carefully
laying his napkin over his slacks, Anna says, "It's her body." The table
quiets.  Eric says, "What?"

"It's her body."

"What does that mean?"

"She should have control over her own body.  Food.  Other stuff.

I don't know." She has started strong but weakens in the face of her
father's glare.  Eric inhales sharply, and Kirby cannot restrain
himself.  He says, "How can you disagree with that?  It sounds
self-evident to me."

"Does it?  The child is three years old.  How can she have control over
her own body when she doesn't know anything about it?  Does she go out
without a coat if it's twenty below zero?  Does she eat only cookies for
three days?  Does she wear a diaper until she's five?  This is one of
those phrases they are using these days.

They all mean the same thing."

"What do they mean?" As Kirby speaks, Leanne and Mary Beth look up, no
doubt wishing that he had a wife or a girlfriend here to restrain him.

Harold looks up, too.  He is grinning.

Eric shifts in his chair, uncomfortable, Kirby suddenly realizes, at
being predictably stuffy once again.  Eric says, "It's Christmas.  Let's
enjoy it."

Harold says, "Principles are principles, any day of the year."

Eric takes the bait and lets himself say, "The family is constituted for
a purpose, which is the sometimes difficult socialization of children.
For a certain period of their lives others control them.  In early
childhood others control their bodies.  They are taught to control
themselves.  Even Freud says that the young barbarian has to be taught
to relinquish his feces, sometimes by force."

"Good Lord, Eric," Leanne says.

Eric is red in the face.  "Authority is a principle I believe in."

He looks around the table and then at Anna, openly angry that she has
gotten him into this.  Across Anna's face flits a look that Kirby has
seen before, has seen on Mieko's face, a combination of self-doubt and
resentment molded into composure.

"Patriarchy is what you mean," Kirby says, realizing from the tone of
his own voice that rage has replaced sympathy and, moreover, is about to
get the better of him.

"Why not?  It works."

"For some people, at a great cost.  Why should daughters be sacrificed
to the whims of the father?" He should stop now.  He doesn't.  "Just
because he put his dick somewhere once or twice."

The result of too many bourbons too early in the day.

"In my opinion-" Eric seems not to notice the vulgarity, but Harold,
beside Kirby, snorts with pleasure.

"I don't want to talk about this," Leanne says.  Kirby blushes and falls
silent, knowing that he has offended her.  It is one of those long
holiday meals, and by the time they get up from the table, Kirby feels
as if he has been sitting in a dim, candlelit corner most of his life.

There is another ritual-the Christmas Eve unwrapping of presentsand by
that time Kirby realizes that he is actively intoxicated and had better
watch his tone of voice and his movements.  Anna hands out the gifts
with a kind of rude bashfulness, and Kirby is surprised at the richness
of the array: from Harold he has gotten a cotton turtleneck and a wool
sweater, in bright, stylish colors; from Leanne a pair of very fancy
gloves; from Isaac three pairs of Ragg wool socks; from Eric's family,
as a group, a blue terry-cloth robe and sheepskin slippers.  When they
open his gifts, he is curious to see what the wrappings reveal: he has
bought it all so long before.
Almost everything is some gadget available in Japan but not yet in the
States.  Everyone peers and oohs and oohs.  It gives Kirby a headache
and a sense of his eyeballs expanding and contracting.

Tomorrow night he will be on his way home again, and though he cannot
bear to stay here, after all, he cannot bear to leave either.  He drifts
toward the stairs, intending to go to bed, but Harold looms before him,
grinning and commanding.  "Your brain needs some oxygen, brother," he
says.  Then they are putting on their parkas, and then they' are
outside, in a cold so sharp that Kirby's nose, the only exposed part of
him, stings.  Harold strides down the driveway, slightly ahead of him,
and Kirby expects him to speak, either for or against Eric, but he
doesn't.

He only walks.  The deep snow is so solidly frozen that it squeaks
beneath their boots.  The only thing Harold says the whole time they are
walking is, "Twenty-two below, not counting the wind chill.  Feels good,
doesn't it?"

" Feels dangerous," Kirby says.

"It is," Harold says.

The neighborhood is brightly decorated, and the colored lights have
their effect on Kirby.  For the first time in three Christmases he feels
a touch of the mystery that he thinks of as the Christmas spirit.  Or
maybe it is love for Harold.

Back at the house, everyone has gone to bed except Leanne and Mary Beth,
who are drying dishes and putting them away.  They are also, Kirby
realizes-after Harold strides through the kitchen and up the
stairs-arguing, although with smiles and in polite tones.  Kirby goes to
a cabinet and lingers over getting himself a glass for milk.  Mary Beth
says, "Kristin will make the connection.  She's old enough."

"I can't believe that."

"She saw all the presents being handed out and unwrapped.  And Anna will
certainly make the connection."

"Anna surely doesn't believe in Santa Claus anymore."

"Unofficially, probably not."

"It's Isaac's first Christmas," Leanne says.  "He'll like
allthewrappings."

"I wish you'd thought of that before you wrapped the family presents and
his Santa presents in the same paper."

"That's a point, too.  They're his presents.  I don't think Kristin will
notice them."

"If they're the only wrapped presents, she will.  She notices
everything."

Now Leanne turns and gazes at Mary Beth, her hands on her hips.  A long
silence follows.  Leanne flicks a glance at Kirby, who pretends not to
notice.  Finally she says, "All right, Mary Beth.

I'll unwrap them."

"Thank you," Mary Beth says.  "I'll finish this, if you want."

Kirby goes out of the kitchen and up to his bedroom.  The light is
already off, and Harold the younger is on his back, snoring.

When he gets up an hour later, too drunk to sleep, Kirby sees Leanne
arranging the last of Santa's gifts under the tree.  She turns the flash
of her glance upon him as he passes through the living room to the
kitchen.

"Mmm," he says, uncomfortable, "can't sleep."

"Want some cocoa?  I always make some before I go to bed." He stops.
"Yeah.  Why not?  Am I mistaken, or have you been up since

about 6:00 A.M.?"

"About that.  But I'm always wired at midnight, no matter what."

He follows her into the kitchen, remembering now that they have never
conversed and wishing that he had stayed in bed.  He has drunk himself
stupid.  Whatever words he has in him have to be summoned from very far
down.  He sits at the table.  After a minute he puts his chin in his
hand.  After a long, blank, rather pleasant time, the cocoa is before
him, marshmallow and all.  He looks at it.  When Leanne speaks, Kirby is
startled, as if he had forgotten that she was there.  "Tired?" she says.

"Too much to drink."

"I noticed."

"I don't have anything more to say about it."

"I'm not asking."

He takes a sip of his cocoa.  He says, "Do you all see much of Eric and
family?"

"They came last Christmas.  He came by himself in the summer.  To a
conference on the future of the family."

"And so you have to put up with him, right?"

"Harold has a three-day limit.  I don't care."

"I noticed you unwrapped all Isaac's presents."

She shrugs, picks at the sole of her boot.  She yawns without covering
her mouth, and then says, "Oh, I'm sorry." She smiles warmly, looking
right at him.  "I am crazy about Kristin.  Crazy enough to not chance
messing up Christmas for her."

"Today she told me that jumping off a cushion was a beautiful thing to
do."

Leanne smiles.  "Yesterday she said that it was wonderful of me to give
her a napkin.  You know, I don't agree with Eric about that body stuff.
I think they naturally do what is healthy for them.

Somebody did an experiment with one-year-olds, gave them a range of
foods to choose from, and they always chose a balanced diet.

They also want to be toilet trained sooner or later.  I think it's weird
the way Eric thinks that every little thing is learned rather than
realized."

"That's a nice phrase." He turns his cup handle so that it points away
and then back in his direction.

Finally he says, "Can I tell you about something?"

"Sure."

"Yesterday a friend of mine called me from Japan, a woman, to say that
she couldn't come visit me.  Her father has cancer.  She had planned to
arrive here the day after tomorrow, and we were going to take a trip out
West.  It isn't important, exactly.  I don't know."

Leanne is silent but attentive, picking at the sole of her boot.  Now
that he has mentioned it, the memory of Mieko's anguish returns to him
like a glaring light or a thundering noise, so enormous that he is
nearly robbed of the power to speak.  He pushes it out.  "She can't come
now, ever.

She probably won't ever call or write me again.  And really, this has
saved her.  She had all sorts of expectations that I couldn't have .  .
.  well, wouldn't have fulfilled, and if she had come she would have
been permanently compromised."

"Did you have some kind of affair when you were there?"

"For a few months.  She's very pretty.  I think she's the prettiest
woman I've ever seen.  She teaches mathematics at the school where I was
teaching.

After I had been with Mieko for a few weeks, I realized that no one,
maybe in her whole adult life, had asked her how she was, or had put his
arm around her shoulders, or had taken care of her in any way.  The
slightest affection was like a drug she couldn't get enough of."

"What did you feel?"

"I liked her.  I really did.  I was happy to see her when she came by.
But she longed for me more than I have ever longed for anything."

"You were glad to leave."

"I was glad to leave."

"So what's the problem?"

"When she called yesterday, she broke down completely.  I listened.  I
thought it was the least I could do, but now I think that she is
compromised.

Japanese people are very private.  It scares me how much I must have
embarrassed her.  I look back on the spring and the summer and
yesterday's call, and I see that, one by one, I broke down every single
one of her strengths, everything she had equipped herself with to live
in a Japanese way.  I was so careful for a year and a half.  I didn't
date Japanese women, and I was very distant-but then I was so lonely,
and she was so pretty, and I thought, well, she's twenty-seven, and she
lives in this sophisticated city, Osaka.  But mostly I was lonely."
Leanne gazes across the table in that way of hers, calm and considering.

Finally she says, "Eric comes in for a lot of criticism around here. His
style's all wrong, for one thing.  And he drives Harold the younger and
Anna crazy.

But I've noticed something about him.  He never tries to get something
for nothing.  I admire that."

Now Kirby looks around the room, at the plants on the windowsill, the
hoarfrost on the windowpanes, the fluorescent light harsh on the
stainless steel sink, and it seems to him that all at once, now that he
realizes it, his life and Micko's have taken their final form.  She is
nearly too old to marry, and by the end of her father's cancer and his
life she will be much too old.

And himself.  Himself.  Leanne's cool remark has revealed his permanent
smallness.  He looks at his hands, first his knuckles, then his palms.
He says, "It seems so dramatic to say that I will never get over this."

"Does it?  To me it seems like saying that what people do is important."

And though he looks at her intently, seeking some sort of pardon, she
says nothing more, only picks at her boot for a moment or two, and then
gets up and puts their cups in the sink.  He follows her out of the
kitchen, through the living room.  She turns out all the lights, so that
the house is utterly dark.  At the bottom of the stairs, unable to see
anything, he stumbles and puts his hand on her arm.  She takes it, in a
grasp that is dry and cool, and guides it to the banister.  Then, soft
and fleeting, he feels a disembodied kiss on his cheek.

