Brian Evenson: A Collapse of Horses

I am certain nobody in my family survived. I am certain they burned, that their faces blackened and bubbled, just as did my own. But in their case they did not recover, but perished. You are not one of them, you cannot be, for if you were you would be dead. Why you choose to pretend to be, and what you hope to gain from it: this is what interests me.

    Now it is your turn to listen to me, to listen to my proofs, though I know you will not be convinced. Imagine this: walking through the countryside one day you come across a paddock. Lying there on their sides, in the dust, unnaturally still, are four horses. All four are prone, with no horses standing. They do not breathe and do not, as far as you can see, move. They are, to all appearances, dead. And yet, on the edge of the paddock, not twenty yards distant, a man fills their trough with water. Are the horses alive and appearances deceptive? Has the man simply not yet turned to see that the horses are dead? Or has he been so shaken by what he has seen that he doesn’t know what to do but proceed as if nothing has happened?

If you turn and walk hurriedly on, leaving before anything decisive happens, what do the horses become for you? They remain both alive and dead, which makes them not quite alive, nor quite dead.

And what, in turn, carrying that paradoxical knowledge in your head, does that make you?

I do not think of myself as special, as anything but ordinary. I completed a degree at a third-tier university housed in the town where I grew up. I graduated safely ensconced in the middle of my class. I found passable employment in the same town. I met a woman, married her, had children with her—three or perhaps four, there is some disagreement on that score—and then the two of us fell gradually and gently out of love.

Then came an incident at work, an accident, a so-called freak one. It left me with a broken skull and, for a short time, a certain amount of confusion. I awoke in an unfamiliar place to find myself strapped down. It seemed to me—I will admit this too—it seemed for some time, hours at least, perhaps even days, that I was not in a hospital at all, but in a mental facility.

But my wife, faithful and everpresent, slowly soothed me into a different understanding of my circumstances. My limbs, she insisted, were restrained simply because I had been delirious. Now that I no longer was, the straps could be loosened. Not quite yet, but soon. There was nothing to worry about. I just had to calm down. Soon, everything would return to normal.

Juan Bosch: La Nochebuena de Encarnación Mendoza

Con su sensible ojo de prófugo Encarnación Mendoza había distinguido el perfil de un árbol a veinte pasos, razón por la cual pensó que la noche iba a decaer. Anduvo acertado en su cálculo; donde empezó a equivocarse fue al sacar conclusiones de esa observación. Pues como el día se acercaba era de rigor buscar escondite, y él se preguntaba si debía internarse en los cerros que tenía a su derecha o en el cañaveral que le quedaba a la izquierda. Para su desgracia, escogió el cañaveral. Hora y media más tarde el sol del día 24 alumbraba los campos y calentaba ligeramente a Encarnación Mendoza, que yacía bocarriba tendido sobre hojas de caña.

A las siete de la mañana los hechos parecían estar sucediéndose tal como había pensado el fugitivo; nadie había pasado por las trochas cercanas. Por otra parte la brisa era fresca y tal vez llovería, como casi todos los años en Nochebuena. Y aunque no lloviera los hombres no saldrían de la bodega, donde estarían desde temprano consumiendo ron, hablando a gritos y tratando de alegrarse como lo mandaba la costumbre. En cambio, de haber tirado hacia los cerros no podría sentirse tan seguro. Él conocía bien el lugar; las familias que vivían en las hondonadas producían leña, yuca y algún maíz. Si cualquiera de los hombres que habitaban los bohíos de por allí bajaba aquel día para vender bastimentos en la bodega del batey y acertaba a verlo, estaba perdido. En leguas a la redonda no había quién se atreviera a silenciar el encuentro. Jamás sería perdonado el que encubriera a Encarnación Mendoza: y aunque no se hablaba del asunto todos los vecinos de la comarca sabían que aquel que le viera debía dar cuenta inmediata al puesto de guardia más cercano.

