The Moonlit Road

Ambrose Bierce

The Moonlit Road

1. Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.
I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health -- with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not -- I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort I might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling the conjecture that it compels.
I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of no particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park of trees and shrubbery.
At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student at Yale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarously murdered -- why and by whom none could conjecture, but the circumstances were these.
My father had gone to Nashville, intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly disappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was some one secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at the unlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its door was open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!

Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman's throat -- dear God! that I might forget them! -- no trace of the assassin was ever found.
I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything -- a footfall, the sudden closing of a door -- aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a 'nervous wreck.' As to me, I was younger then than now -- there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land! Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.
One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath:
'God! God! what is that?'
'I hear nothing,' I replied.
'But see -- see!' he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.
I said: 'Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in -- you are ill.'
He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the centre of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense. His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my body from head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.

At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp. When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the years that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.


2. Statement of Caspar Grattan
To-day I am said to live, to-morrow, here in this room, will lie a senseless shape of clay that all too long was I. If anyone lift the cloth from the face of that unpleasant thing it will be in gratification of a mere morbid curiosity. Some, doubtless, will go further and inquire, 'Who was he?' In this writing I supply the only answer that I am able to make -- Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. The name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of unknown length. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the right. In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.
One day, for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city, far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausing and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, 'That man looks like 767.' Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible. Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ran until I fell exhausted in a country lane.
I have never forgotten that number, and always it comes to memory attended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!
Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration. It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.

Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggering beneath a burden --
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.
Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me -- how admirable, how dreadfully admirable!
Backward beyond the beginning of this via dolorosa -- this epic of suffering with episodes of sin -- I see nothing clearly; it comes out of a cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man.
One does not remember one's birth -- one has to be told. But with me it was different; life came to me full-handed and dowered me with all my faculties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no more than others, for all have stammering intimations that may be memories and may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity in body and mind -- a consciousness accepted without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached and asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. I did not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, I retreated, and night coming on, lay down in the forest and slept.
The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name. Nor shall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end -- a life of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmastering sense of crime in punishment of wrong and of terror in punishment of crime. Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative.
I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter, married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We had, it sometimes seems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at all times a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out of the picture.
One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife's fidelity in a vulgar, commonplace way familiar to everyone who has acquaintance with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling my wife that I should be absent until the following afternoon. But I returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gently open and close, and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With murder in my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even the bad luck of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade myself that it was a human being.

Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all the elemental passions of insulted manhood, I entered the house and sprang up the stairs to the door of my wife's chamber. It was closed, but having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered, and despite the black darkness soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands told me that although disarranged it was unoccupied.
'She is below,' I thought, 'and terrified by my entrance has evaded me in the darkness of the hall.' With the purpose of seeking her I turned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction -- the right one! My foot struck her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my hands were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her struggling body; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation or reproach, I strangled her till she died! There ends the dream. I have related it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form, for again and again the sombre tragedy re-enacts itself in my consciousness -- over and over I lay the plan, I suffer the confirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward the rains beat against the grimy windowpanes, or the snows fall upon my scant attire, the wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my life lies in poverty and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine I do not recall it; if there are birds they do not sing.
There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand among the shadows in a moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whose I cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catch the gleam of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me in the road -- my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there are marks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite gravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything less terrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat in terror -- a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightly shape the words. See! they --
Now I am calm, but truly there is no more to tell: the incident ends where it began -- in darkness and in doubt.

Yes, I am again in control of myself: 'the captain of my soul.' But that is not respite; it is another stage and phase of expiation. My penance, constant in degree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants is tranquillity. After all, it is only a life-sentence. 'To Hell for life' -- that is a foolish penalty: the culprit chooses the duration of his punishment. To-day my term expires.
To each and all, the peace that was not mine.


3. Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, through the Medium Bayrolles
I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. My husband, Joel Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; they had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me no relief; the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it would shine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever evil thing might lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrors of the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy -- the strategy of despair!
Extinguishing the lamp I pulled the bedclothing about my head and lay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In this pitiable state I must have lain for what you call hours -- with us there are no hours, there is no time.
At last it came -- a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way; to my disordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal. I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burning and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell -- we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy.

Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way -- you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!
No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. I heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking hand found the door-knob when -- merciful heaven! -- I heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat -- felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward -- felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I passed into this life.
No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?

What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held.
On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.
I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees they stood -- near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me -- at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted -- I must have shouted,' He sees, he sees: he will understand!' Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with endearments, and, with my son's hand in mine, to speak words that should restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead.

Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last turned and fled into the wood -- whither, it is not given to me to know.
To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this Life Invisible and be lost to me for ever.

The Banana Season's Over

Jon Mallalieu

The Banana Season's Over

"Poison." It's one of the kibbutzniks that speaks, a large woman probably in her forties. "We poison the wildlife every now and again you know, to keep things under control."
She must have just finished her night shift because she is wearing work overalls: a pair of beige, stained dungarees. I gather by the smell that she works in the cowsheds.
"It's the pigeons mainly," she says; "they're a real pest, shit all over the dairy buildings, eat the cattle feed. Unfortunately some of the cats get it too but they're only strays."
I am incensed. "I don't think that's quite the point."
We all turn toward the cat which is now making a rasping choking sound as it tries to clear its blocked airways. Its tongue, cherry red, flashes desperately against the white spittle that fills its tiny mouth. I feel physically sick at the sight of its writhing body turning over the dead leaves. The others mutter in agreement, unhappy with her casual attitude. I continue, "And the pigeons, Jesus, look at the pigeons," all gathering in the same corner, huddled between the road and the yellow shower block. I can't work out why at first and then I figure that it's probably the wind gathering them, trapping them helplessly in a whirling eddy of feathers. Below us more pigeons have appeared on the corrugated roofs of the volunteer huts while others circle and fall from the sky as if the air is too thin to support their weight. Unhappy with her audience she waddles off towards the block of members' housing. We watch her fat rolling backside and her uneven heavy gait. Eddie mutters, "Bitch," under his breath and Tom says, "bloody Israelis," just loud enough to make her turn her head before disappearing from view.

That was kind of how it was on the kibbutz. When I mentioned the incident to Motti the next day in the banana fields he looked a little perplexed and motioned me to climb up onto the warm trailer. He pointed up over the top of the tattered banana leaves at the kibbutz.
"Look Blake, you see the kibbutz?" I nod courteously, shielding my eyes with my palm from the glare of the sun.
"When my parents arrived you know there were no buildings there? Just this bare hill and a row of white tents. Of course there was no running water, no power, no nothing. Well look now, eh? Isn't she beautiful? It's our home and we made it by working on the land. I don't know, maybe it's hard for you to understand, but we have to place things into some kind of order, and animals, well they come low down. You know the history, Blake, our history. Think about the history."

I jump down from the trailer and think about the history.

Work in the bananas is hard graft and by mid-morning I am already exhausted. The sun is high in the clear sky and the dappled shade under the trees is disappearing fast. To make things worse my bare arms are covered in the thin sticky residue of the banana trees and I am stood shin deep in a carpet of dead leaves. I am working with Egal, a grey haired kibbutz elder. He doesn't say much but we have an efficient working partnership. His faded T-shirt is pulled tight around his middle and on his bony hip hangs the blackened leather scabbard, home to his banana knife. It's a beauty: twelve inches long and a butcher's delight. I follow him to a particularly tall tree and watch while he lifts the heavy knife slowly above his head. He brings it swiftly down making a single deft slash in the moist trunk. The knife is stuck fast and he has to pull heavily with both hands on the wooden handle to release it. As it drags free, it emits a wet squeak like the sound of a finger down a wet bathroom mirror. Then the tree slips forward obediently, dutifully, dipping the hard green bananas to a height that can be reached by an expert arm. I grab the fat purple bud that hangs pendulously beneath the bunch with one sticky hand and, leaning forward, push it gently away until the fruit is slanted high above my right shoulder. Then I stand beneath with my knees bent in anticipation until another powerful blow slices through the woody stem and releases the weighty bunch down onto me. The trick is to dip with the falling fruit, to absorb the weight and only then to stand. I now have to find the trailer but it's often hard because the trees can be disorientating and the dusty track is the same colour as the dried fallen leaves. So I stand still momentarily and listen for the voices of other labourers.
When I arrive Tom is sitting on the tailgate of the dented trailer, right on the very edge so his skin doesn't touch the hot sunburned metal. I gasp as I dump my load heavily onto the trailer. Tom looks up, he is chewing gum whilst opening the lid on the polystyrene flask of cold water. He hands it to me and I raise it to my chapped lips. The water traces an icy path to my stomach and I realise then that I never really knew what water was, not until I worked the bananas.

From around the corner Motti appears driving the John Deer. He is pulling another open trailer and in it are the rest of the volunteers grimacing and huddled like weary cattle. They lift and thump with every pothole and cling tightly to the side of the vehicle. I can see Eddie and he raises a pale hand lazily in recognition.
"Typical," says Tom in a resigned drawl jumping to his feet. "Been working like a dog all morning and Motti sees me sitting on my arse, now I'll be for it." But Motti says nothing. He has stopped and is waiting patiently for us to jump up. Egal has appeared red-faced and spectacled at the edge of the track and we all amble silently toward the ticking tractor.
From here the road sweeps neatly along the edge of the wide fields and on past the Roman springs where the water is not only deep but clean and still. It is a favourite swimming spot after a hard hot day's work. Along the edge of the wide pools amongst the avocado trees Roman buildings are gradually disintegrating, giving up their history to the hungry water. In any other country they would be in museums but here it seems you can prop up your garden shed with a Roman column. We move on, wheels grinding over the bleached stone track until we see the square limestone hut. Within minutes we are drinking sweet black coffee flavoured with cardamom and fighting over the tasteless kibbutz biscuits. Sitting outside in the shade of the hut we light our cigarettes and rest our bare elbows on the grubby floor of the trailer, copper-coloured legs splayed out behind us.