AND THERE WAS THE EVENING AND THE MORNING By: HEINRICH BOLL

it was not until noon that he thought of leaving his Christmas presents
for Anna in the baggage room at the station; he was glad he had thought
of it, for it meant he didn't have to go home immediately.  Ever since
Anna had stopped speaking to him he was afraid of going home; her
silence bore down on him like a tombstone the minute he entered the
apartment.  He used to look forward to going home, for two years after
his wedding day: he loved having supper with Anna, talking to her, and
then going to bed; best of all he loved the hour between going to bed
and falling asleep.  Anna fell asleep earlier than he did because
nowadays she was always tired-and he would lie there in the darkness
beside her, he could hear her breathing, and from the far end of the
street the headlamps of cars now and again threw rays of light onto the
ceiling, light that curved down as the cars reached the rise in the
street, bands of pale yellow light that made his sleeping wife's profile
leap up for a second against the wall; then darkness would fall once
more over the room, and all that remained was delicate whorls: the
pattern of the curtains drawn on the ceiling by the gas lamp in the
street.  This was the hour he loved more than any hour of the day,
because he could feel the day falling away from him, and he would slide
down into sleep as into a bath.

Now he strolled hesitatingly past the baggage counter, and saw his box
still there at the back between the red suitcase and the demijohn.  The
open elevator coming down from the platform was empty, white with snow:
it descended like a piece of paper into the gray concrete of the baggage
room, and the man who had been operating it walked over and said to the
clerk: "Now it really feels like Christmas.  It's nice when there's snow
for the kids, eh?" The clerk nodded, silently impaled baggage checks on
his spike, counted the money in his drawer and looked suspiciously
across to Brenig, who had taken his claim check out of his pocket but
folded it up and put it back again.  This was the third time he had
come, the third time he had taken the claim check out and put it back in
his pocket again.  The clerk's suspicious glances made him
uncomfortable; he strolled over to the exit and stood looking out onto
the empty station square.  He loved the snow, loved the cold; as a boy
it had intoxicated him to breathe in the cold clear air, and now he
threw away his cigarette and held his face against the wind, which was
driving light, profuse snowflakes toward the station.  Brenig kept his
eyes open, for he liked it when the flakes got caught in his eyelashes,
new ones constantly replacing the old which melted and ran down his
cheeks in little drops.  A girl walked quickly past him, and he saw how
her green hat became white with snow while she hurried across the
square, but it was only when she was standing at the streetcar stop that
he recognized the little red suitcase she was carrying as the one which
had stood next to his box in the baggage room.

It was a mistake to get married, thought Brenig; they congratulate
you,you flowers, have stupid telegrams delivered to your door, and then
they leave you alone.  They ask whether you have thought of everything:
of things for the kitchen, from saltshaker to stove, and finally they
make sure you even have plenty of soup seasoning on the shelf.  They
estimate whether you can support a family, but what it means to be a
family is something nobody tells you.  They send flowers, twenty
bouquets, and it smells like a funeral; then they throw rice and leave
you alone.

A man walked past him, and he could tell the man was drunk, he was
singing: "Oh come all ye faithful," but Brenig did not shift the angle
of his head so that it was a moment or two before he noticed that the
man was carrying a demijohn in his right hand, and he knew the box with
his Christmas presents for his wife was now standing all by itself on
the top shelf of the baggage room.  It contained an umbrella, two books,
and a big piano made of mocha chocolate: the white keys were of
marzipan, the black ones of dark brittle.  The chocolate piano was as
big as an encyclopedia, and the girl in the store had said the chocolate
would keep for six months.

Maybe I was too young to get married, he thought, maybe I should have
waited until Anna became less serious and I became more serious, but
actually he knew he was serious enough and that Anna's seriousness was
just right.  That was what he loved about her.  For the sake of the hour
before falling asleep he had given up movies and dancing, and hadn't
even bothered to meet his friends.  At night, when he was lying in bed,
he was filled with devoutness, with peace, and he would often repeat the
sentence to himself, although he wasn't quite certain of the exact
wording: "And God made the earth and the moon, to rule over the day and
over the night, to divide the light from the darkness, and God saw that
it was good, and there was the evening and the morning." He had meant to
look it up in Anna's Bible again to see just how it went, but he always
forgot.  For God to have created day and night seemed to him every bit
as wonderful as the creation of flowers, beasts and man.  He loved this
hour before falling asleep more than anything else.  But now that Anna
had stopped speaking to him her silence lay on him like a weight.  If
she had only said: "It's colder today.  .  .  ." or "It's going to rain.

.  .  " it would have put an end to his misery-if she had only, said
"Yes," or:,No, no," or something sillier still, he would be happy, and
he would no longer dread going home.  But for the space of a few seconds
her face would turn to stone, and at these moments he suddenly knew what
she would look like as an old woman; he was seized with fear, suddenly
saw himself thrust thirty years forward into the future as onto a stony
plain, saw himself old too, with the kind of face he had seen on some
men: deeply lined with bitterness, strained with suppressed suffering,
and tinged to the very nostrils with the light yellow of gall: masks,
scattered throughout the everyday world like death's-heads....

Sometimes, although he had only known her for three years, he also knew
what she had looked like as a child, he could picture her as a
ten-year-old girl, dreaming over a book under the lamplight, grave, her
eyes dark under her light lashes, her eyelids flickering above the
printed page, her lips parted....  Often, when he was sitting opposite
her at table, her face would change like the pictures which change when
you shake them, and he suddenly knew that she had sat there exactly like
that as a child, carefully breaking up her potatoes with her fork and
slowly dribbling the gravy over them....  The snow had almost stuck his
eyelashes together, but he could just make out the number 4 gliding up
over the snow as if on sleds.

Maybe I should phone her, he thought, have her come to the phone at
Menders; she'd have to speak to me then.  The number 4 would be followed
immediately by the 7, the last streetcar that evening, but by this time
he was bitterly cold and he walked slowly across the square, saw the
brightly lighted blue 7 in the distance, stood undecided by the
call-box, and looked in a store window where the window dressers were
exchanging Santa Clauses and angels for other dummies: ladies in
decollete, their bare shoulders sprinkled with confetti, their wrists
festooned with paper streamers.

Their escorts, male dummies with graying temples, were being hurriedly
placed on barstools, champagne corks scattered on the floor, one dummy
was having its wings and curls taken off, and Brenig was surprised how
quickly an angel could be turned into a bartender.  Mustache, dark wig
and a sign swiftly nailed to the wall saying: "New Year's Eve without
champagne?"

Here Christmas was over before it had begun.  Maybe, he thought, Anna is
too young, she was only twenty-one, and while he contemplated his
reflection in the store window he noticed the snow had covered his hair
like a little crown-the way he used to see it on fence posts-and it
struck him that old people were wrong to talk about the gaiety of youth:
when you were young, everything was serious and difficult, and nobody
helped you, and he was suddenly surprised that he did not hate Anna for
her silence, that he didn't wish he had married someone else.  The whole
vocabulary that people offered you was meaningless: forgiveness,
divorce, a fresh start, time the Great Healer-these words were all
useless.

You had to work it out for yourself, because you were different from
other people, and because Anna was different from other people's wives.

The window dressers were deftly nailing masks onto the walls, stringing
crackers on a cord: the last number 7 had left long ago, and the box
with his presents for Anna was standing all by itself up there on the
shelf.

I am twenty-five, he thought, and because of a lie, one little lie, a
stupid lie such as millions of men tell every week or every month, I
have to endure this punishment; with my eyes staring into the stony
future I have to look at Anna crouching like a sphim on the edge of the
stony desert, and at myself, my face yellowed with bitterness, an old
man.  Oh yes, there would always be plenty of soup seasoning on the
kitchen shelf, the saltshaker would always be in its proper place, and
he would have been a department head for years and well able to support
his family: a stony clan, and never again would he lie in bed and in the
hour before falling asleep rejoice in the creation of evening, and offer
thanks to God for having created rest from the labors of the day, and he
would send the same stupid telegrams to young people when they got
married as he had been sent himself....  Other women would have laughed
over such a stupid lie about his salary, other women knew that all men
lie to their wives: maybe it was a kind of instinctive self-defense,
against which they invented their own lies, but Anna's face had turned
to stone.  There were books about marriage, and he had looked up in
these books what you could do when something went wrong with your
marriage, but none of the books said anything about a woman who had
turned to stone.  The books told you how to have children and how not to
have children, and they contained a lot of big fine words, but the
little words were missing.

The window dressers had finished their work: streamers were hanging over
wires that were fastened out of sight, and he saw one of the men
disappearing at the back of the store with two angels under his arm,
while the second man emptied a bag of confetti over the dummy's bare
shoulders and gave a final pat to the sign saying "New Year's Eve
without champagne?"

Brenig brushed the snow from his hair, walked back across the square to
the station, and when he had taken the claim check from his pocket and
smoothed it out for the fourth time he ran quickly as if he hadn't a
second to lose.  But the baggage room was closed, and there was a sign
hanging in front of the grille: "Will be open ten minutes before arrival
or departure of a train."

Brenig laughed, he laughed for the first time since noon and looked at
his box, lying up there on the shelf behind bars as if it were in
prison.  The departure board was right next to the counter, and he saw
the next train would not be arriving for another hour.  I can't wait
that long, he thought, and at this time of night I won't even be able to
get flowers or chocolate, not even a little book, and the last number 7
has gone.  For the first time in his life he thought of taking a taxi,
and he felt very grown-up, and at the same time a bit foolish, as he ran
across the square to the taxi rank.

He sat in the back of the cab, clasping his money: ten marks, the last
of his cash, which he had set aside to buy something special for Anna,
but he hadn't found anything special, and now he was sitting there
clasping his money and watching the meter jump up at short
intervals-very short intervals, it seemed to him-ten pfennig at a time,
and every time the meter clicked it felt like a stab in the heart,
although it only showed two marks eighty.  Here I am coming home, with
no flowers, no presents, hungry, tired and stupid, and it occurred to
him that he could almost certainly have got some chocolate in the
waiting room at the station.

The streets were empty, the cab drove almost soundlessly through the
snow, and in the lighted windows Brenig could see the Christmas trees
glowing in the houses: Christmas, the way he had known it as a child and
the way he had felt today, seemed very far away: the important things,
the things that mattered, happened independently of the calendar, and in
the stony desert Christmas would be like any other day of the year and
Easter like a rainy day in November: thirty, forty torn-off calendars,
metal holders with shreds of paper, that's all that would be left if you
didn't watch out.