Empezaba a sentirse tranquilo Encarnación Mendoza, porque tenía la seguridad de que había escogido el mejor lugar para esconderse durante el día, cuando comenzó el destino a jugar en su contra.

Pues a esa hora la madre de Mundito pensaba igual que el prófugo: nadie pasaría por las trochas en la mañana, y si Mundito apuraba el paso haría el viaje a la bodega antes de que comenzaran a transitar los caminos los habituales borrachos del día de Nochebuena. La madre de Mundito tenía unos cuantos centavos que había ido guardando de lo poco que cobraba lavando ropa y revendiendo gallinas en el cruce de la carretera, que le quedaba al poniente, a casi medio día de marcha. Con esos centavos podía mandar a Mundito a la bodega para que comprara harina, bacalao y algo de manteca. Aunque lo hiciera pobremente, quería celebrar la Nochebuena con sus seis pequeños hijos, siquiera fuera comiendo frituras de bacalao.

Lester Del Rey: No Strings Attached

Committing a perfect murder is a simple matter. Drive out some night to a lonely road, find a single person walking along out of sight of anyone else, offer him a ride, knife him, and go home. In such a crime, there's no reason to connect killer and victim—no motive, no clue, no suspect.

To achieve the perfect murder of a man's own wife, however, is a different matter. For obvious reasons, husbands are always high on the suspect list. Who has a better reason for such a crime?

Henry Aimsworth had been pondering the problem with more than academic interest for some time. It wasn't that he hated his wife. He simply couldn't stand the sight or sound of her; even thinking about her made his flesh crawl. If she had been willing to give him a divorce, he'd have been content to wish her all the happiness she was capable of discovering. But Emma, unfortunately, was fond of being his wife; perhaps she was even fond of him. Worse, she was too rigidly bound to trite morality to give him grounds to sue.

There was no hope of her straying. What had been good enough for her mother was good enough for her, and saved all need of thinking; a woman needed a husband, her place was in the home, marriage was forever, and what would the neighbors think? Anyhow, she'd have had difficulty being unfaithful, even if she tried. She'd been gaining some ten pounds every year for the eleven years they had been married, and she'd long since stopped worrying about taking care of her appearance.

He looked up at her now, letting the book drop to his lap. She sat watching the television screen with a vacant look on her face, while some comic went through a tired routine. If she enjoyed it, there was no sign, though she spent half her life in front of the screen. Then the comic went off, and dancers came on. She went back to darning a pair of his socks, as seriously as if she didn't know that he had always refused to wear the lumpy results. Her stockings had runs, and she still wore the faded apron in which she'd cooked supper.

He contrasted her with Shirley unconsciously, and shuddered. In the year since Shirley Bates had come to work in his rare book store, he'd done a lot of such shuddering, and never because of the slim blonde warmth of his assistant. Since that hot day in August when they'd closed the shop early and he'd suggested a ride in the country to cool off, he and Shirley....

Jorge Campos: La Transición

[Los noticieros transmitían desde todas partes del mundo el momento histórico de la apertura de todas las fronteras. Había nacido un nuevo sistema.] -Pablo despertó de golpe al pasar por un bache. Iba atrás, junto a la carne que transportaba el contenedor, en busca de una vida digna al otro lado de la frontera norte. «Mierda», dijo. Y se vomitó.

Algis Budrys: The man who tasted ashes

THE CAR HE'D stolen was a beautifully groomed thing: all polished lacquer and chrome, with almost brand-new dual tread whitewall tires on the nickeled wire wheels. But the transmission was bad, the brake drums scraped, and there was a short circuit in the wiring somewhere, so that he had to keep over sixty miles per hour or the generator would not charge at all. He would have stolen another one if he could, but he had got onto the turnpike before he realized just how unreliable this one was. If he changed cars at a restaurant, it would be reported and the police would stop him when he tried to leave the turnpike.