The view from here is magnificent. To the west through the hazy shimmer of rising heat we can make out the Mediterranean Sea and the terracotta roofs of the houses in the coastal town of Naharia. It sparkles like a tiara with a hundred glinting solar panels. To the east through the fug the Golan Heights rise proudly like bony knuckles, lifting gently away from the fertile plains. Behind us, high above the tops of the stately avocado trees, is the kibbutz. It stands splendid and palatial amongst the heavily scented pine trees. The gentle slopes that form the ramparts of the community are, however, barren. Weed-less and rocky, they descend monotonously to the main road.

Eddie is smoking and sitting on the trailer swinging his large feet in a rhythmic motion. "Does it ever snow?" He speaks quietly looking up at me through his cherubic curls. I glance upwards. "What, you mean here on the kibbutz?"
"I mean in Israel, does it snow in the winter? That would be nice that would, picking bananas in the snow, not having these damn peeling shoulders" He plucks a flake of skin from one of his broad freckled shoulders and lets it fall gently like a spent leaf onto the dirt. He shifts position, leans back, and raises his legs so that his heavy boots rest in his cupped hands.
"Only up in the mountains," I say, "I think you can ski up there. Motti told me he fought up there in the war, up in the Golan Heights. It's always cold when you're high up."
"Right," he sounds enthused, "the wind I guess." But I look confused so he adds thoughtfully, "That's what makes it cold?"
"I guess," but now I'm off imagining snow falling quietly in Jerusalem capping the golden Dome of the Rock. Muting the honking traffic and settling gently, silently on the ancient twisted branches of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.
"It reminds me of home," says Eddie, looking doleful, "makes me think of London in the winter. We used to have a laugh, when it snowed I mean." He jumps down from the trailer and stands with his legs slightly apart in the dust. His face has suddenly become animated. "You know I remember once," he pauses as a small bird flits past us and into the warm shade of the avocado trees, "I think I'd just finished a short stretch inside. Anyhow we'd had a few beers when we saw this Asian guy waltzing down the high street. He was walking slowly, carefully picking at a big soggy bag of chips. I could see the steam rising off them and smell the salt and vinegar in the cold air. And it was cold that night. We were spent up from drinking so we followed him quietly, stealthily. And all that I can remember is that I really wanted that warm bag in my freezing fingers. It was still snowing hard, you could see it when he passed under the street lights, big fat wet flakes." He holds his plump hand six inches from the floor of the trailer to illustrate its depth.

"The guy wore his woolly hat pulled down over his ears, probably off home after a hard day's work. Well, we crouched down low behind some oak trees, sniggering, and made snowballs, tight ones. We squeezed them hard as stones then crept up carefully behind him. We let him have it. The first one smacked him squarely on the head; he didn't know what hit him. He yelled out like a school girl, tried to run but we got him from every angle, the back, the side, the front, took his glasses clean off. His chips were splashed out in the snow, and he started screaming, you bastards, you bloody bastards, come back. I give you bloody hiding, bastards!" (He gets the intonation just right.)
"We could hear him minutes later still yelling looking for his specs in the snow whilst we were laughing, screaming, running through the park. Be great if it snowed here, bloody great."
I want to react. I want to make disapproving noises, to tut or draw my breath sharply over my teeth, but the longer I wait the more it seems unlikely. It's partly because the picture in my head is so damn clear, so beautifully intact, and partly that I enjoyed its clarity, how he took me effortlessly to the exact spot where the warm chips have sunk making dark holes in the fresh snow. And there's this guy, his ears still stinging, ringing, on his knees still looking helplessly for his glasses. I want to ponder on it, to turn the picture over in my head and examine how I feel. The silence is uncomfortable and I know we can all feel it but I can't help myself. I start to laugh, crouching down low, my palms on my bare dirty knees. Quietly at first but then I can't contain it. It's Tom, his laugh is infectious, a kind of high pitched hen-like cackle. And then we are all taken with the moment, and dancing with delight skipping over the dirt track. Eddie grabs a ripe banana from the trailer and lobs it to me; I catch it two handed. The exchange is part of the contract and Eddie, awash with confidence, bounces back, "We never did get any chips."

I spend the rest of the morning walking the pipes with Tom. The irrigation pipes meander along the narrow aisles of banana trees. They provide each tree at its wide base with an allotted dose of water and nutrients. We are checking for leaks and every now and then one of us stops abruptly, kneels on the dried banana leaves and studies a faulty joint in the line. Sometimes the droppers are simply blocked with dirt and it's an easy job to clear the eye with a needle, but other times the pipe needs cutting and reconnecting. While one of us busies ourselves dealing with the problem, the other leans lazily against a tree or patiently takes a drink of water from the flask. We walk for miles accompanied only by our soft voices and the soporific rustle of dead leaves. Sometimes we don't talk for hours and then neither of us wants to break the delicate silence. Other times we while a morning or afternoon away lobbing rotten bananas at each other or singing Simon and Garfunkel tunes.

Last week, where the pipe had split and left a wide puddle in the dirt, we came across a family of tortoises drinking gently at its ragged edge. Laying down quietly on our fronts, hands under our chins we watched them dip and raise their horny heads for an age. Tom eventually looked up at me. "Nature," he said grinning. "Bloody marvellous," and then we were up and off again.
I like Tom. Something about him makes me feel safe. It might be the neatness of his physical frame. He has the lithe, taut body of a rock climber and his skin is a deep chestnut tan. Sometimes, when we go jogging together in the early evening I watch the sweat running down the muscular ridges of his naked back. His posture is athletic, self assured. The way he comfortably plants his grey trainers in the loose dirt of the mud track, the natural rhythm of his pace, his breathing, all these things breed a kind of unspoken respect in me. There is a stillness about him too that holds your attention when he talks. And when he listens his blue eyes shine and behind them you can almost sense his thoughts. But above all these things, it is his smile that beguiles you. It is the natural easy smile of a child and it has the same innocent and honest quality.

I had arrived at kibbutz Briac on a warm September evening; I was tired. The taxi, a yellow Mercedes, dropped me off at the bottom of the hill and I could feel the heat rising from the pitted tarmac. The smell of the tar was reassuring. It reminded me of the summer I had just left behind a thousand miles away. I was eighteen and still a schoolboy fresh from the playing fields, plucked suddenly from the safety of a High School education. If I closed my eyes tightly I could even see my graffiti, bright and yellow, carved like a valley deep into the sloping wooden desk. I walked slowly, lost in my thoughts up the narrow winding road toward the checkpoint. Its red and white striped barrier was slung down low, forbiddingly, across the brow of the hill. My mind was buzzing with fatigue, for the journey had been exhausting and my backpack felt double the burden it had in the morning.

I remember the young man on duty because he was wearing creased army fatigues and smoking a large cheroot. He looked like a captain in some banana republic. Leaning back on his plastic stool, he jumped when he saw me and struck an official-looking pose as if he were being filmed for some documentary. Demanding to see my paperwork, he looked awkward and embarrassed when it was obvious that I had none. Clearly agitated, he picked up the black telephone at his side and pressed it to a greasy ear. He dialled three numbers in rapid succession and spoke briefly in Hebrew, the result of which was that he looked cross but nonetheless allowed me to pass. Then, pointing with a slender finger to a group of low buildings in the distance he sniffed, put his hands in his pockets and mumbled something which I failed to understand.
A few minutes later I was stood perfectly still, staring through a narrow gap between two tall pine trees. There was a fire spitting orange and yellow beads up into the evening sky. It was piled high with freshly cut logs and it gave off an incense of pine resin which hung heavily in the cool air about me. Around the fire there was a group of about six or seven shadowy figures, some sitting cross-legged others kneeling. They were talking and laughing, gently rocking back and forth as if they occupied a small boat which was bobbing on a sea of grass. Their chatter mingled with the crackle of the fire and disappeared with the plume of twisting smoke into the night. Darkness had fallen and above me the first stars were appearing. They looked like chinks of light in a theatre curtain, full of promise. On one of the walls of the yellow huts nearby I noticed that someone had scratched "God shave the Queen" into the thin plaster and I smiled and walked slowly over to meet them.

Standing like a pale castle on top of a rocky hill, the kibbutz was only a stone's throw away from the Lebanese border. Ironically, stones were never thrown, but periodically a shell would whistle angrily across the shapeless mountains only to thump innocuously into the soft brown mud. The craters large as busses filled slowly with tepid water, only to sprout months later with new life. Reeds as thick as broom handles and rangy wind-bent grasses all skirted the static water. In these little ‘manmade' pockets of wildlife coots nested on tiny floating islands and dragonflies hovered reflecting metallic greens and blues in the opaque water. Once or twice at dusk I even spotted terrapins bobbing gently like dark green apples under the gloomy surface.

The earth was a rich golden brown and the valley was blanketed green and yellow by banana plantations and lines of dull green avocado trees. There were fresh water springs which bubbled clear and blue and that ran like veins lazily curling across the patchwork of fields. Here and there the streams met and pooled, swirling in deep dark blots like eyes studying the tumbled-down remains of ancient sandstone buildings.
In the early mornings the sun rose sluggishly from behind the snow-capped Golan Heights, and in the evening it fell swiftly into the listless Mediterranean Sea. It was a fertile landscape in every sense of the word, not least because of the succulent fruit it provided, but also because it held securely in its generous palm this community rich in culture and diverse in origin, the wandering Jews, the Diaspora. The people who tilled and planted the earth did so because they were driven, because the land bound them as walls bind a prisoner. It was their sweat and their breath that gave life to the valley and their history which bound them to each other. It was a good place to be.