He was roused by the driver saying: "Here we are.  .  .  ." Then he was
relieved to see that the meter had stopped at three marks forty.  He
waited impatiently for his change from five marks, and he felt a surge
of relief when he saw a light upstairs in the room where Anna's bed
stood next to his.  He made up his mind never to forget this moment of
relief, and as he got out his house key and put it in the door, he
experienced that silly feeling again that he had had when he got into
the taxi: he felt grown-up, yet at the same time a bit foolish.  In the
kitchen the Christmas tree was standing on the table, with presents
spread out for him: socks, cigarettes and a new fountain pen, and a gay,
colorful calendar which he would be able to hang over his desk in the
office.  The milk was already in the saucepan on the stove, he had only
to light the gas, and there were sandwiches ready for him on the plate
but that was how it had been every evening, even since Anna had stopped
speaking to him, and the setting up of the Christmas tree and the laying
out of the presents was like the preparing of the sandwiches-a duty, and
Anna would always do her duty.  He didn't feel like the milk, and the
appetizing sandwiches didn't appeal to him either.  He went into the
little hall and noticed at once that Anna had turned out the light.  But
the door to the bedroom was open, and without much hope he called softly
into the dark rectangle: "Anna, are you asleep?" He waited, for a long
time it seemed, as if his question was falling into a deep well, and the
dark silence in the dark rectangle of the bedroom door contained
everything that was in store for him in thirty, forty years-and when
Anna said "No," he thought he must have heard wrong, perhaps it was an
illusion, and he went on hurriedly in a louder voice: "I've done such a
stupid thing.  I checked my presents for you at the station, and when I
wanted to pick them up the baggage room was closed, and I didn't want to
hang around.  Are you angry?"

This time he was sure he had really heard her "No," but he could also
hear that this "No" did not come from the corner of the room where their
beds had been.  Evidently Anna had moved her bed under the window. "It's
an umbrella," he said, "two books and a little piano made of chocolate;
it's as big as an encyclopedia, the keys are made of marzipan and
brittle." He stopped, listened for a reply, nothing came from the dark
rectangle, but when he asked: "Are you pleased?" the "Yes" came quicker
than the two "No's" had done....

He turned out the light in the kitchen, undressed in the dark and got
into bed: through the curtains he could see the Christmas trees in the
building across the street, and downstairs there was singing, but he had
regained his hour, he had two "No's," and a "Yes," and when a car came
up the street the headlamps made Anna's profile leap up out of the
darkness for him ....

TONI CADE BAMBARA

Christmas Eve at Johnson's Drugs N Goods

I was probably the first to spot them cause I'd been watching the
entrance to the store on the lookout for my daddy, knowing that if he
didn't show soon, he wouldn't be coming at all.

His new family would be expecting him to spend the holidays with them.

For the first half of my shift, I'd raced the cleaning cart down the
aisles doing a slapdash job on the signs and glass cages, eager to stay
in view of the doorway.  And look like Johnson's kept getting bigger,
swelling, sprawling itself all over the corner lot, just to keep me from
the door, to wear me out in the marathon vigil.  In point of fact,
Johnson's Drugs N Goods takes up less than one third of the block.  But
it's laid out funny in crisscross aisles so you get to feeling like a
rat in an endless maze.  Plus the ceilings are high and the fluorescents
a blazing white.  And Mrs.  Johnson's got these huge signs sectioning
off the spaceS-TOBACCO DRUGS HOUSEWARES, etc.-like it was some bigtime
department store.  The thing is, till the two noisy women came in, it
felt like a desert under a blazing sun.  Piper in Tobacco even had on
shades.

The new dude in Drugs looked like he was at the end of a wrong-way
telescope.  I got to feeling like a nomad with the cleaning cart,
trekking across the sands with no end in sight, wandering.  The overhead
lights creating mirages and racing up my heart till I'd realize that
wasn't my daddy in the parking lot, just the posterboard Santa Claus. Or
that wasn't my daddy in the entrance way, just the Burma Shave man in a
frozen stance.

Then I'd tried to make out pictures of Daddy getting off the bus at the
terminal, or driving a rented car past the Chamber of Commerce building,
or sitting jammed-leg in one of them DC pointo-nine brand-X planes,
coming to see me.

By the time the bus pulled into the lot and the two women in their
big-city clothes hit the door, I'd decided Daddy was already at the
house waiting for me, knowing that for a mirage too, since Johnson's is
right across from the railroad and bus terminals and the house is a
dollar-sixty cab away.  And I know he wouldn't feature going to the
house on the off chance of running into Mama.

Or even if he escaped that fate, having to sit in the parlor with his
hat in his lap while Aunt Harriet looks him up and down grunting, too
busy with the latest crossword-puzzle contest to offer the man some
supper.  And Uncle Henry talking a blue streak bout how he outfoxed the
city council or something and nary a cold beer in sight for my daddy.

But then the two women came banging into the store and I felt better.

Right away the store stopped sprawling, got fixed.  And we all got
pulled together from our various zones to one focal point-them.

Changing up the whole atmosphere of the place fore they even got into
the store proper.

Before we knew it, we were all smiling, looking halfway like you
supposed to on Christmas Eve, even if you do got to work for OF lady
Johnson, who don't give you no slack whatever the holiday.

"What the hell does this mean, Ethel?" the one in the fur coat say,
talking loud and fast, yanking on the rails that lead the way into the
store.

"What are we, cattle?  Being herded into the blankety-blank store and in
my fur coat," she grumbles, boosting herself up between the rails,
swinging her body along like the kids do in the park.

Me and Piper look at each other and smile.  Then Piper moves down to the
edge of the counter right under the TOBACCO sign so as not to miss
nothing.  Madeen over in Housewares waved to me to ask what's up and I
just shrug.  I'm fascinated by the women.

"Look here," the one called Ethel say, drawing the words out lazy slow.

"Do you got a token for this sucker?" She's shoving hard against the
turnstile folks supposed to exit through.  Pushing past and grunting,
the turnstile crank cranking like it gonna bust, her Christmas corsage
of holly and bells just ajingling and hanging by a thread.  Then she
gets through and stumbles toward the cigar counter and leans back
against it, studying the turnstile hard.

It whips back around in place, making scrunching noises like it's been
abused.  "You know one thing," she say, dropping her face onto her coat
collar so Piper'd know he's being addressed.

" Ma'am?  "

"That is one belligerent bad boy, that thing right there."

Piper laughs his prize-winning laugh and starts touching the stacks of
gift-wrapped stuff, case the ladies in the market for pipe tobacco or
something.  Two or three of the customers who'd been falling asleep in
the magazines coming to life now, inching forward.  Phototropism, I'd
call it, if somebody asked me for a word.  The one in the fur coat's
coming around now the right way-if you don't count the stiff-elbow
rail-walking she was doingtalking about "Oh, my God, I can walk, I can
walk, Ethel, praise de lawd." The two women watching Piper touch the
cigars, the humidors, the gift-wrapped boxes.  Mostly he's touching
himself, cause George Lee Piper love him some George Lee Piper.  Can't
blame him.  Piper be fine.  "You work on commissions, young man?" Fur
Coat asking.  "No, ma'am."

The two women look at each other.  They look over toward the folks
inching forward.  They look at me gliding by with the cleaning cart.
They look back at each other and shrug.

"So what's his problem?" Ethel says in a stage whisper.  "Why he so hot
to sell us something?"

"Search me." Fur Coat starts flapping her coat and frisking herself.

"You know?" she asking me.

t'It's a mystery to me," I say, doing my best to run OF man Sampson
over.  He sneaking around trying to jump Madeen in Housewares.  And it
is a mystery to me how come Piper always so eager to make a sale.  You'd
think he had half interest in the place.  He says it's because it's his
job, and after all, the Johnsons are black folks.  I guess so, I guess
so.  Me, I just clean the place and stay busy in case Mrs.  J is in the
prescription booth, peeking out over the top of the glass.

When I look around again, I see that the readers are suddenly very
interested in cigars.  They crowding around Ethel and Fur Coat.

Piper kinda embarrassed by all the attention, though fine as he is, he
oughta be used to it.  His expression's cool but his hands give him
away, sliding around the counter like he shuffling a deck of slippery
cards.  Fur Coat nudges Ethel and they bend over to watch the hands,
doing these chicken-head jerkings.  The readers take up positions just
like a director was hollering "Places" at em.

Piper, never one to disappoint an audience, starts zipping around these
invisible walnut shells.  Right away Fur Coat whips out a little red
change purse and slaps a dollar bill on the counter.

Ethel dips deep into her coat pocket, bending her knees and being real
comic, then plunks down some change.  01' man Sampson tries to boost up
on my cleaning cart to see the shells that ain't there.

"Scuse me, Mr.  Sampson," I say, speeding the cart up sudden so that
quite naturally he falls off, the dirty dog.

Piper is snapping them imaginary shells around like nobody's business,
one of the readers leaning over another's shoulder, staring pop-eyed.

"All right now, everybody step back," Ethel announces.  She waves the
crowd back and pushes up one coat sleeve, lifts her fist into the air
and jerks out one stiff finger from the bunch, and damn if the readers
don't lift their heads to behold in amazement this wondrous finger.

"That, folks," Fur Coat explains, "is what is known as the indicator
finger.  The indicator is about to indicate the indicates."

"Say who?" Dirty al' man Sampson decides he'd rather sneak up on Madeen
than watch the show.

"What's going on over there?" Miz Delia asks me.  I spray the watch case
and make a big thing of wiping it and ignoring her.  But then the new
dude in Drugs hollers over the same thing.

"Christmas cheer gone to the head.  A coupla vaudevillians," I say.  He
smiles, and Miz Delia says "Ohhh" like I was talking to her.  "This
one," Ethel says, planting a finger exactly one quarter of an inch from
the countertop.

Piper dumb-shows a lift of the shell, turning his face away as though he
can't bear to look and find the elusive pea ain't there and he's gonna
have to take the ladies' money.  Then his eyes swivel around and sneak a
peek and widen, lighting up his whole face in a prize-winning grin.

"You got it," he shouts.

The women grab each other by the coat shoulders and jump each other up
and down.  And I look toward the back cause I know Mrs. J got to be
hearing all this carrying-on, and on payday if Mr.  J ain't handing out
the checks, she's going to give us some long lecture about decorum and
what it means to be on board at Johnson's Drugs N Goods.  I wheel over
to the glass jars and punch bowls, wanting alibi distance just in case.
And also to warn Madeen about Sampson gaining on her.  He's ducking down
behind the coffeepots, walking squat and shameless.  "Pay us our money,
young man," Fur Coat is demanding, rapping her knuckles on the counter.

"Yeah, what kind of crooked shell game is you running here in this
joint?" say Ethel, finding a good foil character to play.

"We should hate to have to turn the place out, young man."

"It out," echoes Ethel.

The women nod to the crowd and a coupla folks giggle.  And Piper
tap-taps on the cash register like he shonuff gonna give em they money.
I'd rather they turned the place out myself.  I want to call my daddy.
Only way any of us are going to get home in time to dress for the
Christmas dance at the center is for the women to turn it out.  Like I
say, Piper ain't too clear about the worker's interest versus
management's, as the dude in Drugs would say it.