No, he was trapped with what he had. Hunched over the wheel of his roaring cage, the yellowish headlights reflecting white from the lane markers, Redfern swept his eyes systematically over the instruments: ammeter, fuel gauge, oil pressure, water temperature, speedometer, odometer. He thought of himself as doing it systematically, every ten minutes, like a professionally trained driver. Actually, he was dividing his attention almost equally between the road and the odometer. A hundred and ten miles covered, seventy miles to go, ninety minutes before the ship was due to take off, with or without him, average speed required: 42.62, approx.; round off to allow for stopping the car at the exit toll booth, for covering two miles of back roads, for leaving the car and running an unknown distance across a weed-grown field to the ship's airlock--they would take off on schedule with him six inches from the slamming airlock door; they would not stay themselves a microsecond to accommodate him--say fifty miles per hour, average. Then allow for speedometer error. Say fifty-five miles per hour, indicated, average. Allow for odometer error. Say sixty miles per hour, indicated, average. Allow for unforseen delays. Sixty-five miles per hour.

Redfern's foot trembled on the accelerator pedal. His thigh ached from hours of unremitting pressure. His car flashed by signboards, wove continually around immense trailer trucks in the slow lane. His mind raced to keep up with the changing figures on the odometer. He wished he weren't feeling a slight miss in the engine whenever he eased up on the accelerator. He cursed the car's owner for his false-front prodigality with wax and whitewalls.

He looked at his watch again. Four in the morning. He turned the radio on, ignoring his fear that something else might happen to the car's wiring.

"--And that's the news," the announcer's professionally relaxed voice said. "After a word about United Airlines, we'll hear, first, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, followed by--"

His watch was slow.

Five minutes? Fifteen minutes? How long did the news take?

Niccolò Ammaniti: Carta

 

Era strana quella mattina. Forse era quella cappa grigia e stagnante che si era adagiata sulla città, forse era solo che avevo dormito in un letto di merda. Non lo so. Fatto sta che arrivai al lavoro alla solita ora.

A quel tempo lavoravo alla USL della seconda circoscrizione e non facevo un cazzo tutto il giorno. Di lavoro ce n’era da fare ma io trovavo sempre il modo di inguattarmi, di partire per illusorie commissioni.

Lavoravo nel reparto derattizzazione e disinfestazione.

Se vi si riempie la casa di pulci, che vi formano dei calzini neri e pieni di vita intorno alle caviglie, non vi resta che chiamare noi. Se vi si stipa il solaio di sorci e se vi risalgono su dal cesso zoccole grosse come barboncini arriviamo e mettiamo a ferro e a fuoco il vostro appartamento.

A farla breve, quella mattina, arrivai al lavoro più scazzato del solito. Volevo stare a casa. Tomba doveva scendere alle 11:30 nello speciale e avevo calcolato che sarei potuto tornare intorno alle 11 e prepararmi per bene. Appena entrato vidi Franco, l’usciere, che se ne stava seduto dentro la guardiola e giocava a scopa con Carmela, la bidella. Tutte le mattine la stessa storia. Perdeva sempre.

‘A Coluzza, c’è Michelozzi che ti cerca…» disse il portiere senza alzare lo sguardo dalle carte.

E che vuole?»

Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Las siamesas

Siempre le había tentado al novelista el conflicto de aquellas dos almas juntas, inseparables y, sin embargo, distintas.

Aquella paradoja de la vida con complicadas seducciones le sugería una novela desesperada en que el conflicto terceril sería cuádruple.

Ante la invocación de las hermanas con algo de criollas, comenzó su relato:

I

Al nacer lloró su madre porque el que las dos estuviesen unidas por la cintura hasta más abajo de los omoplatos, la parecía una doble desgracia, pues no sólo la nacía mujer en vez de varón, sino que la mujer que la nacía estaba sometida y mediatizada por otra mujer, es decir, sería doblemente desdichada la hija que aparecía con dos rostros, dos corazones, cuatro manos y cuatro pies.