The single dusty track that swung gently up the incline from the main road met, at its summit, the high steel fence. The fence ran for a gleaming mile surrounding and ensnaring the community, its posts driven firmly into the stony ground and its rim topped angrily with razor wire. The fence both protected but simultaneously managed to create a feeling of siege among its occupants. There were pine trees, gangling and ungainly, leaning lazily into the slope. Their cones spread out like litter at the base of their rutted trunks and amongst them the members' housing was scattered like popcorn. There was grass too, wide watered lawns criss-crossed by rough concrete paths and dotted with freshly turned rose beds.
The paths all seem to converge like wheel spokes toward the dining room, which was at meal times as cavernous and busy as a train station. It was the hub of kibbutz life, where the workers grumbled over their morning coffee before taking the wagons and trailers down into the dew-covered valley. Where the dark-haired school kids copied out homework and ate their soft-boiled eggs, eggs that had been inside a chicken only the evening before, and that now dripped orange streaks down clean white T-shirts.

Kettles gleamed along one side, simmering and agitated, whilst fresh vegetables were set out in wide steel trays ready for the next meal. Deep, welcoming tubs of Schnitzel and couscous, fish and boiled new potatoes, artichoke hearts in olive oil and vats of buttermilk were all tended to fastidiously by women dressed neatly in dark blue dungarees. From the dining room one could sit and watch the ocean through the narrow windows which ran along one side. A thin strip of bright blue light against the grey-blue horizon. Often when I think back to my life here this is where I am at three in the morning. Alone in the dining room. Alone in the marbled darkness and leaning back on a hard wooden chair. I'm drinking sweet black tea and although it is night I can still make out the ocean because the moon is out and full and the water is fat and still.

I am in the dining room now, its lunchtime and I have just come in from the fields. Motti the banana boss has driven us up in the trailer, the bone-shaker all the way from the far side of the Jezreel valley. The room is a beehive, awash with noise. The banter of relieved hungry workers, the chink of cheap cutlery on cheap china. The chuckle of cool water being poured from glass jugs into white handle-less cups.
You can tell who works in the bananas by the stains on their clothes. The thin sticky sap that runs from the wounds in the fleshy trunks leaves deep brown welts on cloth. No amount of washing can remove it and anyway it is our mark, our badge, the banana logo. Tom and Eddie are already seated spooning down chicken and potato hungrily. Steffi is over at the urns making tea, tall and shapely. Her shorts are far too small and I can't help but gaze at the back of her pale dimpled thighs.
"I know what you're doing," Tom says with a wry smile.
Eddie looks up guiltily from his plate. "What?" A mop of curly blonde hair flops down over his blue eyes. There is a morsel of food lodged in the corner of his mouth.
"Not you, you fool. Blake, he's ogling Steffi again." He looks me in the eye almost apologetically. "You know you've not a hope. She's a tease. I've heard she scours the laundry room for clothes two sizes too small just to tantalise us all with those long legs." He smirks and glances over again as if to reaffirm his observation.

"Well she can tantalise all she likes as far as I'm concerned," I mutter and sit myself down opposite them. "Sometimes it's better to travel than to arrive, isn't that what they say?"
"Don't know what you all see in her myself," says Eddie, "I mean she's pretty and all but too precious for my liking." Tom and I exchange careful glances as she makes her way toward the table. He moves over to let her in. Smiling guiltily, Tom asks how her morning has been.
"Oh not too bad you know. Those damn chickens are a nightmare. I'm mean literally, I dreamt about them last night. I was choking on feathers."
"Don't tell me, when you woke up you'd eaten your pillow." Eddie, amused with his own wit, bangs his fist on the table.
"No," says Steffi looking confused. "I woke up crying, I think it's my asthma." Her eyes look moist, red rimmed. "Sometimes I just want to go home." She curls her hair delicately behind one ear. It's a habit that she has and one that Tom and I agree is a rather ‘knowing' one. It is nevertheless an attractive, somewhat delicate movement and it makes me feel protective of her.
"Never mind eh, it's Shabbat," I say soothingly, "nothing that a few cold beers won't fix."
"I suppose," she smiles at me and takes a sip of her tea. I feel something like butterflies inside; it's not that I want her or anything but something about her makes me feel, well, tender. Maybe it's because of the night she slept in the spare bed in our room. I woke early with the birds as the cold morning air was pouring down through my open window. When I glanced across the room her thin duvet had fallen onto the tiled floor. Tom was still sleeping but I lay there for an hour caressing her naked goose-bumped curves with my eyes. Do I feel guilty? I suppose I do but although she doesn't know it I think we bonded then. I smile to myself at the thought of it and stir my tea.
Steffi is talking to me but I'm no longer listening "Blake?" she says gently…
"Sorry, I was just thinking about… about those damn pigeons." I was always a good liar. She nods approvingly as she tears a piece of bread in two and dips a piece into her chicken soup.

"What about Carl's dog, Blackie? He'd go crazy if it were poisoned." I say, warming to the theme.
"He'd probably shoot someone," she says, looking nervous. "Didn't he do that before?"
"I think he took a pot shot at some guy who cut him up at the lights once. Blew a couple of his tyres out. Well that's what I heard from Motti anyway."
Eddie, oblivious to the conversation, lights up a Noblesse, the cheapest of the Israeli cigarettes. We are allowed seven free packs a week as part of our allowance. He stands the soft green pack on its end and stares at it, elbows resting firmly on the plastic table. From a distance you would be forgiven for thinking that he had varicose veins, but close up as I am now you can see that his arms are covered in tattoos. The outline of the Pink Panther is sketched poorly on the inside of his thick white forearm. He has spent time in Maidstone prison and the letters HMP grace three of the red knuckles on each hand. At one time, he borrowed a friend's tattooing needle and most of his body now resembles my old school rough book, covered in a mixture of adolescent doodles and obscure graffiti. The cigarettes smell cheap and he smokes every last millimetre, taking the last drag deep into his lungs then stubbing it out into a mound of leftover mashed potato on Tom's plate.
Tom shoves the plate away across to the other side of the table and throws Eddie a withering look.
"You'd finished, hadn't you?" says Eddie defensively. "You're like a bloody old woman sometimes. Here, look, I'll take it away myself."
He stacks his tray hurriedly, untidily, and heads off for the slops bin. We all watch the flakes of mud from his suede boots trace his path across the polished floor.
"Me too, I guess," I say under my breath. "See you all back at the ghetto."

It's December now and although it's not cold, there is a chill in the air as I walk across the kibbutz towards the ghetto. Past the cowsheds and the tumbling stinking piles of rotting pomelos. Past the steaming laundry and the kolbo, the supermarket where we spend our hard earned vouchers on crates of Gold Star beer and cheap shampoo. There are rooks perched like sentries way up in the pine trees. A bird's eye view would certainly afford you a wonderful vision of the whole kibbutz. High above you would clearly see the metal fence that traps this community in a fat bubble on the landscape. The kibbutz is alive. It's a self-sufficient organism, swimming with vivid colours and movement. Right now as I'm walking I'm aware that hundreds of others are still busy at their work. Busy in the fruit fields and the glass factory, in the humid kitchens and the sprawling filthy cowsheds. There are kids playing basketball on the red clay court, their faces streaked with dirt and sweat; and there by the primary school is the swimming pool, green and stagnant during the cool winter months. There is no secondary school. The teenagers have to travel out of the kibbutz for that. It is there they learn about the world outside the fence and where they develop their unsavoury taste for another life. A life in which they can own their own house and wash their car quietly on a Saturday morning. The young yearn to escape from the confines of the kibbutz and dream constantly of leaving the unhealthy dark shadows of their forefathers. But the old, well you can see it in their yellow eyes that they are afraid. Afraid that they will be forgotten, but even more fearful that their history will forgotten with them.

I have reached the volunteer housing known amongst its inhabitants as the ghetto. It is scattered haphazardly across an acre of poor soil and pushed up aggressively against the tough wire meshed fence. And although the view across the valley is a fine one the ghetto feels like it is isolated from the rest of the kibbutz. Which I suppose it is and is meant to be. We are the outsiders, the untouchables, cheap labour that can be called upon in times of desperation and disposed of during the lean months. We are a transient population, the European Bedouin, and like them we appear and disappear bouncing from kibbutz to kibbutz and from job to monotonous job.
The huts in the ghetto, with their grey corrugated asbestos roofs, lie in a broad rectangle around an enclosed ramshackle plot. Clumps of dry grasses and untamed straggling bushes have invaded most of the space. There is, however, a small circle in the middle which has been lovingly cleared, and in which a fire still smoulders. A gentle reminder of the previous night when Tom, fuelled with alcohol, launched into the fire a bucket of blue paraffin. We were all rocked backwards by the flame burst and had, after a shocked pause, laughed hysterically. Only the week before he had disappeared for an hour and returned triumphantly, dragging a telegraph pole behind him. The damn thing burned for four straight days.
Outside each hut is a concrete veranda invariably strewn with muddy work boots and empty beer bottles. From one porch hangs a whole five-foot bunch of ripe bananas, and from another washing is strung out to dry along a sagging piece of orange twine. Inside, the rooms are basic. A cold tiled floor, a hand basin against one bare wall, and against another a cheap plywood wardrobe.
We live by easy rules in the ghetto. Under the corrugated gutter-less roofing and between the damp plaster walls we whisper and shout, dream of Marmite and of home. In winter we curse the draughts but nurse the yellow flame that warms our hands with the same delight, the same intensity. And when the walls of our room grow green with mould we stare at the glowing bars drying our damp socks, our faces chiselled in the shifting flickering shadows like Van Gogh's ‘Potato Eaters'. I always loved that picture.

Now I feel like an old hand in my kibbutz-issue ankle boots and torn blue work top. Making my way into the bare room I kick off my boots, fling my dirty shirt into the corner and lay myself prostrate on the low creaking bed. There is nothing like the deep sleep of a siesta.