So he's light-tapping and quite naturally the cash drawer does not come
out.  He's yanking some unseen dollar from the not-there drawer and
handing it over.  Damn if Fur Coat don't snatch it, deal out the bills
to herself and her friend and then make a big production out of folding
the money flat and jamming it in that little red change purse.

"I wanna thank you," Ethel says, strolling off, swinging her pocketbook
so that the crowd got to back up and disperse.  Fur Coat spreads her
coat and curtsies.

"A pleasure to do business with you ladies," Piper says, tipping his
hat, looking kinda disappointed that he didn't sell em something.
Tipping his hat the way he tipped the shells, cause you know Mrs.  J
don't allow no hats indoors.  I came to work in slacks one time and she
sent me home to change and docked me too.

I wear a gele sometimes just to mess her around, and you can tell she
trying to figure out if she'll go for it or not.  The woman is crazy.
Not Uncle Henrytype crazy, but black-property-owner-type crazy.

She thinks this is a museum, which is why folks don't hardly come in
here to shop.  That's OK cause we all get to know each other well.  It's
not OK cause it's a drag to look busy.  If you look like you ain't
buckling under a weight of work, Mrs.  J will have you count the
Band-Aids in the boxes to make sure the company ain't pulling a fast
one.  The woman crazy.

Now Uncle Henry-type crazy is my kind of crazy.  The type crazy to get
you a job.  He march into the "saloon" as he calls it and tells Leon Dhe
is not an equal-opportunity employer and that he, Alderman Henry
Peoples, is going to put some fire to his ass.  So soon's summer comes,
me and Madeen got us a job at Leon D.  Salon.

One of them hushed, funeraltype shops with skinny models parading around
for customers corseted and strangling in their seats, huffin and puffin.

Madeen got fired right off on account of the pound of mascara she wears
on each lash and them weird dresses she designs for herself (with less
than a yard of cloth each if you ask me).  I did my best to hang in
there so's me and Madeen'd have hang-around money till Johnson started
hiring again.  But it was hard getting back and forth from the stockroom
to this little kitchen to fix the espresso to the showroom.  One minute
up to your ass in carpet, the next skidding across white linoleum, the
next making all this noise on ceramic tile and people looking around at
you and all.

Was there for two weeks and just about had it licked by stationing
different kind of shoes at each place that I could slip into, but then
Leon D stumbled over my bedroom slippers one afternoon.

But to hear Uncle Henry tell it, writing about it all to Daddy, I was
working at a promising place making a name for myself.  And Aunt Harriet
listening to Uncle Henry read the letter, looking me up and down and
grunting.  She know what kind of name it must because my name in the
family is Miss Clumsy.  Like if you got a glass-top coffee table with
doodads on em, or a hurricane lamp sitting on a mantel anywhere near a
door I got to come through, or an antique jar you brought all the way
from Venice the time you won the crossword puzzle contest-you can rest
assure I'll demolish them by and by.  I ain't vicious, I'm just clumsy.
It's my gawky stage, Mama says.  Aunt Harriet cuts her eye at Mama and
grunts.

My daddy advised me on the phone not to mention anything to the Johnsons
about this gift of mine for disaster or the fact that I worked at Leon
D.  Salon.  No sense the Johnsons calling up there to check on me and
come to find I knocked over a perfume display two times in the same day.

Like I say-it's a gift.  So when I got to clean the glass jars and punch
bowls at Johnson's, I take it slow and pay attention.  Then I take up my
station relaxed in Fabrics, where the worst that can happen is I upset a
box of pins.

Mrs.  J is in the prescription booth, and she clears her throat real
loud.

We all look to the back to read the smoke signals.  She ain't paying Fur
Coat and Ethel no attention.  They over in Cosmetics messing with Miz
Delia's mind and her customers.  Mrs.  J got her eye on some young
teenagers browsing around jewelry.  The other eye on Piper.  But this
does not mean Piper is supposed to check the kids out.  It means Madeen
is.  You got to know how to read Mrs.  J to get along.  She always got
one eye on Piper.  Tries to make it seem like she don't trust him at the
cash register.

That may be part of the reason now, now that she's worked up this cover
story so in her mind.  But we all know why she watches Piper, same
reason we all do.  Cause Piper is so fine you just can't help yourself.
Tall and built up, blue-black and smooth, got the nerve to have dimples,
and wears this splayed-out pushbroom mustache he's always raking in with
three fingers.  Got a big butt too that makes you wanna hug the customer
that asks for the cartoons Piper keeps behind him, two shells down.
Mercy.  And when it's slow, or when Mrs.  J comes bustling over for the
count, Piper steps from behind the counter and shows his self.  You get
to see the whole Piper from the shiny boots to the glistening fro and
every inch of him fine.  Enough to make you holler.

Miz Delia in Cosmetics, a sister who's been passing for years but
fooling nobody but herself, she always lallygagging over to Tobacco
talking bout are there any new samples of those silver-tipped cigars for
women.

Piper don't even squander energy to bump her off anymore.  She mostly
just ain't even there.  At first he would get mad when she used to act
hinkty and had these white men picking her up at the store.  Then he got
sorrowful about it all, saying she was a pitiful person.  Now that she's
going out with the blond chemist back there, he just wiped her off the
map.  She tries to mess with him, but Piper ain't heard the news she's
been born.  Sometimes his act slips, though, cause he does take a lot of
unnecessary energy to play up to Madeen whenever Miz Delia's hanging
around, He's not consistent in his attentions, and that spurs Madeen the
dress designer to madness.  And Piper really oughta put brakes on that,
cause Madeen subject to walk in one day in a fishnet dress and no
underwear and then what he gain do about that?  Last year on my birthday
my daddy got on us about dressing like hussies to attract the boys.
Madeen shrugged it off and went about her business.  It hurt my
feelings.  The onliest reason I was wearing that tight sweater and that
skimpy skirt was cause I'd been to the roller rink and that's how we
dress.  But my daddy didn't even listen and I was really hurt.  But then
later that night, I come through the living room to make some cocoa and
he apologized.  He lift up from the couch where he always sleeps when he
comes to visit, lifted up and whispered it-"Sorry." I could just make
him out by the light from the refrigerator.

"Candy," he calls to make sure I heard him.  And I don't want to close
the fridge door cause I know I'll want to remember this scene, figuring
it's going to be the last birthday visit cause he fixin to get married
and move outta state.

"Sir?"

He pat the couch and I come on over and just leave the fridge door open
so we can see each other.  I forgot to put the milk down, so I got this
cold milk bottle in my lap, feeling stupid.

"I was a little rough on you earlier," he say, picking something I can't
see from my bathrobe.  "But you're getting to be a woman now and certain
things have to be said.  Certain things have to be understood so you can
decide what kind of woman you're going to be, ya know?"

"Sir," I nod.  I'm thinking Aunt Harriet ought to tell me, but then Aunt
Harriet prefers to grunt at folks, reserving words for the damn
crossword puzzles.  And my mama stay on the road so much with the band,
when she do come home for a hot minute all she has to tell me is "My
slippers're in the back closet" or "Your poor tired ma'd like some
coffee."

He takes my hand and don't even kid me about the milk bottle, just holds
my hand for a long time saying nothing, just squeezes it.

And I know he feeling bad about moving away and all, but what can he do,
he got a life to lead.  Just like Mama got her life to lead.  just like
I got my life to lead and'll probably leave here myself one day and
become an actress or a director.  And I know I should tell him it's all
right.  Sitting there with that milk bottle chilling me through my
bathrobe, the light from the refrigerator throwing funny shadows on the
wall, I know that years later when I'm in trouble or something, or hear
that my daddy died or something like that, I'm going feel real bad that
I didn't tell him-it's all right, Daddy, I understand.  It ain't like
he'd made any promises about making a home for me with him.  So it ain't
like he's gone back on his word.  And if the new wife can't see taking
in no half-grown new daughter, hell, I understand that.  I can't get the
words together, neither can he.  So we just squeeze each other's hands.
And that'll have to do.

"When I was a young man," he says after while, "there were girls who ran
around all made up in sassy clothes.  And they were OK to party with,
but not the kind you cared for, ya know?" I nod and he pats my hand. But
I'm thinking that ain't right, to party with a person you don't care
for.  How come you can't?  I want to ask, but he's talking.  And I was
raised not to interrupt folk when they talking, especially my daddy.
"You and Madeen cause quite a stir down at the barbershop." He tries to
laugh it, but it comes out scary.  "Got to make up your mind now what
kind of woman you're going to be.  You know what I'm saying?" I nod and
he loosens his grip so I can go make my cocoa.

I'm messing around in the kitchenette feeling dishonest.  Things I want
to say, I haven't said.  I look back over toward the couch and know this
picture is going to haunt me later.  Going to regret the things left
unsaid.  Like a coward, like a child maybe.  I fix my cocoa and keep my
silence, but I do remember to put the milk back and close the
refrigerator door.

"Candy?"

"Sir?" I'm standing there in the dark, the fridge door closed now and we
can't even see each other.

"It's not about looks anyway," he says, and I hear him settling deep
into the couch and pulling up the bedclothes.  "And it ain't always
about attracting some man either ...  not necessarily."

I'm waiting to hear what it is about, the cup shaking in the saucer and
me wanting to ask him all over again how it was when he and Mama first
met in Central Park, and how it used to be when they lived in Philly and
had me and how it was when the two of them were no longer making any
sense together but moved down here anyway and then split up.  But I
could hear that breathing he does just before the snoring starts.  So I
hustle on down the hall so I won't be listening for it and can't get to
sleep.

All night I'm thinking about this woman I'm going to be.  I'll look like
Mama but don't wanna be no singer.  Was named after Grandma Candestine
but don't wanna be no fussy old woman with a bunch of kids.  Can't see
myself turning into Aunt Harriet either, doing crossword puzzles all day
long.  I look over at Madeen, all sprawled out in her bed, tangled up in
the sheets looking like the alcoholic she trying to be these days,
sneaking liquor from Uncle Henry's closet.  And I know I don't wanna be
stumbling down the street with my boobs out and my dress up and my heels
cracking off and all.  I write for a whole hour in my diary trying to
connect with the future me and trying not to hear my daddy snoring.

Fur Coat and Ethel in Housewares talking with Madeen.  I know they must
be cracking on Miz Delia, cause I hear Madeen saying something about
equal opportunity.  We used to say that Mrs.  J was an equal-opportunity
employer for hiring Miz Delia.  But then she went and hired real white
folks-a blond, crew cut chemist and a pimplyface kid for the stockroom.

If you ask me, that's running equal opportunity in the ground.

And running the business underground cause don't nobody round here deal
with no white chemist.  They used to wrinkly old folks grinding up the
herbs and bark and telling them very particular things to do and not to
do working the roots.  So they keep on going to Mama Drear down past the
pond or Doc Jessup in back of the barbershop.  Don't do a doctor one bit
of good to write out a prescription talking about fill it at Johnson's,
cause unless it's an emergency folk stay strictly away from a white root
worker, especially if he don't tell you what he doing.  Aunt Harriet in
here one day when Mama Drear was too sick to counsel and quite naturally
she asks the chemist to explain what all he doing back there with the
mortar and pestle and the scooper and the scales.