Lo primero que hizo la madre al saber el extraño ser que había parido, fue pensar qué pecado monstruoso, qué idea disparatada o qué antecedente endiablado pagaba con aquel castigo de una doble hija como coja de todo su ser que sería pasto de la curiosidad trivial de las gentes.

No encontró razón ninguna que disculpase aquella extraña aparición fuera de lo normal y pensó si sería en la historia de su esposo donde se ocultaba aquella falta castigada tan cruelmente.

En los primeros meses las hermanas siamesas parecían el ser que no puede vivir, la intentona de la naturaleza por salirse de sus prototipos, que es purgada con la muerte.

William Gibson: Johnny Mnemonic

I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, thought, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. I'd had to turn both those twelve-gauge shells from brass stock, on the lathe, and then load then myself; I'd had to dig up an old microfiche with instructions for hand- loading cartidges; I'd had to build a lever-action press to seat the primers -all very tricky. But I knew they'd work.

The meet was set for the Drome at 2300, but I rode the tube three stops past the closest platform and walked back. Immaculate procedure. I checked myself out in the chrome siding of a coffee kiosk, your basic sharp-faced Caucasoid with a ruff of stiff, dark hair. The girls at Under the Knife were big on Sony Mao, and it was getting harder to keep them from adding the chic suggestion of epicanthic folds. It probably wouldn't fool Ralfi Face, but it might get me next to his table. The Drome is a single narrow space with a bar down one side and tables along the other, thick with pimps and handlers and a arcame array of dealers. The Magnetic Dog Sisters were on the door that night, and I didn't relish trying to get out past them if things didn't work out. They were two meters tall and thin as greyhounds. One was black and the other white, but aside from that they were as nearly identical as cosmetic surgery could make them. They'd been lovers for years and were bad news in the tussle. I was never quite sure which one had originally been male.

Julio Cortázar: Las Líneas de la Mano

De una carta tirada sobre la mesa sale una línea que corre por la plancha de pino y baja por una pata. Basta mirar bien para descubrir que la línea continúa por el piso de parqué, remonta el muro, entra en una lámina que reproduce un cuadro de Boucher, dibuja la espalda de una mujer reclinada en un diván y por fin escapa de la habitación por el techo y desciende en la cadena del pararrayos hasta la calle. Ahí es difícil seguirla a causa del tránsito, pero con atención se la verá subir por la rueda del autobús estacionado en la esquina y que lleva al puerto. Allí baja por la media de nilón cristal de la pasajera más rubia, entra en el territorio hostil de las aduanas, rampa y repta y zigzaguea hasta el muelle mayor y allí (pero es difícil verla, sólo las ratas la siguen para trepar a bordo) sube al barco de turbinas sonoras, corre por las planchas de la cubierta de primera clase, salva con dificultad la escotilla mayor y en una cabina, donde un hombre triste bebe coñac y escucha la sirena de partida, remonta por la costura del pantalón, por el chaleco de punto, se desliza hacia el codo y con un último esfuerzo se guarece en la palma de la mano derecha, que en ese instante empieza a cerrarse sobre la culata de una pistola.

Gene Wolfe: Incubator

“You’ll know it right away,” Fil had said, smiling. He had a charming smile. “Our roof was designed by some lunatic, and it’s all tile, sort of between a greenish yellow and a yellowish green.” When she had said nothing Fil added, “Depends on how the sun strikes it. There’s nothing like it for thousands of kilos—nothing else like it in the world, probably. I mean, who’d want a roof like that?”

She had remarked that she still did not understand why the locator would not take her straight there. “Don’t know,” Fil had said. He had golden hair, like someone in an old, old painting. “Something Father did, probably.” Then he vanished, and a hundred vocal and keyed commands had not brought him back.

There it was, over there! That jumble of poisoned leaves! She guided L-87 with a gesture and told him to land with another.