In the late afternoon I wander down to the Refet, the cowsheds, plastic jug in hand and pour myself a few pints of cool creamy milk from the huge stainless steel cauldron. Uri, the dairy boss, raises an arm when he sees me and ambles over. He is wearing his trademark yellow Wellingtons. We chat about this and that over the pulsating drone of the milking machines. He has a son my age at university in Jerusalem, a daughter in high school. He worries about them both; there has been a spate of bombings recently on busses and in shopping malls. He often talks of leaving the country for Europe but as he always says, palms raised toward the heavens, "This is my homeland, where else would I go?"
Then, behind him I notice the pigeons, scattered over the roofs and the muddy grassless fields. They are eating the cattle feed, an unappetising mixture of pomelo rind and chicken shit. Out in one of the fields is the woman in the beige dungarees. She looks even heavier than I remember. She is cajoling the cattle, coaxing them aggressively into the aluminium corral with a large wooden stick. Glancing up at me as she enters the shed, her face remains expressionless, cold. Connecting up the cows to the machine, her movements seem graceless. I've seen Uri do it a hundred times and with the polished ease of a gymnast, but there is something awkward about her and I start to wonder then if the poisoning was her idea.

Now Christmas had crept up on us slowly and tapped our shoulders gently. The volunteer huts are festooned in gaudy decoration and on Christmas Eve we drive the minibus into Jerusalem. We all sing White Christmas at the top of our voices and Tom leans out of the small window shouting felicitations gleefully at passers by. The city is beautiful, glistening with the headlights of the evening traffic. It is as vibrant and as warming as a rum punch.

On we drive, along the narrow roads and through the golden sandstone gorges of the old city. The huge wooden gates to the city are open wide and people flow through them like melted butter, running softly, easily down the busy streets. Outside the city the street lights begin to disappear and the land falls away steeply on one side of the road. Yellow buildings give way to green coniferous forest and the air outside drops in temperature. It is dark in the bus and we talk excitedly about Christmas and home and family.
Bethlehem, when we arrive, is alive and thronging with hundreds of people and Manger Square is bedecked with cheap wooden tables and chairs. There are lights strung up overhead in brilliant gleaming rows whilst the church of the nativity looks graciously over the whole festive scene. We are all swept along willingly with the tide of religious fervour. Although none of us is a practising Christian it feels churlish to deny anything tonight, so we become believers for the evening and drink cheap red wine and sing carols with the mass of happy revellers. Later we even queue for an hour to get our passports stamped with Joyeux No'l and the crest of a black eagle. Then we dance late into the night holding hands with friends and strangers alike. I'm dancing with Steffi, whilst Tom dances with the new Danish girl Hanni. She arrived last week and is still fresh and pink from home. He winks at me. Eddie sits alone smoking black tobacco and drinking warm beer. Although Steffi and I don't talk I can feel our hands silently exchanging heat in the cool night. Later on as we walk down the hill she says "It's been a great evening, hasn't it?" She has eyes like a calf, large and curious and they kind of draw you in helplessly. I nod silently just as Tom starts to sing drunkenly in front of us at the top of his voice. I laugh and say to Steffi that it has indeed been a wonderful night. We stop, facing each other, and I touch her on the cheek with the back of my cold fingers. There is something between us but I don't think either of us really knows what it is. Her breath smells of cigarettes and wine.

We all drink hot sweet tea in an Arab café halfway down the hill, the owner insisting that Tom and I play backgammon with him. We teach him the backgammon chant that we yell as we throw the dice back in the ghetto, "Big doubles!" When he has mastered the chant and has soundly beaten both of us, he rips up the bill laughing loudly through his thick black moustache. As we walk out into the dawn the morning breeze is just beginning to kick up the yellow dust. It flicks it over the shop fronts and parked cars like icing sugar. At the bottom of the long hill, where the main road runs by like some dark river, there is a small park. It is surrounded by a high fence and fronted with a wide arched gate. It is locked; Tom rattles it angrily then starts to climb. The rest of the group, oblivious, walk on to meet up with the bus. I quickly follow Tom and in seconds we are both stood knee high in the thorny rose bushes, laughing. Wading to the centre of the garden, we find a patch of dry grass and sit down. I can hear the faint chatter of the group still walking slowly away towards the rising sun, crimson on the horizon. Its light is seeping between the branches of the eucalyptus trees and I can smell the perfumed leaves on the cool air. Hanging pendulously above us is a beautiful rose, its flowers dark red and just tantalisingly half open. Tom says that we should take one each for the girls and before I can reply he has leapt ferociously on the plant. I join him, twisting the wiry stems till the tight buds are released and our fingers are raw and stained green. We clamber gecko-like back over the thick iron railings and catch up with the group. I pass my rose to Steffi and Tom hands his to Hanni, chuckling as we realise that they are crawling with green fly. They take the flowers gratefully, gracefully, like athletes at a medal ceremony. Steffi smiles at me and climbs quietly, wearily onto the bus.

It's Christmas day and without lifting my head from the pillow I can see the weak shaft of light that has cut its way through the crack in my door and into my room. In it are a million flecks of dust sparkling like bubbles in champagne, rising in the thermals and bursting in the hushed darkness. I am still half asleep, aware of my breathing although separate from its hissing rise and fall. Across the room I can see my work clothes heaped and blue on the back of the wooden chair. I won't need them today. Eyes closed and lead-heavy, feet exposed at the end of the short bunk, I curl into a ball cupping my hands between my warm legs. It makes me feel safe.

Tom wakes later and we wish each other a happy Christmas. Sitting up in bed we look like an old married couple as we eat dried apricots wrapped around warm blocks of milk chocolate.
We spend the day in Jerusalem. First visiting the Garden of Gethsemane then walking the Stations of the Cross ending up in the beautiful church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tom has a fit of giggles when the silence and solemnity of the place gets too much for him. We have to leave the church quickly for fear of being accosted by one of the priests.
It is a beautiful day outside. The skies are clear and blue and it's a day which I never forget.

During the next few weeks there is a perceptible change of atmosphere on the kibbutz. Down in the bananas, Motti has taken to drinking his morning coffee alone and the friendly banter amongst the crew has subsided a little. There is talk in the papers of a Palestinian uprising and the road blocks and recent police presence around Naharia all seem to confirm the stories. Last week I watched a small group of elderly women clearing out one of the air-raid shelters. They had laid out the dusty gas masks on the grass in small bundles and were struggling into the shelter with large plastic packs of bottled water.
There is a rumour going round that there are no gas masks for volunteers but when I ask Motti if this is true, he laughs so loud that even Egal grins softly. It is the first time I have seen Motti smile since last week when I complained about the freezing dew on the banana leaves. "Blake my friend, I never promised you a rose garden, eh?" Then he had slapped me on the back and turned back toward the tractor, cigarette in hand.

Then it happens; later that month, after a frugal supper of vegetables and cottage cheese, I go to bed early only to be woken hours later. It is black, moonless. So dark in fact, that I'm unable to see my hand in front of my face. I'm aware however that something has woken me, aware that there is someone else in the room. I can feel a presence, a band of heat that one would expect from the bar of an electric fire. Then without warning there is a silent explosion of light, as intense and as blinding as a flash bulb. The mesh mosquito netting at the window scatters the white light across the walls of the room; it's chequered like graph paper. As my eyes adjust I can make out a figure. Steffi is standing in the centre of the room. She is barefoot, frozen on the cold tiles. All the while I'm expecting the light to suddenly vanish so I find myself studying the room, memorising the location of all objects in readiness to be plunged back into vulnerable blindness. It doesn't happen. Instead the light begins to shift slowly and the shadows start to move around the room. I'm still waking, disorientated, confused, and then there is a cold hand on my shoulder and an earnest voice, "Blake, wake up, there's fighting down in the valley."

Almost immediately I hear a soft "phut phut phut" from across the valley. The sound of a moped misfiring. I know what it is immediately: gunfire. Outside in the ghetto others are appearing from their doorways; Tom has moved gingerly out onto the road to get a better view. More gunfire now; it's rapid, getting louder as I clamber shakily onto the wooden pallets stacked up against my hut. From the roof I can see clearly into the valley below. The scene is incredible. High in the night sky is a star so brilliant that it has lit up the countryside as far as the eye can see. The light is hanging, perhaps falling slowly: a flare? It is so beautifully white that it has drained the landscape of any colour. The view is monochromatic, a moonscape, and the light is so powerful that it has penetrated into every crevice, every hollow in the countryside. There is shouting but it's too far away to be intelligible. Leaning over the edge of the thin roof I reach down and pull up Steffi who is still struggling vainly on the pallets. We sit down now and watch the scene together. The action is some miles away and we are in no immediate danger, but it nonetheless feels exciting. It reminds me of a black and white photograph I once saw in a school history book about the American Civil War. It showed a family perched on a grassy hillside picnicking, whilst below in the valley a bloody battle raged between the forces of the North and South. At the time something about it profoundly shocked me. And there is no doubt that there is something shocking, but at the same time slightly titillating about this scene, the uncomfortable mixture of danger and security.
The "star" is lower in the sky now and its light, although bright, is waning just slightly, but the voices seem to be louder, more intense. I wonder if she is thinking the same thing. This "star", radiant, alluring in the night sky over towards Bethlehem. It feels as if there is two thousand years of history spread out there in front of us.
Then, because it feels like a film and for no other reason, I lean forward and kiss the nape of her neck. It is perfumed and warm. For a split second I feel like a child again, driven by the same impulse that makes one reach out for the electric fence on a country ramble, just to see. She responds by rolling back gently into my arms and for a minute we sit in silence as the flare dips softly into the trees on the far side of the valley and then there is darkness.

The incident makes all the morning papers. A Palestinian attack on an Israeli home in Naharia. They came in from the Lebanon by boat and have left a family devastated, a boy motherless, a husband alone with his grief. By the evening there is the inevitable retaliation. The Israeli army have bulldozed a row of whitewashed homes down one dusty street in Gaza. Helicopter gun ships have taken out the car of a Hamas leader. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye… God knows who they killed; God knows if they cared, it's just a mess. There is no right and wrong anymore it seems, just an exponential anger.
Strangely, however, what stays in my mind even more clearly about that winter is my visit weeks later to Steffi's old room. She has since departed, returned to Denmark and the nursing career she always talked of. Behind her bed and above her thin pillow, pinned to the wall, is the rose I gave her that night in Bethlehem. It is dried and dark, like some Chinese herbal remedy, and something about it makes me feel empty.