And he say something about rules and regulations, the gist of which was
mind your business, lady.  Aunt Harriet dug down deep into her crossword
puzzle words and pitched a natural bitch.

Called that man a bunch of choicest names.  But the line that got me
was-"Medication without explanation is obscene." And what she say that
for, we ran that in the ground for days.

Infatuation without fraternization is obscene.  Insemination without
obligation is tyranny.  Fornication without contraception is obtuse, and
so forth and so on.  Madeen's best line came out the night we were
watching a TV special about welfare.

Sterilization without strangulation and hell's damnation is I-oweyou-one
crackers.  Look like every situation called for a line like that, and
even if it didn't, we made it fit.

Then one Saturday morning we were locked out and we standing around
shivering in our sweaters and this old white dude jumps out a pickup
truck hysterical, his truck still in gear and backing out the lot.  His
wife had given their child an overdose of medicine and the kid was out
cold.

Look like everything he said was grist for the mill.

CHRISTMAS EVE AT JOHNSON'S DRUGS N GOODS By: Toni Cade Bambara

"She just administered the medicine without even reading the label," he
told the chemist, yanking on his jacket so the man couldn't even get out
his keys.  "She never even considered the fact it might be dangerous,
the medicine so old and all." We follow the two down the aisle to the
prescription booth, the old white dude talking a mile a minute, saying
they tried to keep the kid awake, tried to walk him, but he wouldn't
walk.  Tried to give him an enema, but he wouldn't stay propped up.
Could the chemist suggest something to empty his stomach out and soothe
his inflamed ass and what all?  And besides he was breathing funny and
should he administer mouthto-mouth resuscitation?  The minute he tore
out of there and ran down the street to catch up with his truck, we
started in.

Administration without consideration is illiterate.  Irrigation without
resuscitation is evacuation without ambulation is inflammation without
information is execution without restitution is.  We got downright silly
about the whole thing till Mrs.  J threatened to fire us all.  But we
kept it up for a week.

Then the new dude in Drugs who don't never say much stopped the show one
afternoon when we were trying to figure out what to call the street
riots in the sixties and so forth.  He say revolution without
transformation is half-assed.  Took me a while to ponder that one, a
whole day in fact just to work up to it.  After while I would listen
real hard whenever he opened his mouth, which wasn't often.  And I
jotted down the titles of the books I'd see him with.  And soon's I
finish up the stack that's by my bed, I'm hitting the library.  He
started giving me some of the newspapers he keeps stashed in that blue
bag of his we all at first thought was full of funky jockstraps and
sneakers.  Come to find it's full of carrots and oranges and books and
stuff.  Madeen say he got a gun in there too.  But then Madeen all the
time saying something.

Like she saying here lately that the chemist's jerking off there behind
the poisons and the goopher dust.

The chemist's name is Hubert Tarrly.  Madeen tagged him Herbert
Tareyton.  But the name that stuck was Nazi Youth.  Every time I look at
him I hear Hitler barking out over the loudspeaker urging the youth to
measure up and take over the world.  And I can see these stark-eyed gray
kids in short pants and suspenders doing jump-ups and scissor kicks and
turning they mamas in to the Gestapo for listening to the radio. Chemist
looks like he grew up like that, eating knockwurst and beating on Jews,
rounding up gypsies, saying Sieg bed and shit.  Mrs.  J said something
to him one morning and damn if he didn't click his heels.  I like to
die.

She blushing all over her simple self talking bout that's southern
cavalier style.  I could smell the gas.  I could see the flaming cross
too.  Nazi Youth and then some.  The dude in Drugs started calling him
that too, the dude whose name I can never remember.  I always wanna say
All Babo when I talk about him with my girlfriends down at the skating
rink or with the older sisters at the arts center.  But that ain't
right.  Either you call a person a name that says what they about or you
call em what they call themselves, one or the other.

Now take Fur Coat, for instance.  She is clearly about the fur coat. She
moving up and down the aisles talking while Ethel in the cloth coat is
doing all the work, picking up teapots, checking the price on the dust
mops, clicking a bracelet against the punch bowl to see if it ring
crystal, hollering to somebody about whether the floor wax need buffing
or not.  And it's all on account of the fur coat.  Her work is something
other than that.  Like when they were in Cosmetics messing with Miz
Delia, some white ladies come up talking about what's the latest in face
masks.  And every time Miz Delia pull something out the box, Ethel shake
her head and say that brand is crap.  Then Fur Coat trots out the
surefire recipe for the face mask.  What she tells the old white ladies
is to whip up some egg white to peaks, pour in some honey, some oil of
wintergreen, some oil of eucalyptus, the juice of a lemon and a half a
teaspoon of arsenic.  Now any fool can figure out what lemon juice do to
arsenic, or how honey going make the concoction stick, and what all else
the oil of this and that'll do to your face.  But Fur Coat in her fur
coat make you stand still and listen to this madness.  Fur Coat an
authority in her fur coat.

The fur coat is an act of alchemy in itself, as Aunt Harriet would put
it.  just like my mama in her fur coat, same kind tooPersian lamb,
bought hot in some riot or other.  Mama's coat was part of the Turn The
School Out Outfit.  Hardly ever came out of the quilted bag cept for
that.

Wasn't for window-shopping, wasn't for going to rehearsal, wasn't for
church teas, was for working her show.  She'd flip a flap of that coat
back over her hip when she strolled into the classroom to get on the
teacher's case bout saying something out of the way about black folks.
Then she'd pick out the exact plank, exact spot she'd take her stand on,
then plant one of them black suede pumps from the 1.  Miller outlet she
used to work at.

Then she'd lift her chin arrogant proud to start the rap, and all us
kids would lean forward and stare at the cameo brooch visible now on the
wide-wale wine plush corduroy dress.  Then she'd work her show in her
outfit.  Bam-barn that black suede pocketbook punctuating the points as
Mama ticked off the teacher's offenses, And when she got to the good
part, and all us kids would strain up off the benches to hear every word
so we could play it out in the school yard, she'd take both fists and
brush that fur coat way back past her hips and she'd challenge the
teacher to either change up and apologize or meet her for a showdown at
a schoolboard hearing.

And of course OF teacher'd apologize to all us black kids.  Then Mama'd
let the coat fall back into place and she'd whip around, the coat
draping like queen robes, and march herself out.  Mama was baad in her
fur coat.

I don't know what-all Fur Coat do in her fur coat but I can tell it's
hellafyin whatever it all is.  They came into Fabrics and stood around a
while trying to see what shit they could get into.

All they had in their baskets was a teapot and some light bulbs and some
doodads from the special gift department, perfume and whatnot.  I waited
on a few customers wanting braid and balls of macrame twine, nothing
where I could show my stuff.

Now if somebody wanted some of the silky, juicy cotton stuff I could get
into something fancy, yanking off the yards, measuring it doing a
shufflestick number, nicking it just so, then ripping the hell out the
shit.  But didn't nobody ask for that.  Fur Coat and Ethel kinda finger
some bolts and trade private jokes, then they moved onto Drugs.

"We'd like to see the latest in rubberized fashions for men, young man."
Fur Coat is doing a super Lady Granville Whitmore the Third number.  "If
you would." She bows her head, fluttering her lashes.

Me and Madeen start messing around in the shoe-polish section so's not
to miss nothing.  I kind of favor Fur Coat, on account of she got my
mama's coat on, I guess.  On the other hand, I like the way Ethel drawl
talk like she too tired and bored to go on.  I guess I like em both
cause they shopping the right way, having fun and all.  And they got
plenty of style.  I wouldn't mind being like that when I am full grown.

The dude in Drugs thinks on the request awhile, sucking in his lips like
he wanna talk to himself on the inside.  He's looking up and down the
counter, pauses at the plastic rain hats, rejects them, then squints
hard at Ethel and Fur Coat.  Fur Coat plants a well-heeled foot on the
shelf with the tampons and pads and sighs.

Something about that sigh I don't like.  It's real rather than play
snooty.  The dude in Drugs always looks a little crumbled, a little
rough dry, like he jumped straight out the hamper but not quite
straight.  But he got stuff to him if you listen rather than look. Seems
to me al' Fur Coat is looking.  She keeps looking while the dude moves
down the aisle behind the counter, ducks down out of sight, reappears
and comes back, dumping an armful of boxes on the counter.

"One box of Trojans and one box of Ramses," Ethel announces.  "We want
to do the comparison test."

"On the premises?" Lady G Fur says, planting a dignified hand on her
collarbone.

"Egg-zack-lee."

"In your opinion, young man," Lady G Fur says, staying the arm of the
brand tester, "which of the two is the best?  Uhmm-the better of the
two, that is.  In your vast experience as lady-killer and cock hound,
which passes the X test?" It's said kinda snotty.  Me and Madeen
exchange a look and dust around the cans of shoe polish.  "Well," the
dude says, picking up a box in each hand, "in my opinion, Trojans have a
snappier ring to em." He rattles the box against his ear, then lets
Ethel listen.  She nods approval.  Fur Coat will not be swayed.  "On the
other hand, Ramses is a smoother smoke.  Cooler on the throat.  What do
you say in your vast experience as er-" Ethel is banging down boxes of
Kotex cracking up, screaming, "He gotcha.  He gotcha that time.

Old laundry bag got over on you, Helen." Mrs.  J comes out of the
prescription booth and hustles her bulk to the counter.  Me and Madeen
clamp down hard on giggles and I damn near got to climb in with the
neutral shoe polish to escape attention.  Ethel and Fur Coat don't give
a shit, they paying customers, so they just roar.  Cept Fur Coat's roar
is phony, like she really mad and gonna get even with the dude for not
turning out to be a chump.

Meanwhile, the dude is standing like a robot, arms out at exactly the
same height, elbows crooked just so, boxes displayed between thumb and
next finger, the gears in the wrist click, clicking, turning.  And not
even cracking a smile.

"What's the problem here?" Mrs.  J trying not to sound breathless or
angry and ain't doing too good a job.  She got to say it twice to be
heard.

"No problem, Mrs.  Johnson," the dude says straight-face.  "The
customers are buying condoms, I am selling condoms.  A sale is being
conducted, as is customary in a store."

Mrs.  J looks down at the jumble of boxes and covers her mouth.

She don't know what to do.  I duck down, cause when folks in authority
caught in a trick, the first they look for is a scapegoat.

"Well, honey," Ethel says, giving a chummy shove to Mrs.  J's shoulder,
"what do you think?  I've heard that Trojans are ultrasensitive.  They
use a baby lamb brain, I understand."

"Membrane, dear, membrane," Fur Coat says down her nose.  "They remove
the intestines of a four-week-old lamb and use the membrane.

Tough, resilient, sheer."

"Gotcha," says Ethel.  "On the other hand, it is said by folks who
should know that Ramses has a better box score."