It was all garden here, no paths at all that she could see, no paved paths, no bridle paths, just lush green grass among straggling rose bushes. Were not roses supposed to bloom all summer? All winter, too, even here north of the line? These roses did not know the rules, or most did not. A few blue or green blossoms here and there. And foliage, though not as lush as she had expected.

She took a dozen steps before the thought struck, but once it did she knew that it was quite correct. These roses had not been chosen for their blossoms or even for their foliage. Chosen for something else. From fear, she refrained from naming it, even silently. No name, and no looking at those.

Left, then right, then straight on for twenty-odd steps and here was the inhabitation. She positioned in front of the lens, standing far enough back to give it a full view. Blond, she reminded herself. That was what Fil’s yellow hair was called. Dark blue eyes? Was she imagining those? Could semihumans, even blond ones, really have two such eyes?

The voice of the door was not his. “Come right in. It’s not locked.”

A woe man’s? An android’s?

The door swung open before she touched it. The room beyond was large and many-shadowed, with a ceiling that had to be three stories high—no, five. It seemed to draw her up like sky, promising something she could not have named. A row of pillars to the left, mucus stretched from floor to ceiling.

“Father wanted you to come here.”

Domingo Santos: Genoma

Fue en la fiesta de los Álvarez. Esas malditas fiestas siempre ponen ideas locas en la cabeza de Helena. Es algo superior a sus fuerzas: no puede evitarlo.

Al volver a casa, mientras nos preparamos para irnos a la cama, me lo dice:

—Quiero tener un hijo.

No es nada extraño en una mujer de cuarenta años. A los veinte sólo quieres divertirte, a los treinta te importa únicamente tu carrera, a los cuarenta se produce lo que el sociopsicólogo Harvest califica de «síndrome del nido vacío nunca llenado». El marido ya no es suficiente para satisfacerla. Quiere algo más. Un hijo es la respuesta obvia.

Se me queda mirando entre interrogadora y curiosa. Desde siempre sabe que me gustan los niños, que no me importaría tener hijos, pese a esa absurda propaganda de «qué les vamos a dejar en este mundo de mierda» que difunden los radicales. Asiento.

Parece aliviada.

—Bien —dice—. Entonces iremos a Biotronik.

Asiento de nuevo. Por supuesto, iremos a Biotronik.

El hecho de que Biotronik tenga su sede central en Munich carece de importancia: son sólo cuarenta y cinco minutos de vuelo desde Madrid. Aprovechamos el fin de semana para visitar Colonia y Hamburgo, y el lunes por la mañana estamos delante del gran edificio circular de acero y cristal tintado con las grandes letras resplandecientes en su parte superior.

Nos atiende un adonis puro ario, pelo de oro, ojos de mar, la sonrisa de la Gioconda en versión masculina. La gran moda de hace veinticinco años; puedes encontrarlos a cientos por las calles. Ahora se estila más el indocaucásico. Las modas cambian.

Se presenta como el jefe de departamento Hans Ströber; puro marketing, porque Biotronik no tiene departamentos: es toda una gran y única unidad. Habla un español perfecto. Lleva en las manos la ficha que le han entregado en recepción. Nos hace pasar a un lujoso despacho, se sitúa tras una gran mesa con patas de caballete de acero y sobre de grueso cristal ahumado, introduce la ficha en su ordenador. Como requieren las reglas, sólo mira la pantalla de reojo.