It's raining. I can hear it rattling on the roof like tin tacks. Outside on the veranda I lace my work boots and kick the stanchion, loosening the dried mud from their treads. There is a low cold mist and the rainwater is beginning to run down the walls of the hut, collecting in puddles and running rivulets over the dusty earth. I'm leaving in a week so I'm trying to savour these moments. I breathe in deeply and the air smells of vegetation.
Eddie left last month, disappeared one night taking with him the wallets of several volunteers, a camera, and Tom's twelve-string guitar. I don't think anyone was surprised and something about it even amuses me. I wonder if I'll ever see him again? But Tom is staying on, he's found a nice Jewish girl and it all looks hunky-dory. I'll miss them both.
Sometimes in my quieter moments I find myself wishing I could stay here, wishing I belonged. I'm jealous; the Jews have an identity, they belong and they are something and I, I kind of feel a little lost sometimes, a little aimless. But I know it's not easy, only last week the Palestinians attacked again, blew up a night club in Tel Aviv. The kids' phones were ringing as they cleared up the bodies. Jesus Christ, I've queued outside those clubs.

I climb the cold stone steps, hands deep in my coat pockets. There is a pigeon lying in the road in front of me; one of its wings is still twitching but I think it's dead. I flick it with the toe of my muddy boot and watch it settle in the long wet grass. I can hear the hollow rattle of the diesel engine in the distance, and as I stand and wait for the wagon to take me down to the valley I think about the poison. There is so much of it in this small country I wonder how it will ever survive.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Brothers Grimm

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

There was a king who had twelve beautiful daughters. They slept in twelve beds all in one room and when they went to bed, the doors were shut and locked up. However, every morning their shoes were found to be quite worn through as if they had been danced in all night. Nobody could find out how it happened, or where the princesses had been.
So the king made it known to all the land that if any person could discover the secret and find out where it was that the princesses danced in the night, he would have the one he liked best to take as his wife, and would be king after his death. But whoever tried and did not succeed, after three days and nights, they would be put to death.
A king's son soon came. He was well entertained, and in the evening was taken to the chamber next to the one where the princesses lay in their twelve beds. There he was to sit and watch where they went to dance; and, in order that nothing could happen without him hearing it, the door of his chamber was left open. But the king's son soon fell asleep; and when he awoke in the morning he found that the princesses had all been dancing, for the soles of their shoes were full of holes.
The same thing happened the second and third night and so the king ordered his head to be cut off.
After him came several others; but they all had the same luck, and all lost their lives in the same way.
Now it happened that an old soldier, who had been wounded in battle and could fight no longer, passed through the country where this king reigned, and as he was travelling through a wood, he met an old woman, who asked him where he was going.
'I hardly know where I am going, or what I had better do,' said the soldier; 'but I think I would like to find out where it is that the princesses dance, and then in time I might be a king.'
'Well,' said the old woman, 'that is not a very hard task: only take care not to drink any of the wine which one of the princesses will bring to you in the evening; and as soon as she leaves you pretend to be fast asleep.'

Then she gave him a cloak, and said, 'As soon as you put that on you will become invisible, and you will then be able to follow the princesses wherever they go.' When the soldier heard all this good advice, he was determined to try his luck, so he went to the king, and said he was willing to undertake the task.
He was as well received as the others had been, and the king ordered fine royal robes to be given him; and when the evening came he was led to the outer chamber.
Just as he was going to lie down, the eldest of the princesses brought him a cup of wine; but the soldier threw it all away secretly, taking care not to drink a drop. Then he laid himself down on his bed, and in a little while began to snore very loudly as if he was fast asleep.
When the twelve princesses heard this they laughed heartily; and the eldest said, 'This fellow too might have done a wiser thing than lose his life in this way!' Then they rose and opened their drawers and boxes, and took out all their fine clothes, and dressed themselves at the mirror, and skipped about as if they were eager to begin dancing.
But the youngest said, 'I don't know why it is, but while you are so happy I feel very uneasy; I am sure some mischance will befall us.'
'You simpleton,' said the eldest, 'you are always afraid; have you forgotten how many kings' sons have already watched in vain? And as for this soldier, even if I had not given him his sleeping draught, he would have slept soundly enough.'
When they were all ready, they went and looked at the soldier; but he snored on, and did not stir hand or foot: so they thought they were quite safe.
Then the eldest went up to her own bed and clapped her hands, and the bed sank into the floor and a trap-door flew open. The soldier saw them going down through the trap-door one after another, the eldest leading the way; and thinking he had no time to lose, he jumped up, put on the cloak which the old woman had given him, and followed them.
However, in the middle of the stairs he trod on the gown of the youngest princess, and she cried out to her sisters, 'All is not right; someone took hold of my gown.'

'You silly creature!' said the eldest, 'it is nothing but a nail in the wall.'
Down they all went, and at the bottom they found themselves in a most delightful grove of trees; and the leaves were all of silver, and glittered and sparkled beautifully. The soldier wished to take away some token of the place; so he broke off a little branch, and there came a loud noise from the tree. Then the youngest daughter said again, 'I am sure all is not right -- did not you hear that noise? That never happened before.'
But the eldest said, 'It is only our princes, who are shouting for joy at our approach.'
They came to another grove of trees, where all the leaves were of gold; and afterwards to a third, where the leaves were all glittering diamonds. And the soldier broke a branch from each; and every time there was a loud noise, which made the youngest sister tremble with fear. But the eldest still said it was only the princes, who were crying for joy.
They went on till they came to a great lake; and at the side of the lake there lay twelve little boats with twelve handsome princes in them, who seemed to be waiting there for the princesses.
One of the princesses went into each boat, and the soldier stepped into the same boat as the youngest. As they were rowing over the lake, the prince who was in the boat with the youngest princess and the soldier said, 'I do not know why it is, but though I am rowing with all my might we do not get on so fast as usual, and I am quite tired: the boat seems very heavy today.'
'It is only the heat of the weather,' said the princess, 'I am very warm, too.'
On the other side of the lake stood a fine, illuminated castle from which came the merry music of horns and trumpets. There they all landed, and went into the castle, and each prince danced with his princess; and the soldier, who was still invisible, danced with them too. When any of the princesses had a cup of wine set by her, he drank it all up, so that when she put the cup to her mouth it was empty. At this, too, the youngest sister was terribly frightened, but the eldest always silenced her.

They danced on till three o'clock in the morning, and then all their shoes were worn out, so that they were obliged to leave. The princes rowed them back again over the lake (but this time the soldier placed himself in the boat with the eldest princess); and on the opposite shore they took leave of each other, the princesses promising to come again the next night.
When they came to the stairs, the soldier ran on before the princesses, and laid himself down. And as the twelve, tired sisters slowly came up, they heard him snoring in his bed and they said, 'Now all is quite safe'. Then they undressed themselves, put away their fine clothes, pulled off their shoes, and went to bed.
In the morning the soldier said nothing about what had happened, but determined to see more of this strange adventure, and went again on the second and third nights. Everything happened just as before: the princesses danced till their shoes were worn to pieces, and then returned home. On the third night the soldier carried away one of the golden cups as a token of where he had been.
As soon as the time came when he was to declare the secret, he was taken before the king with the three branches and the golden cup; and the twelve princesses stood listening behind the door to hear what he would say.
The king asked him. 'Where do my twelve daughters dance at night?'
The soldier answered, 'With twelve princes in a castle underground.' And then he told the king all that had happened, and showed him the three branches and the golden cup which he had brought with him.
The king called for the princesses, and asked them whether what the soldier said was true and when they saw that they were discovered, and that it was of no use to deny what had happened, they confessed it all.
So the king asked the soldier which of the princesses he would choose for his wife; and he answered, 'I am not very young, so I will have the eldest.' -- and they were married that very day, and the soldier was chosen to be the king's heir.

Kerfol

Edith Wharton

Kerfol

"You ought to buy it," said my host; "it's just the place for a solitary-minded devil like you. And it would be rather worth while to own the most romantic house in Brittany. The present people are dead broke, and it's going for a song -- you ought to buy it."
It was not with the least idea of living up to the character my friend Lanrivain ascribed to me (as a matter of fact, under my unsociable exterior I have always had secret yearnings for domesticity) that I took his hint one autumn afternoon and went to Kerfol. My friend was motoring over to Quimper on business: he dropped me on the way, at a cross-road on a heath, and said: "First turn to the right and second to the left. Then straight ahead till you see an avenue. If you meet any peasants, don't ask your way. They don't understand French, and they would pretend they did and mix you up. I'll be back for you here by sunset -- and don't forget the tombs in the chapel."
I followed Lanrivain's directions with the hesitation occasioned by the usual difficulty of remembering whether he had said the first turn to the right and second to the left, or the contrary. If I had met a peasant I should certainly have asked, and probably been sent astray; but I had the desert landscape to myself, and so stumbled on the right turn and walked on across the heath till I came to an avenue. It was so unlike any other avenue I have ever seen that I instantly knew it must be THE avenue. The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel through which the autumn light fell faintly. I know most trees by name, but I haven't to this day been able to decide what those trees were. They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for half a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an avenue that unmistakeably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it.

Presently the trees ended and I came to a fortified gate in a long wall. Between me and the wall was an open space of grass, with other grey avenues radiating from it. Behind the wall were tall slate roofs mossed with silver, a chapel belfry, the top of a keep. A moat filled with wild shrubs and brambles surrounded the place; the drawbridge had been replaced by a stone arch, and the portcullis by an iron gate. I stood for a long time on the hither side of the moat, gazing about me, and letting the influence of the place sink in. I said to myself: "If I wait long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs --" and I rather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon.
I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me. It may have been the depth of the silence that made me so conscious of my gesture. The squeak of my match sounded as loud as the scraping of a brake, and I almost fancied I heard it fall when I tossed it onto the grass. But there was more than that: a sense of irrelevance, of littleness, of childish bravado, in sitting there puffing my cigarette-smoke into the face of such a past.
I knew nothing of the history of Kerfol -- I was new to Brittany, and Lanrivain had never mentioned the name to me till the day before -- but one couldn't as much as glance at that pile without feeling in it a long accumulation of history. What kind of history I was not prepared to guess: perhaps only the sheer weight of many associated lives and deaths which gives a kind of majesty to all old houses. But the aspect of Kerfol suggested something more -- a perspective of stern and cruel memories stretching away, like its own grey avenues, into a blur of darkness.
Certainly no house had ever more completely and finally broken with the present. As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to the sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. "Tombs in the chapel? The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected. I hoped more and more that the guardian would not come. The details of the place, however striking, would seem trivial compared with its collective impressiveness; and I wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the weight of its silence.