"Box score," echoes Mrs.  J in a daze.

"Box score.  You know, honey-no splits, breaks, leaks, seeps."

"Seepage, dear, seepage," says Fur Coat, all nasal.

"Gotcha."

"The solution," says the dude in an almost robot voice, "is to take one
small box of each and do the comparison test as you say.

A survey.  A random sampling of your friends." He says this to Fur Coat,
who is not enjoying it all nearly so much as Ethel, who is whooping and
hollering.

Mrs.  J backs off and trots to the prescription booth.  Nazi Youth peeks
over the glass and mumbles something soothing to Mrs.  J.  He waves me
and Madeen away like he somebody we got to pay some mind.

"We will take one superduper, jumbo family size of each."

"Family size?" Fur Coat is appalled.  "And one more thing, young man,"
she orders.  "Wrap up a petite size for a small-size smartass
acquaintance of mine.  Gift-wrapped, ribbons and all."

It occurs to me that Fur Coat's going to present this to the dude.

Right then and there I decide I don't like her.  She's not
discriminating with her stuff.  Up till then I was thinking how much I'd
like to trade Aunt Harriet in for either of these two, hang out with
them, sit up all night while they drink highballs and talk about men
they've known and towns they've been in.  I always did want to hang out
with women like this and listen to their stories.  But they beginning to
reveal themselves as not nice people, just cause the dude is rough dry
on Christmas Eve.

My Uncle Henry all the time telling me they different kinds of folks in
the community, but when you boil it right down there's just nice and not
nice.  Uncle Henry say they folks who'll throw they mamas to the wolves
if the fish sandwich big enough.  They folks who won't whatever the hot
sauce.  They folks that're scared, folks that are dumb; folks that have
heart and some with heart to spare.

That all boils down to nice and not nice if you ask me.  It occurs to me
that Fur Coat is not nice.  Fun, dazzling, witty, but not nice.  "Do you
accept Christmas gifts, young man?" Fur Coat asking in icy tones she
ain't masking too well.

"No.  But I do accept Kwanza presents at the feast."

"Quan ...  hmm .  .  .  " Fur Coat and Ethel go into a huddle with the
stage whispers.  "I bet he thinks we don't know beans about Quantas....
Don't he know we are the Ebony jet Set....  We never travel to kangaroo
land except by .  .  ."

Fur Coat straightens up and stares at the dude.  "Will you accept a
whatchamacallit gift from me even though we are not feasting, as it
were?"

"if it is given with love and respect, my sister, of course." He was
sounding so sincere, it kinda got to Fur Coat.

"In that case .  .  ." She scoops up her bundle and sweeps out the
place.

Ethel trotting behind hollering, "He gotcha, Helen.  Give the boy
credit.

Maybe we should hire him and do a threesome act." She spun the turnstile
round three times for she got into the spin and spun out the store.

"Characters," says Piper on tiptoe, so we all can hear him.  He laughs
and checks his watch.  Madeen slinks over to Tobacco to be in asking
distance in case he don't already have a date to the dance.  Miz Delia's
patting some powder on.  I'm staring at the door after Fur Coat and
Ethel, coming to terms with the fact that my daddy ain't coming.  It's
gonna be just Uncle Henry and Aunt Harriet this year, with maybe Mama
calling on the phone between sets to holler in my ear, asking have I
been a good girl, it's been that long since she's taken a good look at
me.

"You wanna go to the Kwanza celebrations with me sometime this week or
next week, Candy?"

I turn and look at the dude.  I can tell my face is falling and right
now I don't feel up to doing anything about it.  Holidays are
depressing.  Maybe there's something joyous about this celebration he's
talking about.  Cause Lord knows Christmas is a drag.  The sister who
taught me how to wrap a gele asked me was I coming to the celebration
down at the Black Arts Center, but I didn't know nothing bout it.  "Look
here," I finally say, "would you please get a pencil and paper and write
your name down for me.  And write that other word down too so I can look
it up."

He writes his name down and spins the paper around for me to read.

"Obatale."

"Right," he says, spinning it back.  "But you can call me All Babo if
you want to." He was leaning over too far writing out Kwanza for me to
see if that was a smile on his face or a smirk.  I figure a smile, cause
Obatale nice people.

Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned By:: RAY BRADBURY

It was just before midnight on Christmas Eve when Father Mellon woke,
having slept for only a few minutes.  He had a most peculiar urge to
rise, go, and swing wide the front door of his church to let the snow in
and then go sit in the confessional to wait.

Wait for what?  Who could say?  Who might tell?  But the urge was so
incredibly strong it was not to be denied.

"What's going on here?" he muttered quietly to himself, as he dressed.

"I am going mad, am I not?  At this hour, who could possibly want or
need, and why in blazes should I-" But dress he did and down he went and
opened wide the front door of the church and stood in awe of the great
artwork beyond, better than any painting in history, a tapestry of snow
weaving in laces and gentling to roofs and shadowing the lamps and
putting shawls on the huddled masses of cars waiting to be blessed at
the curb.  The snow touched the sidewalks and then his eyelids and then
his heart.  He found himself holding his breath with the fickle beauties
and then, turning, the snow following at his back, he went to hide in
the confessional.

Damn fool, he thought.  Stupid old man.  Out of here!  Back to your bed!

But then he heard it: a sound at the door, and footsteps scraping on the
pavestones of the church, and at last the damp rustle of some invader
fresh to the other side of the confessional.  Father Mellon waited.

"Bless me," a man's voice whispered, "for I have sinned!"

Stunned at the quickness of this asking, Father Mellon could only
retort: "How could you know the church would be open and I here?"

"I prayed, Father," was the quiet reply.  "God made you come open up.))
There seemed no answer to this, so the old priest, and what sounded like
a hoarse old sinner, sat for a long cold moment as the clock itched on
toward midnight, and at last the refugee from darkness repeated: "Bless
this sinner, father!"

But in place of the usual unguents and ointments of words, with
Christmas hurrying fast through the snow, Father Mellon leaned toward
the lattice window and could not help saying: "It must be a terrible
load of sin you carry to have driven you out on such a night on an
impossible mission that turned possible only because God heard and
pushed me out of bed."

"It is a terrible list, Father, as you will find!"

"Then speak, son," said the priest, "before we both freeze-"

"Well, it was this way-" whispered the wintry voice behind the thin
paneling.  "-Sixty years back-"

"Speak up!  Sixty?!" The priest gasped.  "That long past?"

"Sixty!" And there was a tormented silence.

"Go on," said the priest, ashamed of interrupting.

"Sixty years this week, when I was twelve," said the gray voice, "I
Christmas-shopped with my grandmother in a small town back East.

We walked both ways.  In those days, who had a car?  We walked, and
coming home with the wrapped gifts, my grandma said something, I've long
since forgotten what, and I got mad and ran ahead, away from her.  Far
off, I could hear her call and then cry, terribly, for me to come back,
come back, but I wouldn't.  She wailed so, I knew I had hurt her, which
made me feel strong and good, so I ran even more, laughing, and beat her
to the house and when she came in she was gasping and weeping as if
never to stop.  I felt ashamed and ran to hide.  .  .  ."

There was a long silence.

The priest prompted, "Is that it?"

"The list is long," mourned the voice beyond the thin panel.

"Continue," said the priest, eyes shut.

"I did much the same to my mother, before New Year's.  She angered me. I
ran.  I heard her cry out behind me.  I smiled and ran faster.  Why?

Why, oh God, why?"

The priest had no answer.

"Is that it, then?" he murmured, at last, feeling strangely moved toward
the old man beyond.

fine summer day," said the voice, "some bullies beat me.  When they were
gone, on a bush I saw two butterflies, embraced, lovely.

I hated their happiness.  I grabbed them in my fist and pulverized them
to dust.  Oh, Father, the shame!"

The wind blew in the church door at that moment and both of them glanced
up to see a Christmas ghost of snow turned about in the door and falling
away in drifts of whiteness to scatter on the pavings.  "There's one
last terrible thing," said the old man, hidden away with his grief.  And
then he said: "When I was thirteen, again in Christmas week, my dog
Boran away and was lost three days and nights.  I loved him more than
life itself.  He was special and loving and fine.  And all of a sudden
the beast was gone, and all his beauty with him.  I waited.  I cried.  I
waited.

I prayed.  I shouted under my breath.  I knew he would never, never come
back!  And then, oh, then, that Christmas Eve at two in the morning,
with sleet on the sidewalks and icicles on roofs and snow falling, I
heard a sound in my sleep and woke to hear him scratching the door!  I
bounded from bed so fast I almost killed myself!  I yanked the door open
and there was my miserable dog, shivering, excited, covered with dirty
slush.  I yelled, pulled him in, slammed the door, fell to my knees,
grabbed him and wept.

What a gift, what a gift!  I called his name over and over, and he wept
with me, all whines and agonies of joy.

And then I stopped.  Do you know what I did then?  Can you guess the
terrible thing?  I beat him.  Yes, beat him.  With my fists, my hands,
my palms, and my fists again, crying: how dare you leave, how dare you
run off,

how dare you do that to me, how dare you, how dareP And I beat and beat
until I was weak and sobbed and had to stop for I saw what I'd done, and
he just stood and took it all as if he knew he deserved it; he had
failed my love and now I was failing his, and I pulled off and tears
streamed from my eyes, my breath strangled, and I grabbed him again and
crushed him to me but this time cried: forgive, oh please, Bo, forgive.
I didn't mean it.  Oh, Bo, forgive....

"But, oh, Father, he couldn't forgive me.  Who was he?  A beast, an
animal, a dog, my love.  And he looked at me with such great dark eyes
that it locked my heart and it's been locked forever after with shame. I
could not then forgive myself.  All these years, the memory of my love
and how I failed him, and every Christmas since, not the rest of the
year, but every Christmas Eve, his ghost comes back, I see the dog, I
hear the beating, I know my failure.  Oh, God!"

The man fell silent, weeping.

And at last the old priest dared a word: "And that is why you are here?
"

"Yes, Father.  Isn't it awful.  Isn't it terrible?"

The priest could not answer, for tears were streaming down his face,
too, and he found himself unaccountably short of breath.

"Will God forgive me, Father?" asked the other.

"Yes."

"Will you forgive me, Father?"

"Yes.  But let me tell you something now, son.  When I was ten, the same
things happened.  My parents, of course, but then-my dog, the love of my
life, who ran off and I hated him for leaving me, and when he came back
I, too, loved and beat him, then went back to love.  Until this night, I
have told no one.  The shame has stayed put all these years.  I have
confessed all to my priestconfessor.  But never that.  So-" There was a
pause.

"So, Father?"

"Lord, Lord, dear man, God will forgive us.  At long last, we have
brought it out, dared to say.  And 1, I will forgive you.  But
finally---" The old priest could not go on, for new tears were really
pouring down his face now.

The stranger on the other side guessed this and very carefully inquired,
"Do you want my forgiveness, Father?"