Edward Frederic Benson: Reconciliation

Garth Place lies low in a dip of the hills which, north, east, and west, enclose its sequestered valley, as in the palm of a hollowed hand. To the south the valley broadens out and the encompassing hills merge themselves into the wide strip of flat country once reclaimed from the sea, and now, with intersections of drainage dykes, forming the fat pasture of the scattered farms. Thick woods of beech and oak, which climb the hillsides above the house up to the top of the ridge, give it further shelter, and it dozes in a soft and sundered climate of its own when the bleak uplands above it are swept by the east winds of spring or the northerly blasts of winter; and, sitting in its terraced garden in the mild sunshine of a clear December day, you may hear the gale roaring through the tree-tops on the upper slopes, and see the clouds scudding high above you, yet never feel a breath of the wind that shreds them seawards. The clearings in these woods are thick with anemones and full-blown clumps of primroses a month before the tiniest bud has appeared in the copses of the upland, and its gardens are still bright with the red blossoms of the autumn long after the flower-borders in the village that huddles on the hill-top to the west have been blackened by the frosts. Only when the south wind blows is its tranquillity disturbed, and then the sound of the waves is heard, and the wind is salt with the sea.

The house itself dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and has miraculously escaped the destructive hand of the restorer. Its three low storeys are built of the grey stone of the district, the roof is made of thin slabs of the same, between which the blown seeds have found anchorage, and the broad mullioned windows are many-paned. Never a creak comes from its oaken floors, solid and broad are its staircases, its panelling is as firm as the walls in which it is laid. A faint odour of wood smoke from the centuries of fires that have burned on its open hearths pervades it, that and an extraordinary silence. A man who lay awake all night in one of its chambers would hear no whisper of cracking wood-work, or rattling pane, and all night long there would come to his listening ears no sound from outside but the hoot of the tawny owl, or in June the music of the nightingale. At the back a strip of garden has been anciently levelled out of the hillside, in front the slope has been built up to form a couple of terraces. Below, a spring feeds a small sheet of water, bordered by marshy ground set with tufts of rushes, and out of it a stream much stifled in herbage wanders exiguously past the kitchen garden, and joins the slow-flowing little river which, after a couple of miles of lazy travel, debouches through broadening mud-flats into the English Channel. Along the further margin of the stream a footpath with right-of-way leads from the village of Garth on the hill above to the main road across the plain. Just below the house a small stone bridge with a gate crosses the stream and gives access to this footpath.

Cristina Fernández Cubas: La fiebre azul

No recuerdo ahora quién me dio el dato. Si fue el propio holandés con el que tenía que cerrar un negocio, o si «Masajonia» era la palabra clave, la información obligada, la referencia de connaisseur que corría de boca en boca entre extranjeros. Lo cierto es que al llegar al porche, después de un penoso viaje desde el aeropuerto, me recibió un agradable aroma a torta de mijo y la reconfortante noticia de que en pocas horas podía ocupar un cuarto que acababa de quedar libre. Me sentí afortunado. No había ningún otro hotel en más de cincuenta kilómetros a la redonda.

Mi habitación era la número siete. Todas las habitaciones en el Masajonia tienen el mismo número: el siete. Pero ningún cliente se confunde. Las habitaciones, cinco o seis en total -no estoy seguro-, lucen su número en lo alto de la puerta. Ningún siete se parece a otro siete. Hay sietes de latón, de madera, de hierro forjado, de arcilla... Hay sietes de todos los tamaños y para todos los gustos. Historiados, sencillos, vistosos y relucientes o deteriorados e incompletos. El mío, el que me tocó en suerte, más que un siete parecía una ele algo torcida. Le faltaba el tornillo de la parte superior y había girado sobre sí mismo. Intenté arreglarlo no sé por qué , devolverlo a su originario carácter de número, pero él se empeñó en conservar su apariencia de letra. Informé a Recepción. Es un decir. Recepción consistía en una hamaca blanca y un negro orondo que atendía por Balik. Nunca supe qué idioma hablaba Balik, si hablaba alguno o si fingía hablar y no hacía otra cosa que juntar sonidos. Tampoco si su amplia sonrisa significaba que me había entendido o todo lo contrario. Le dibujé un siete sobre un papel y le di la vuelta. Él se puso a reír a carcajadas. Simulé que tenía un martillo, empecé a clavetear contra una pared y coloqué el papel en su superficie. «Ajajash», concedió el hombre. Y se tumbó en la hamaca.