"It's the very place for you!" Lanrivain had said; and I was overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could NOT see -- ?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to SEE more -- I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing -- but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. "But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I thought reluctantly, and hesitated. Finally I crossed the bridge and tried the iron gate. It yielded, and I walked under the tunnel formed by the thickness of the chemin de ronde. At the farther end, a wooden barricade had been laid across the entrance, and beyond it I saw a court enclosed in noble architecture. The main building faced me; and I now discovered that one half was a mere ruined front, with gaping windows through which the wild growths of the moat and the trees of the park were visible. The rest of the house was still in its robust beauty. One end abutted on the round tower, the other on the small traceried chapel, and in an angle of the building stood a graceful well-head adorned with mossy urns. A few roses grew against the walls, and on an upper window-sill I remember noticing a pot of fuchsias.
My sense of the pressure of the invisible began to yield to my architectural interest. The building was so fine that I felt a desire to explore it for its own sake. I looked about the court, wondering in which corner the guardian lodged. Then I pushed open the barrier and went in. As I did so, a little dog barred my way. He was such a remarkably beautiful little dog that for a moment he made me forget the splendid place he was defending. I was not sure of his breed at the time, but have since learned that it was Chinese, and that he was of a rare variety called the "Sleeve-dog." He was very small and golden brown, with large brown eyes and a ruffled throat: he looked rather like a large tawny chrysanthemum. I said to myself: "These little beasts always snap and scream, and somebody will be out in a minute."

The little animal stood before me, forbidding, almost menacing: there was anger in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came no nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed that another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. "There'll be a hubbub now," I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled paws, still watching me. "At a given point, they'll all charge at my ankles: it's one of the dodges that dogs who live together put up on one," I thought. I was not much alarmed, for they were neither large nor formidable. But they let me wander about the court as I pleased, following me at a little distance -- always the same distance -- and always keeping their eyes on me. Presently I looked across at the ruined facade, and saw that in one of its window-frames another dog stood: a large white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much more experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me with a deeper intentness.
"I'll hear from HIM," I said to myself; but he stood in the empty window-frame, against the trees of the park, and continued to watch me without moving. I looked back at him for a time, to see if the sense that he was being watched would not rouse him. Half the width of the court lay between us, and we stared at each other silently across it. But he did not stir, and at last I turned away. Behind me I found the rest of the pack, with a newcomer added: a small black greyhound with pale agate-coloured eyes. He was shivering a little, and his expression was more timid than that of the others. I noticed that he kept a little behind them. And still there was not a sound.
I stood there for fully five minutes, the circle about me -- waiting, as they seemed to be waiting. At last I went up to the little golden-brown dog and stooped to pat him. As I did so, I heard myself laugh. The little dog did not start, or growl, or take his eyes from me -- he simply slipped back about a yard, and then paused and continued to look at me. "Oh, hang it!" I exclaimed aloud, and walked across the court toward the well.

As I advanced, the dogs separated and slid away into different corners of the court. I examined the urns on the well, tried a locked door or two, and up and down the dumb facade; then I faced about toward the chapel. When I turned I perceived that all the dogs had disappeared except the old pointer, who still watched me from the empty window-frame. It was rather a relief to be rid of that cloud of witnesses; and I began to look about me for a way to the back of the house. "Perhaps there'll be somebody in the garden," I thought. I found a way across the moat, scrambled over a wall smothered in brambles, and got into the garden. A few lean hydrangeas and geraniums pined in the flower-beds, and the ancient house looked down on them indifferently. Its garden side was plainer and severer than the other: the long granite front, with its few windows and steep roof, looked like a fortress-prison. I walked around the farther wing, went up some disjointed steps, and entered the deep twilight of a narrow and incredibly old box-walk. The walk was just wide enough for one person to slip through, and its branches met overhead. It was like the ghost of a box-walk, its lustrous green all turning to the shadowy greyness of the avenues. I walked on and on, the branches hitting me in the face and springing back with a dry rattle; and at length I came out on the grassy top of the chemin de ronde. I walked along it to the gate-tower, looking down into the court, which was just below me. Not a human being was in sight; and neither were the dogs. I found a flight of steps in the thickness of the wall and went down them; and when I emerged again into the court, there stood the circle of dogs, the golden- brown one a little ahead of the others, the black greyhound shivering in the rear.
"Oh, hang it -- you uncomfortable beasts, you!" I exclaimed, my voice startling me with a sudden echo. The dogs stood motionless, watching me. I knew by this time that they would not try to prevent my approaching the house, and the knowledge left me free to examine them. I had a feeling that they must be horribly cowed to be so silent and inert. Yet they did not look hungry or ill-treated. Their coats were smooth and they were not thin, except the shivering greyhound. It was more as if they had lived a long time with people who never spoke to them or looked at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange passivity, this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than the misery of starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to rouse them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper; but the longer I looked into their fixed and weary eyes the more preposterous the idea became. With the windows of that house looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing? The dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and what it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was passing through my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But even that feeling probably reached them through a thick fog of listlessness. I had an idea that their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag.

"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb circle, "do you know what you look like, the whole lot of you? You look as if you'd seen a ghost -- that's how you look! I wonder if there IS a ghost here, and nobody but you left for it to appear to?" The dogs continued to gaze at me without moving. . .
It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross- roads -- and I wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense of having escaped from the loneliest place in the whole world, and of not liking loneliness -- to that degree -- as much as I had imagined I should. My friend had brought his solicitor back from Quimper for the night, and seated beside a fat and affable stranger I felt no inclination to talk of Kerfol. . .
But that evening, when Lanrivain and the solicitor were closeted in the study, Madame de Lanrivain began to question me in the drawing-room.
"Well -- are you going to buy Kerfol?" she asked, tilting up her gay chin from her embroidery.
"I haven't decided yet. The fact is, I couldn't get into the house," I said, as if I had simply postponed my decision, and meant to go back for another look.
"You couldn't get in? Why, what happened? The family are mad to sell the place, and the old guardian has orders --"
"Very likely. But the old guardian wasn't there."
"What a pity! He must have gone to market. But his daughter -- ?"
"There was nobody about. At least I saw no one."
"How extraordinary! Literally nobody?"
"Nobody but a lot of dogs -- a whole pack of them -- who seemed to have the place to themselves."
Madame de Lanrivain let the embroidery slip to her knee and folded her hands on it. For several minutes she looked at me thoughtfully.
"A pack of dogs -- you SAW them?"
"Saw them? I saw nothing else!"
"How many?" She dropped her voice a little. "I've always wondered --"
I looked at her with surprise: I had supposed the place to be familiar to her. "Have you never been to Kerfol?" I asked.
"Oh, yes: often. But never on that day."
"What day?"

"I'd quite forgotten -- and so had Herve, I'm sure. If we'd remembered, we never should have sent you today -- but then, after all, one doesn't half believe that sort of thing, does one?"
"What sort of thing?" I asked, involuntarily sinking my voice to the level of hers. Inwardly I was thinking: "I KNEW there was something. . ."
Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile. "Didn't Herve tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of them are rather unpleasant."
"Yes -- but those dogs?" I insisted.
"Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say there's one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The women in Brittany drink dreadfully." She stooped to match a silk; then she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: "Did you REALLY see a lot of dogs? There isn't one at Kerfol," she said.
II

Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back of an upper shelf of his library.
"Yes -- here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the Assizes of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written about a hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account is transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it's queer reading. And there's a Herve de Lanrivain mixed up in it -- not exactly MY style, as you'll see. But then he's only a collateral. Here, take the book up to bed with you. I don't exactly remember the details; but after you've read it I'll bet anything you'll leave your light burning all night!"
I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was detestable. . .

At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But it is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added anything of my own.

III
It was in the year 16 -- that Yves de Cornault, lord of the domain of Kerfol, went to the pardon of Locronan to perform his religious duties. He was a rich and powerful noble, then in his sixty-second year, but hale and sturdy, a great horseman and hunter and a pious man. So all his neighbours attested. In appearance he seems to have been short and broad, with a swarthy face, legs slightly bowed from the saddle, a hanging nose and broad hands with black hairs on them. He had married young and lost his wife and son soon after, and since then had lived alone at Kerfol. Twice a year he went to Morlaix, where he had a handsome house by the river, and spent a week or ten days there; and occasionally he rode to Rennes on business. Witnesses were found to declare that during these absences he led a life different from the one he was known to lead at Kerfol, where he busied himself with his estate, attended mass daily, and found his only amusement in hunting the wild boar and water-fowl. But these rumours are not particularly relevant, and it is certain that among people of his own class in the neighbourhood he passed for a stern and even austere man, observant of his religious obligations, and keeping strictly to himself. There was no talk of any familiarity with the women on his estate, though at that time the nobility were very free with their peasants. Some people said he had never looked at a woman since his wife's death; but such things are hard to prove, and the evidence on this point was not worth much.
Well, in his sixty-second year, Yves de Cornault went to the pardon at Locronan, and saw there a young lady of Douarnenez, who had ridden over pillion behind her father to do her duty to the saint. Her name was Anne de Barrigan, and she came of good old Breton stock, but much less great and powerful than that of Yves de Cornault; and her father had squandered his fortune at cards, and lived almost like a peasant in his little granite manor on the moors. . . I have said I would add nothing of my own to this bald statement of a strange case; but I must interrupt myself here to describe the young lady who rode up to the lych-gate of Locronan at the very moment when the Baron de Cornault was also dismounting there. I take my description from a rather rare thing: a faded drawing in red crayon, sober and truthful enough to be by a late pupil of the Clouets, which hangs in Lanrivain's study, and is said to be a portrait of Anne de Barrigan. It is unsigned and has no mark of identity but the initials A. B., and the date 16 -- , the year after her marriage. It represents a young woman with a small oval face, almost pointed, yet wide enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at the corners. The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which one feels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying close like a cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel probably, with a look at once shy and steady. A pair of beautiful long hands are crossed below the lady's breast. . .