The priest nodded, silently.  Perhaps the other felt the shadow of the
nod, for he quickly said, "Ah, well.  It's given."

And they both sat there for a long moment in the dark and another ghost
moved to stand in the door, then sank to snow and drifted away.  "Before
you go," said the priest.  "Come share a glass of wine." The great clock
in the square across from the church struck midnight.

"It's Christmas, Father," said the voice from behind the panel.

"The finest Christmas ever, I think."

"The finest."

The old priest rose and stepped out.

He waited a moment for some stir, some movement from the opposite side
of the confessional.

There was no sound.

Frowning, the priest reached out and opened the confessional door and
peered into the cubicle.

There was nothing and no one there.

His jaw dropped.  Snow moved along the back of his neck.  He put his
hand out to feel the darkness.

The place was empty.

Turning, he stared at the entry door and hurried over to look out.

Snow fell in the last tones of far clocks late,sounding the hour.  The
streets were deserted.

Turning again, he saw the tall mirror that stood in the church entry.

There was an old man, himself, reflected in the cold glass.

Almost without thinking, he raised his hand and made the sign of
blessing.  The reflection in the mirror did likewise.

Then the old priest, wiping his eyes, turned a last time and went to
find the wine.

Outside, Christmas, like the snow, was everywhere.

The H Street Sledding Record By: Ron Carlson

The last thing I do every Christmas Eve is go out in the yard and throw
the horse manure onto the roof.  It is a ritual.  After we return from
making our attempt at the H Street Sledding Record, and we sit in the
kitchen sipping egg nag and listening to Elise recount the sled ride,
and Elise then finally goes to bed happily, reluctantly, and we finish
placing Elise's presents under the tree and we pin her stocking to the
mantel-with care-and Drew brings out two other wrapped boxes which
anyone could see are for me, and I slap my forehead having forgotten to
get her anything at all for Christmas (except the prizes hidden behind
the glider on the front porch), I go into the garage and put on the
gloves and then into the yard where I throw the horse manure on the
roof.

Drew always uses this occasion to call my mother.  They exchange all the
Christmas news, but the main purpose of the calls the last few years has
been for Drew to stand in the window where she can see me out there
lobbing the great turds up into the snow on the roof and describe what I
am doing to my mother.  The two women take amusement from this.  They
say things like: "You married him" and "He's your son." I take their
responses to my rituals as a kind of fond, subtle support, which it is.
Drew had said when she first discovered me throwing the manure on the
roof, the Christmas that Elise was four, "You're the only man I've ever
known who did that." See: a compliment.

But, now that Elise is eight, Drew has become cautious: "You're
fostering her fantasies." I answer: "Kids grow up too soon these days."
And then Drew has this: "What do you want her to do, come home from
school in tears when she's fifteen?  Some kid in her class will have
said-Oh, sure, Santa's reindeer shit on your roof, eh?" All I can say to
Drew then is: "Some kid in her class!

Fine!  I don't care what he says.  I'm her father!"

I have thrown horse manure on our roof for four years now, and I plan to
do it every Christmas Eve until my arm gives out.  It satisfies me as a
homeowner to do so, for the wonderful amber stain that is developing
between the swamp cooler and the chimney and is visible all spring,
summer-fall as you drive down the hill by our house, and for the way the
two rosebushes by the gutter spout have raged into new and profound
growth during the milder months.  And as a father, it satisfies me as a
ritual that keeps my family together.

Drew has said, "You want to create evidence?  Let's put out milk and a
cookie and then drink the milk and eat a bite out of the cookie." I
looked at her.  "Drew," I had said, "I don't like cookies.  I never ate
a dessert in my life."

And like I said, Drew has been a good sport, even the year I threw one
gob short and ran a hideous smear down the kitchen window screen that
hovered over all of us until March when I was able to take it down and
go to the car wash.

I obtain the manure from my friend Bob, more specifically from his
horse, Power, who lives just west of Heber.  I drive out there the week
before Christmas and retrieve about a bushel.  I throw it on the roof a
lump at a time, wearing a pair of welding gloves my father gave me.  I
put the brake on the sled in 1975 when Drew was pregnant with Elise so
we could still make our annual attempt on the H Street Record on
Christmas Eve.  It was the handle of a broken Louisville Slugger
baseball bat, and still had the precise "34" stamped into the bottom.  I
sawed it off square and drilled and bolted it to the rear of the sled,
so that when I pulled back on it, the stump would drag us to a stop.  As
it turned out, it was one of the two years when there was no snow, so we
walked up to Eleventh Avenue and H Street (as we promised: rain or
shine), sat on the Flexible Flyer in the middle of the dry street on a
starry Christmas Eve, and I held her in my lap.  We sat on the sled like
two basketball players contesting possession of her belly.  We talked a
little about what it would be like when she took her leave from the firm
and I had her home all day with the baby, and we talked remotely about
whether we wanted any more babies, and we talked about the record, which
was set on December 24, 1969, the first Christmas of our marriage, when
we lived in the neighborhood, on Fifth Avenue in an old barn of a house
the total rent on which was seventy-two fifty, honest, and Drew had
given me the sled that very night and we had walked out about midnight
and been surprised by the blizzard.  No wonder we took the sled and
walked around the corner up H Street, up, up, up to Eleventh Avenue, and
without speaking or knowing what we were doing, opening the door on the
second ritual of our marriage, the annual sled ride (the first ritual
was the word condition and the activities it engendered in our droopy
old bed).  At the top we scanned the city blurred in snow, sat on my
brand-new Christmas sled, and set off.  The sled rode high and
effortlessly through the deep snow, and suddenly, as our hearts started
and our eyes began to burn against the snowy air, we were going faster
than we'd planned.  We crossed Tenth Avenue, nearly taking flight in the
dip, and then descended in a dark rush: Ninth, Eighth, Seventh, soaring
across each avenue, my arms wrapped around Drew like a straitjacket to
drag her off with me if a car should cross in front of us on Sixth,
Fifth Avenue, Fourth (this all took seconds, do you see?) until a car
did turn onto H Street, headed our way, and we veered the new sled
sharply, up over the curb, dousing our speed in the snowy yard one house
from the corner of Third Avenue.

Drew took a real faceful of snow, which she squirmed around and pressed
into my neck, saying the words: "Now, that's a record!"

And it was the record: Eleventh to Third, and it stood partly because
there had been two Christmas Eves with no snow, partly because of
assorted spills brought on by too much speed, too much laughter,
sometimes too much caution, and by a light blue Mercedes that crossed
Sixth Avenue just in front of us in 1973.  And though some years were
flops, there was nothing about Christmas that Elise looked forward to as
much as our one annual attempt at the H Street Sledding Record.  I think
Drew wants another baby.

I'm not sure, but I think she wants another child.  The signs are so
subtle they barely seem to add up, but she says things like, "Remember
before Elise went to school?" and "There sure are a lot of women in
their mid-thirties having babies." I should ask her.

But for some reason, I don't.  We talk about everything, everything. But
I've avoided this topic.  I've avoided talking to Drew about this topic
because I want another child too badly to have her not want one.  I want
a little boy to come into the yard on Christmas morning and say: "See,
there on the roof!  The reindeers were there!" I want another kid to
throw horse manure for.  I'll wait.  It will come up one of these days;
I'll find a way to bring it up.

Christmas is coming.

Every year on the day after Halloween, I tip the sled out of the rafters
in the garage and Elise and I sponge it off, clean the beautiful dark
blond wood with furniture polish, enamel the nicked spots on the runner
supports with black engine paint, and rub the runners themselves with
waxed paper.

It is a ritual done on the same plaid blanket in the garage and it takes
all afternoon.  When we are finished, we lean the sled against the wall,
and Elise marches into the house.  "OK now," she says to her mother:
"Let it snow."

On the first Friday night in December, every year, Elise and Drew and I
go buy our tree.  This too is ritual.  Like those families that bundle
up and head for the wilderness so they can trudge through the deep,
pristine snow, chop down their own little tree, and drag it, step by
step, all the way home, we venture forth in the same spirit.  Only we
take the old pickup down to South State and find some joker who has
thrown up two strings of colored lights around the corner of the parking
lot of a burned-out Safeway and is proffering trees to the general
public.

There is something magical and sad about this little forest just sprung
up across from City Tacos, and Drew and Elise and I wander the wooded
paths, waiting for some lopsided pifion to leap into our hearts.  The
winter Drew and I became serious, when I was a senior and she was
already in her first year at law school, I sold Christmas trees during
vacation.

I answered a card on a dorm bulletin board and went to work for a guy
named Geer, who had cut two thousand squat pifions from the hills east
of Cedar City and was selling them from a dirt lot on Redwood Road.
Drew's mother invited me to stay with them for the holidays, and it gave
me the chance to help Drew make up her mind about me.  I would sell
trees until midnight with Geer, and then drive back to Drew's and watch
every old movie in the world and wrestle with Drew until our faces were
mashed blue.

I wanted to complicate things wonderfully by having her sleep with me.
She wanted to keep the couch cushions between us and think it over.  It
was a crazy Christmas; we'd steam up the windows in the entire living
room, but she never gave in.  We did develop the joke about condition,
which we still use as a code word for desire.  And later, I won't say if
it was spring or fall, when Drew said to me, "I'd like to see you about
this condition," I knew everything was going to be all right, and that
we'd spend every Christmas together for the rest of our lives.

One night during that period, I delivered a tree to University Village,
the married students' housing off Sunnyside.  The woman was waiting for
me with the door open as I dragged the pine up the steps to the second
floor.

She was a girl, really, about twenty, and her son, about three, watched
the arrival from behind her.  When I had the tree squeezed into the
apartment, she asked if I could just hold it for a minute while she
found her tree stand.

If you ever need to stall for a couple of hours, just say you're looking
for your tree stand; I mean the girl was gone for about twenty minutes.
I stood and exchanged stares with the kid, who was scared; he didn't
understand why some strange man had brought a tree into his home.
"Christmas," I told him.  "Christmas.  Can you say 'Merry Christmas'?" I
was an idiot.

When the girl returned with her tree stand, she didn't seem in any hurry
to set it up.  She came over to me and showed me the tree stand, holding
it up for an explanation as to how it worked.

Close up the girl's large eyes had an odd look in them, and then I
understood it when she leaned through the boughs and kissed me.

It was a great move; I had to hand it to her.  There I was holding the
tree; I couldn't make a move either way.

It has never been among my policies to kiss strangers, but I held the
kiss and the tree.  Something about her eyes.  She stepped back with the
sweetest look of embarrassment and hope on her pretty face that I'd ever
seen.  "Just loosen the turnscrews in the side of that stand," I said,
finally.  "And we can put this tree up.  " By the time I had the tree
secured, she had returned again with a box of ornaments, lights, junk
like that, and I headed for the door.

"Thanks," I said.  "Merry Christmas."