La habitación no era mala. Tal vez debería decir excelente. Pocas veces en mis dos meses de estancia en África me había sentido tan cómodo en el cuarto de un hotel. Disponía de una cama inmensa, una mesa, dos sillas, un espejo, el obligado ventilador y una butaca de orejas, al estilo inglés, que, aunque desentonaba claramente con el resto, me producía una olvidada sensación de bienestar. La mosquitera cosa rara no presentaba el menor remiendo ni la más leve rasgadura.

Era una segunda piel que me seguía a cualquier rincón del dormitorio. De la mesa a la cama y de la cama al sillón. Los insectos del manglar no podían con ella. Eso era importante. Como también el delicioso olor a especias e incienso que impregnaba sábanas y toallas, y las ramas de palmera que agitadas por el viento oscurecían o alumbraban el cuarto a través de la persiana.

El Hotel Masajonia es un edificio de adobe de una sola planta. Sencillo, limpio, sin lujos añadidos (si exceptuamos el sillón) y sin otra peculiaridad que la curiosa insistencia en numerar todas las habitaciones con un siete. Una rareza que al principio sorprende, pero pronto, como no lleva a confusión, se olvida. Tal vez los primeros propietarios (ingleses, sin lugar a dudas) lo quisieron así. Una pequeña sofisticación en el corazón de África. Luego se fueron, y ahí quedaron los números como un simple elemento de decoración o un capricho que nadie se molestó en retirar. El primer día le pregunté al hombre de la hamaca. «¿Por qué todas las habitaciones son la siete?» «Ajajash», respondió encogiéndose de hombros. «Ajajash», repetí. Y me di por satisfecho.

Vincent O'Sullivan: The interval

MRS. WILTON passed through a little alley leading from one of the gates which are around Regent's Park, and came out on the wide and quiet street. She walked along slowly, peering anxiously from side to side so as not to overlook the number. She pulled her furs closer round her; after her years in India this London damp seemed very harsh. Still, it was not a fog to-day. A dense haze, gray and tinged ruddy, lay between the houses, sometimes blowing with a little wet kiss against the face. Mrs. Wilton's hair and eyelashes and her furs were powdered with tiny drops. But there was nothing in the weather to blur the sight; she could see the faces of people some distance off and read the signs on the shops.

Before the door of a dealer in antiques and second-hand furniture she paused and looked through the shabby uncleaned window at an unassorted heap of things, many of them of great value. She read the Polish name fastened on the pane in white letters.

"Yes; this is the place."

She opened the door, which met her entrance with an ill-tempered jangle. From somewhere in the black depths of the shop the dealer came forward. He had a clammy white face, with a sparse black beard, and wore a skull cap and spectacles. Mrs. Wilton spoke to him in a low voice.

A look of complicity, of cunning, perhaps of irony, passed through the dealer's cynical and sad eyes. But he bowed gravely and respectfully.

"Yes, she is here, madam. Whether she will see you or not I do not know. She is not always well; she has her moods. And then, we have to be so careful. The police —— Not that they would touch a lady like you. But the poor alien has not much chance these days."

Mrs. Wilton followed him to the back of the shop, where there was a winding staircase. She knocked over a few things in her passage and stooped to pick them up, but the dealer kept muttering, "It does not matter — surely it does not matter." He lit a candle.

"You must go up these stairs. They are very dark; be careful. When you come to a door, open it and go straight in."

He stood at the foot of the stairs holding the light high above his head and she ascended.

The room was not very large, and it seemed very ordinary. There were some flimsy, uncomfortable chairs in gilt and red. Two large palms were in corners. Under a glass cover on the table was a view of Rome. The room had not a business-like look, thought Mrs. Wilton; there was no suggestion of the office or waiting-room where people came and went all day; yet you would not say that it was a private room which was lived in. There were no books or papers about; every chair was in the place it had been placed when the room was last swept; there was no fire and it was very cold.