The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when the Baron came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse, ordered another to be instantly saddled, called to a young page come with him, and rode away that same evening to the south. His steward followed the next morning with coffers laden on a pair of pack mules. The following week Yves de Cornault rode back to Kerfol, sent for his vassals and tenants, and told them he was to be married at All Saints to Anne de Barrigan of Douarnenez. And on All Saints' Day the marriage took place.
As to the next few years, the evidence on both sides seems to show that they passed happily for the couple. No one was found to say that Yves de Cornault had been unkind to his wife, and it was plain to all that he was content with his bargain. Indeed, it was admitted by the chaplain and other witnesses for the prosecution that the young lady had a softening influence on her husband, and that he became less exacting with his tenants, less harsh to peasants and dependents, and less subject to the fits of gloomy silence which had darkened his widow-hood. As to his wife, the only grievance her champions could call up in her behalf was that Kerfol was a lonely place, and that when her husband was away on business at Rennes or Morlaix -- whither she was never taken -- she was not allowed so much as to walk in the park unaccompanied. But no one asserted that she was unhappy, though one servant-woman said she had surprised her crying, and had heard her say that she was a woman accursed to have no child, and nothing in life to call her own. But that was a natural enough feeling in a wife attached to her husband; and certainly it must have been a great grief to Yves de Cornault that she gave him no son. Yet he never made her feel her childlessness as a reproach -- she herself admits this in her evidence -- but seemed to try to make her forget it by showering gifts and favours on her. Rich though he was, he had never been open-handed; but nothing was too fine for his wife, in the way of silks or gems or linen, or whatever else she fancied. Every wandering merchant was welcome at Kerfol, and when the master was called away he never came back without bringing his wife a handsome present -- something curious and particular -- from Morlaix or Rennes or Quimper. One of the waiting-women gave, in cross-examination, an interesting list of one year's gifts, which I copy. From Morlaix, a carved ivory junk, with Chinamen at the oars, that a strange sailor had brought back as a votive offering for Notre Dame de la Clarte, above Ploumanac'h; from Quimper, an embroidered gown, worked by the nuns of the Assumption; from Rennes, a silver rose that opened and showed an amber Virgin with a crown of garnets; from Morlaix, again, a length of Damascus velvet shot with gold, bought of a Jew from Syria; and for Michaelmas that same year, from Rennes, a necklet or bracelet of round stones -- emeralds and pearls and rubies -- strung like beads on a gold wire. This was the present that pleased the lady best, the woman said. Later on, as it happened, it was produced at the trial, and appears to have struck the Judges and the public as a curious and valuable jewel.

The very same winter, the Baron absented himself again, this time as far as Bordeaux, and on his return he brought his wife something even odder and prettier than the bracelet. It was a winter evening when he rode up to Kerfol and, walking into the hall, found her sitting listlessly by the fire, her chin on her hand, looking into the fire. He carried a velvet box in his hand and, setting it down on the hearth, lifted the lid and let out a little golden-brown dog.
Anne de Cornault exclaimed with pleasure as the little creature bounded toward her. "Oh, it looks like a bird or a butterfly!" she cried as she picked it up; and the dog put its paws on her shoulders and looked at her with eyes "like a Christian's." After that she would never have it out of her sight, and petted and talked to it as if it had been a child -- as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know. Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen it from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do, since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to hellfire. Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for they were beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knew he had got hold of a good thing; but Anne's pleasure was so great that, to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would doubtless have given twice the sum.
So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain sailing; but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as nearly as possible to Anne's own statements; though toward the end, poor thing . . .
Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was brought to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at the head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife's rooms to a door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave the alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror -- for his blood was all over her -- that at first the roused household could not make out what she was saying, and thought she had gone suddenly mad. But there, sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, and head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the steps below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face and throat, as if with a dull weapon; and one of his legs had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his death. But how did he come there, and who had murdered him?

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was immediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from her room she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; then it was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she was dressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in. Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and the key in the lock; and it was noticed by the chaplain (an observant man) that the dress she wore was stained with blood about the knees, and that there were traces of small blood-stained hands low down on the staircase walls, so that it was conjectured that she had really been at the postern-door when her husband fell and, feeling her way up to him in the darkness on her hands and knees, had been stained by his blood dripping down on her. Of course it was argued on the other side that the blood-marks on her dress might have been caused by her kneeling down by her husband when she rushed out of her room; but there was the open door below, and the fact that the fingermarks in the staircase all pointed upward.
The accused held to her statement for the first two days, in spite of its improbability; but on the third day word was brought to her that Herve de Lanrivain, a young nobleman of the neighbourhood, had been arrested for complicity in the crime. Two or three witnesses thereupon came forward to say that it was known throughout the country that Lanrivain had formerly been on good terms with the lady of Cornault; but that he had been absent from Brittany for over a year, and people had ceased to associate their names. The witnesses who made this statement were not of a very reputable sort. One was an old herb-gatherer suspected of witch-craft, another a drunken clerk from a neighbouring parish, the third a half-witted shepherd who could be made to say anything; and it was clear that the prosecution was not satisfied with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb- gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was brought into court, she "appeared weak and wandering," and after being encouraged to collect herself and speak the truth, on her honour and the wounds of her Blessed Redeemer, she confessed that she had in fact gone down the stairs to speak with Herve de Lanrivain (who denied everything), and had been surprised there by the sound of her husband's fall. That was better; and the prosecution rubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction increased when various dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say -- with apparent sincerity -- that during the year or two preceding his death their master had once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits of brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before his second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going well at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been any signs of open disagreement between husband and wife.

Anne de Cornault, when questioned as to her reason for going down at night to open the door to Herve de Lanrivain, made an answer which must have sent a smile around the court. She said it was because she was lonely and wanted to talk with the young man. Was this the only reason? she was asked; and replied: "Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships' heads." "But why at midnight?" the court asked. "Because I could see him in no other way." I can see the exchange of glances across the ermine collars under the Crucifix.
Anne de Cornault, further questioned, said that her married life had been extremely lonely: "desolate" was the word she used. It was true that her husband seldom spoke harshly to her; but there were days when he did not speak at all. It was true that he had never struck or threatened her; but he kept her like a prisoner at Kerfol, and when he rode away to Morlaix or Quimper or Rennes he set so close a watch on her that she could not pick a flower in the garden without having a waiting-woman at her heels. "I am no Queen, to need such honours," she once said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure does not leave the key in the lock when he goes out. "Then take me with you," she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and young wives better off at their own firesides.
"But what did you want to say to Herve de Lanrivain?" the court asked; and she answered: "To ask him to take me away."
"Ah -- you confess that you went down to him with adulterous thoughts?"
"No."
"Then why did you want him to take you away?"
"Because I was afraid for my life."
"Of whom were you afraid?"
"Of my husband."
"Why were you afraid of your husband?"
"Because he had strangled my little dog."
Another smile must have passed around the court-room: in days when any nobleman had a right to hang his peasants -- and most of them exercised it -- pinching a pet animal's wind-pipe was nothing to make a fuss about.
At this point one of the Judges, who appears to have had a certain sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed to explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the following statement.

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband had not been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have been unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much.
It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her, brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make up for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the little brown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Her husband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave her leave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and to keep it always with her.
One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her feet, as his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back. Suddenly she was waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly.
"You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in the chapel with her feet on a little dog," he said.
The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered: "Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with my dog at my feet."
"Oho -- we'll wait and see," he said, laughing also, but with his black brows close together. "The dog is the emblem of fidelity."
"And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?"
"When I'm in doubt I find out," he answered. "I am an old man," he added, "and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you shall have your monument if you earn it."
"And I swear to be faithful," she returned, "if only for the sake of having my little dog at my feet."
Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. She was a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves de Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe no one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the first time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice to Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen words with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it was under the chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the chapel. He said: "I pity you," and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that any one thought her an object of pity. He added: "Call for me when you need me," and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and thought often of the meeting.

She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more. How or where she would not say -- one had the impression that she feared to implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at the last he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreign country, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him for many months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had none to give him but the collar about the little dog's neck. She was sorry afterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she had not had the courage to refuse.
Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days later he picked up the little dog to pet it, and noticed that its collar was missing. His wife told him that the dog had lost it in the undergrowth of the park, and that she and her maids had hunted a whole day for it. It was true, she explained to the court, that she had made the maids search for the necklet -- they all believed the dog had lost it in the park. . .
Her husband made no comment, and that evening at supper he was in his usual mood, between good and bad: you could never tell which. He talked a good deal, describing what he had seen and done at Rennes; but now and then he stopped and looked hard at her; and when she went to bed she found her little dog strangled on her pillow. The little thing was dead, but still warm; she stooped to lift it, and her distress turned to horror when she discovered that it had been strangled by twisting twice round its throat the necklet she had given to Lanrivain.
The next morning at dawn she buried the dog in the garden, and hid the necklet in her breast. She said nothing to her husband, then or later, and he said nothing to her; but that day he had a peasant hanged for stealing a faggot in the park, and the next day he nearly beat to death a young horse he was breaking.
Winter set in, and the short days passed, and the long nights, one by one; and she heard nothing of Herve de Lanrivain. It might be that her husband had killed him; or merely that he had been robbed of the necklet. Day after day by the hearth among the spinning maids, night after night alone on her bed, she wondered and trembled. Sometimes at table her husband looked across at her and smiled; and then she felt sure that Lanrivain was dead. She dared not try to get news of him, for she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea that he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the castle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held back. The winter was long and black and rainy. One day, in Yves de Cornault's absence, some gypsies came to Kerfol with a troop of performing dogs. Anne bought the smallest and cleverest, a white dog with a feathery coat and one blue and one brown eye. It seemed to have been ill-treated by the gypsies, and clung to her plaintively when she took it from them. That evening her husband came back, and when she went to bed she found the dog strangled on her pillow.