Her son had caught on by now and was fully involved in unloading the
ornaments.  The girl looked up at me, and this time I saw it all: her
husband coming home in his cap and gown last June, saying, "Thanks for
law school, honey, but I met Doris at the Juris-Prudence Ball and I
gotta be me.  Keep the kid.  " The girl said to me, "You could stay and
help."

It seemed like two statements to me, and so I answered them separately:
"Thank you.  But I can't stay; that's the best help.

Have a good Christmas.  " And I left them there together, decorating
that tree; a ritual against the cold.

How do you like it?" Elise says to me.  She has selected a short broad
bush which seems to have grown in two directions at once and then given
up.  She sees the look on my face and says, "If you can't say anything
nice, don't say anything at all.  Besides, I've already decided: this is
the tree for us.

" It's a beautiful tree," Drew says.

"Quasimodo," I whisper to Drew.  "This tree's name is Quasimodo."

"No whispering," Elise says from behind us.  "What's he saying now,
Mom?"

"He said he likes the tree, too."

Elise is not convinced and after a pause she says, "Dad.  It's
Christmas.

Behave yourself."

When we go to pay for the tree, the master of ceremonies is busy
negotiating a deal with two kids, a punk couple.  The tree man stands
with his hands in his change apron and says, "I gotta get thirty-five
bucks for that tree." The boy, a skinny kid in a leather jacket, shrugs
and says he's only got twenty-eight bucks.

His girlfriend, a large person with a bowl haircut and a monstrous black
overcoat festooned with buttons, is wailing, "Please!

Oh no!  Jimmy!  Jimmy!  I love that tree!  I want that tree!" The tree
itself stands aside, a noble pine of about twelve feet.

Unless these kids live in a gymnasium, they're buying a tree bigger than
their needs.

Jimmy retreats to his car, an old Plymouth big as a boat.  POLICE RULE
is spray-painted across both doors in balloon letters.  He returns
instantly and opens a handful of coins.  "I'll give you thirty-one
bucks, fifty-five cents, and my watch." To our surprise, the wily tree
man takes the watch to examine it.  When I see that, I give Elise four
dollars and tell her to give it to Kid Jimmy and say, "Merry Christmas."
His girlfriend is still wailing but now a minor refrain of "Oh Jimmy,
that tree!  Oh Jimmy," etc.  I haven't seen a public display of emotion
and longing of this magnitude in Salt Lake City, ever.  I watch Elise
give the boy the money, but instead of saying, "Merry Christmas," I hear
her say instead: "Here, Jimmy.  Santa says keep your watch."

Jimmy pays for the tree, and his girl-and this is the truth-jumps on
him, wrestles him to the ground in gratitude and smothers him for nearly
a minute.  There have never been people happier about a Christmas tree.
We pay quickly and head out before Jimmy or his girlfriend can think to
begin thanking us.

On the way home in the truck, I say to Elise, "Santa says keep your
watch, eh?"

"Yes, he does," she smiles.

"How old are you, anyway?"

'Eight."

It's an old joke, and Drew finishes it for me: "When he was your age, he
was seven."

We will go home and while the two women begin decorating the tree with
the artifacts of our many Christmases together, I will thread popcorn
onto a long string.  It is a ritual I prefer for its uniqueness; the
fact that once a year I get to sit and watch the two girls I am related
to move about a tree inside our home, while I sit nearby and sew food.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, Elise comes into our
bedroom, already dressed for sledding.  "Good news," she says..

"We've got a shot at the record."

Drew rises from the pillow and peeks out the blind.  "It's snowing," she
says.

Christmas Eve, we drive back along the snowy avenues, and park on Fifth,
as always.  "I know," Elise says, hopping out of the car.

"You two used to live right over there before you had me and it was a
swell place and only cost seventy-two fifty a month, honest."

Drew looks at me and smiles.

"How old are you?" I ask Elise, but she is busy towing the sled away,
around the corner, up toward Eleventh Avenue.  It is still snowing,
petal flakes, teeming by the streetlamps, trying to carry the world
away.  I take Drew's hand and we walk up the middle of H Street behind
our daughter.

There is no traffic, but the few cars have packed the tender snow
perfectly.

It could be a record.  On Ninth Avenue, Drew stops me in the
intersection, the world still as snow, and kisses me.  "I love you," she
says.

"What a planet," I whisper.  "To allow such a thing."

By the time we climb to Eleventh Avenue, Elise is seated on the sled,
ready to go.  "What are you guys waiting for, Christmas?"

she says and then laughs at her own joke.  Then she becomes all
business: "Listen, Dad, I figure if you stay just a little to the left
of the tire tracks we could go all the way.  And no wobbling!" She's
referring to last year's record attempt, which was extinguished in the
Eighth Avenue block when we laughed ourselves into a fatal wobble and
ended in a slush heap.

We arrange ourselves on the sled, as we have each Christmas Eve for
eight years.  As I reach my long legs around these two women, I sense
their excitement.  "It's going to be a record," Elise whispers into the
whispering snow.

"Do you think so?" Drew asks.  She also feels this could be the night.

"Oh yeah," Elise says.  "The conditions are perfect."

"What do you think?" Drew turns to me.

"Well, the conditions are perfect."

When I say conditions, Drew leans back and kisses me.  So I press:
"There's still room on the sled," I say, pointing to the F in Flexible
Flyer that is visible between Elise's legs.  "There's still room for
another person."

"Who?" Elise asks.

"Your little brother," Drew says, squeezing my knees.

And that's about all that was said, sitting up there on Eleventh Avenue
on Christmas Eve on a sled which is as old as my marriage with a brake
that is as old as my daughter.  Later tonight I will stand in my yard
and throw this year's reindeer droppings on my very own home.  I love
Christmas.

Now the snow spirals around us softly.  I put my arms around my family
and lift my feet onto the steering bar.  We begin to slip down H Street.
We are trying for the record.  The conditions, as you know by now, are
perfect.

Acknowledgments

"Auggie Wren's Christmas Story" by Paul Auster, copyright (C) v 1990 by
Paul Auster.  First published in The New York Times.

Reprinted by permission of The Carol Mann Agency as agent for the
author.  "Christmas Eve at Johnson's Drugs N Goods" from The Sea Birds
Are Still Alive by Tom Cade Bambara.  Copyright (C) 1974, 1976, 1977 by
Tom Cade Bambara.  Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.  "Where
You'll Find Me" by Ann Beattie from Where You'll Find Me.  Copyright (C)
1986

by Ivory & Pity, Inc.  Reprinted by permission of Linden, a division of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.

"And There Was the Evening and the Morning.  from The Stories of
Heinrich B611 by Heinrich B611, translator, Leila Vennewitz.

Translation copyright (C) 1986 by Leila Vennewitz and the estate of
Heinrich B611.  Reprinted by permission of Alfred A.

Knopf, Inc.

"The Frozen Fields" by Paul Bowles.  Copyright (C) 1959 by Paul Bowles.
Reprinted from Collected Stories of Paul Bowles with the permission of
Black Sparrow Press.

"Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned" from The Toynbee Convector by Ray
Bradbury, copyright (C) 1988 by Ray Bradbury is reprinted by permission
of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.

"A Christmas Carillon" by Hortense Calisher from The Collected Stories
of Hortense Calisher.  Reprinted by permission of Donadio & Ashworth.
Copyright a 1953, 1975 by Hortense Calisher.

"Santa's Children" from Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino, copyright (C) 1963
by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a English translation copyright (C) 1983
by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc and Martin Secker & Warburg, Ltd
reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

"The H Street Sledding Record" is reprinted from The News of the World:
Stories by Ron Carlson, by permission of W.  W.  Norton & Company, Inc.
Copyright a 1987 by Ron Carlson.

"Put Yourself in My Shoes" from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

by Raymond Carver is reprinted by permission of Tess Gallagher.

Copyright (C) 1977 by Tess Gallagher.

"The World in a Bowl of Soup: A Christmas Story" by Annie Dillard.

Copyright a 1976

by Annie Dillard.  Reprinted by permission of Russell & Volkening as
agents for the author.  Story first appeared in Harper's Magazine.
"Xmas" by Thomas M.  Disch is reprinted from Shenandoah: The Washington
and Lee University Review, with the permission of the Editor.

"A Clock Ticks at Christmas" by Patricia Highsmith, copyright 0 1985 by
Patricia Highsmith, is from her story collection Mermaids on the Qolf
Course, published by William Heinemann Ltd London, and Penzler Books,
New York, and reprinted by permission of Diogenes Verlag AG,
Switzerland.

"A Christmas Conspiracy Tale" by Ivan Klima.  English translation
copyright a 1985

Reader's International, Inc.  Reprinted by permission of Reader's
International, Inc.

"Christmas" is an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Copyright 0 1960 by Harper Lee.  Reprinted by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers.

"Drawing Names" from Shilo and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason.

Copyright a 1982

by Bobbie Ann Mason.  Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins
Publishers.

"The Centerpiece" from On the River Styx by Peter Matthlessen.

Copyright a 1951, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1978, 1985, 1988, 1989 by Peter
Matthlessen.  Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

"The Doll" from The Fanatic Heart by Edna O'Brien.  Copyright a 1984 by
Edna O'Brien.

Reprinted by permission of Farrar Straus Giroux, Inc.

"Christmas Morning" from Collected Stories by Frank O'Connor.

Copyright a 1946 by Frank O'Connor.  Reprinted by permission of Alfred
A.  Knopf, Inc.  Originally appeared in The New Yorker.

"Two of a Kind" from The Collected Stories of Sean O'Faolain, Copyright
Q 1959, 1961 by Sean O'Faolain.  By permission of Little, Brown &
Company.

"The Loudest Voice" by Grace Paley.  Copyright (0 1985 by Grace Paley.
Reprinted by permission of Grace Paley, Penguin.

"The Birds for Christmas" by Mark Richard is reprinted by permission of
Georges Borchardt, Inc for the author.  Copyright Q 1990 by Mark
Richard.  First appeared in The New Yorker.

"The Night of the Magi" by Leo Rosten from 0 K*A*P*L*A*N* MY
K*A*P*L*A*N!

Reprinted by permission of the William Morris Agency, Inc on behalf of
the author.

Copyright 0 1976 by Leo Rosten.

"Christmas for Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo" by Ntozake Shange.

Copyright 0 1982 by Ntozake Shange.  From the book Sassafrass, Cypress &
Indigo and reprinted with permission from St.  Martin's Press, Inc New
York, NY.

"Long Distance" from The Age of Qrief by Jane Smiley.  Copyright 0 1987
by Jane Smiley.

Reprinted by permission of Alfred A.  Knopf, Inc.

"Jesu, joy of Man's Desiring" from The Fetishist by Michel Tournier.
Copyright a 1983

by Doubleday, a division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group,
Inc and William Collins Sons & Company, Ltd.  Used by permission of
Doubleday, a division of Bantam, Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

"Champagne" is an excerpt from This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff,
copyright a 1989.

Reprinted by permission of Atlantic Monthly Press.