After that she said to herself that she would never have another dog; but one bitter cold evening a poor lean greyhound was found whining at the castle-gate, and she took him in and forbade the maids to speak of him to her husband. She hid him in a room that no one went to, smuggled food to him from her own plate, made him a warm bed to lie on and petted him like a child.
Yves de Cornault came home, and the next day she found the greyhound strangled on her pillow. She wept in secret, but said nothing, and resolved that even if she met a dog dying of hunger she would never bring him into the castle; but one day she found a young sheep-dog, a brindled puppy with good blue eyes, lying with a broken leg in the snow of the park. Yves de Cornault was at Rennes, and she brought the dog in, warmed and fed it, tied up its leg and hid it in the castle till her husband's return. The day before, she gave it to a peasant woman who lived a long way off, and paid her handsomely to care for it and say nothing; but that night she heard a whining and scratching at her door, and when she opened it the lame puppy, drenched and shivering, jumped up on her with little sobbing barks. She hid him in her bed, and the next morning was about to have him taken back to the peasant woman when she heard her husband ride into the court. She shut the dog in a chest and went down to receive him. An hour or two later, when she returned to her room, the puppy lay strangled on her pillow. . .
After that she dared not make a pet of any other dog; and her loneliness became almost unendurable. Sometimes, when she crossed the court of the castle, and thought no one was looking, she stopped to pat the old pointer at the gate. But one day as she was caressing him her husband came out of the chapel; and the next day the old dog was gone. . .
This curious narrative was not told in one sitting of the court, or received without impatience and incredulous comment. It was plain that the Judges were surprised by its puerility, and that it did not help the accused in the eyes of the public. It was an odd tale, certainly; but what did it prove? That Yves de Cornault disliked dogs, and that his wife, to gratify her own fancy, persistently ignored this dislike. As for pleading this trivial disagreement as an excuse for her relations -- whatever their nature -- with her supposed accomplice, the argument was so absurd that her own lawyer manifestly regretted having let her make use of it, and tried several times to cut short her story. But she went on to the end, with a kind of hypnotized insistence, as though the scenes she evoked were so real to her that she had forgotten where she was and imagined herself to be re-living them.

At length the Judge who had previously shown a certain kindness to her said (leaning forward a little, one may suppose, from his row of dozing colleagues): "Then you would have us believe that you murdered your husband because he would not let you keep a pet dog?"
"I did not murder my husband."
"Who did, then? Herve de Lanrivain?"
"No."
"Who then? Can you tell us?"
"Yes, I can tell you. The dogs --" At that point she was carried out of the court in a swoon.

*
It was evident that her lawyer tried to get her to abandon this line of defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemed convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their first private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamed of it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save his professional reputation. But the obstinate Judge -- who perhaps, after all, was more inquisitive than kindly -- evidently wanted to hear the story out, and she was ordered, the next day, to continue her deposition.
She said that after the disappearance of the old watch-dog nothing particular happened for a month or two. Her husband was much as usual: she did not remember any special incident. But one evening a pedlar woman came to the castle and was selling trinkets to the maids. She had no heart for trinkets, but she stood looking on while the women made their choice. And then, she did not know how, but the pedlar coaxed her into buying for herself an odd pear-shaped pomander with a strong scent in it -- she had once seen something of the kind on a gypsy woman. She had no desire for the pomander, and did not know why she had bought it. The pedlar said that whoever wore it had the power to read the future; but she did not really believe that, or care much either. However, she bought the thing and took it up to her room, where she sat turning it about in her hand. Then the strange scent attracted her and she began to wonder what kind of spice was in the box. She opened it and found a grey bean rolled in a strip of paper; and on the paper she saw a sign she knew, and a message from Herve de Lanrivain, saying that he was at home again and would be at the door in the court that night after the moon had set. . .

She burned the paper and then sat down to think. It was nightfall, and her husband was at home. . . She had no way of warning Lanrivain, and there was nothing to do but to wait. . .
At this point I fancy the drowsy courtroom beginning to wake up. Even to the oldest hand on the bench there must have been a certain aesthetic relish in picturing the feelings of a woman on receiving such a message at night-fall from a man living twenty miles away, to whom she had no means of sending a warning. . .
She was not a clever woman, I imagine; and as the first result of her cogitation she appears to have made the mistake of being, that evening, too kind to her husband. She could not ply him with wine, according to the traditional expedient, for though he drank heavily at times he had a strong head; and when he drank beyond its strength it was because he chose to, and not because a woman coaxed him. Not his wife, at any rate -- she was an old story by now. As I read the case, I fancy there was no feeling for her left in him but the hatred occasioned by his supposed dishonour.
At any rate, she tried to call up her old graces; but early in the evening he complained of pains and fever, and left the hall to go up to his room. His servant carried him a cup of hot wine, and brought back word that he was sleeping and not to be disturbed; and an hour later, when Anne lifted the tapestry and listened at his door, she heard his loud regular breathing. She thought it might be a feint, and stayed a long time barefooted in the cold passage, her ear to the crack; but the breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was pitch black. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door -- where she stopped again to listen to his breathing -- to the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herself that no one was following her; then she began to go down the stairs in the darkness. They were so steep and winding that she had to go very slowly, for fear of stumbling. Her one thought was to get the door unbolted, tell Lanrivain to make his escape, and hasten back to her room. She had tried the bolt earlier in the evening, and managed to put a little grease on it; but nevertheless, when she drew it, it gave a squeak . . . not loud, but it made her heart stop; and the next minute, overhead, she heard a noise. . .

"What noise?" the prosecution interposed.
"My husband's voice calling out my name and cursing me."
"What did you hear after that?"
"A terrible scream and a fall."
"Where was Herve de Lanrivain at this time?"
"He was standing outside in the court. I just made him out in the darkness. I told him for God's sake to go, and then I pushed the door shut."
"What did you do next?"
"I stood at the foot of the stairs and listened."
"What did you hear?"
"I heard dogs snarling and panting." (Visible discouragement of the bench, boredom of the public, and exasperation of the lawyer for the defense. Dogs again -- ! But the inquisitive Judge insisted.)
"What dogs?"
She bent her head and spoke so low that she had to be told to repeat her answer: "I don't know."
"How do you mean -- you don't know?"
"I don't know what dogs. . ."
The Judge again intervened: "Try to tell us exactly what happened. How long did you remain at the foot of the stairs?"
"Only a few minutes."
"And what was going on meanwhile overhead?"
"The dogs kept on snarling and panting. Once or twice he cried out. I think he moaned once. Then he was quiet."
"Then what happened?"
"Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown to them -- gulping and lapping."
(There was a groan of disgust and repulsion through the court, and another attempted intervention by the distracted lawyer. But the inquisitive Judge was still inquisitive.)
"And all the while you did not go up?"
"Yes -- I went up then -- to drive them off."
"The dogs?"
"Yes."
"Well -- ?"
"When I got there it was quite dark. I found my husband's flint and steel and struck a spark. I saw him lying there. He was dead."
"And the dogs?"
"The dogs were gone."
"Gone -- where to?"
"I don't know. There was no way out -- and there were no dogs at Kerfol."
She straightened herself to her full height, threw her arms above her head, and fell down on the stone floor with a long scream. There was a moment of confusion in the court-room. Some one on the bench was heard to say: "This is clearly a case for the ecclesiastical authorities" -- and the prisoner's lawyer doubtless jumped at the suggestion.

After this, the trial loses itself in a maze of cross-questioning and squabbling. Every witness who was called corroborated Anne de Cornault's statement that there were no dogs at Kerfol: had been none for several months. The master of the house had taken a dislike to dogs, there was no denying it. But, on the other hand, at the inquest, there had been long and bitter discussion as to the nature of the dead man's wounds. One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked like bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other.
At last Anne de Cornault was brought back into court -- at the instance of the same Judge -- and asked if she knew where the dogs she spoke of could have come from. On the body of her Redeemer she swore that she did not. Then the Judge put his final question: "If the dogs you think you heard had been known to you, do you think you would have recognized them by their barking?"
"Yes."
"Did you recognize them?"
"Yes."
"What dogs do you take them to have been?"
"My dead dogs," she said in a whisper. . . She was taken out of court, not to reappear there again. There was some kind of ecclesiastical investigation, and the end of the business was that the Judges disagreed with each other, and with the ecclesiastical committee, and that Anne de Cornault was finally handed over to the keeping of her husband's family, who shut her up in the keep of Kerfol, where she is said to have died many years later, a harmless madwoman.
So ends her story. As for that of Herve de Lanrivain, I had only to apply to his collateral descendant for its subsequent details. The evidence against the young man being insufficient, and his family influence in the duchy considerable, he was set free, and left soon afterward for Paris. He was probably in no mood for a worldly life, and he appears to have come almost immediately under the influence of the famous M. Arnauld d'Andilly and the gentlemen of Port Royal. A year or two later he was received into their Order, and without achieving any particular distinction he followed its good and evil fortunes till his death some twenty years later. Lanrivain showed me a portrait of him by a pupil of Philippe de Champaigne: sad eyes, an impulsive mouth and a narrow brow. Poor Herve de Lanrivain: it was a grey ending. Yet as I looked at his stiff and sallow effigy, in the dark dress of the Jansenists, I almost found myself envying his fate. After all, in the course of his life two great things had happened to him: he had loved romantically, and he must have talked with Pascal. . .