The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance

Dreams are among the most belabored of subjects because their mystery is belied by how simple they appear to be.  How often have we remembered a phrase or occurrence in the middle of a rather ordinary day then understood that it was the memory of a dream not of reality?  How often has a dream spoken in truth about feelings and thoughts that we could not reveal in our daily interaction?  Let us forget once and for all the psychobabble that has stunk in rotting heaps for decades only to be recycled and gain in stench: life cannot be reduced to the primitive symbols of the unimaginative and the neurotic.  On the contrary, life is to be enjoyed in the plenitude of its secrets by those fortunate enough to be granted enough of it.  So if you love what magic life may hold, you can imagine what awaits us in death, which brings us to this terrible little tale.

Our narrator has the distinct advantage of anonymity and the even greater advantage of being able to stagger the details of his story in four personal letters.  What the recipient Robert, ostensibly his brother, thinks of these epistles is never revealed.  The subject matter is their Uncle Henry, a Rector in what appears to be Cambridgeshire, where our narrator has decided to head.  Upon arrival, he asks around regarding Uncle Henry's movements then registers the following composition:

The facts are these.  On Friday the 19th, he went as usual shortly before five o'clock to read evening prayers at the Church; and when they were over the clerk brought him a message, in response to which he set off to pay a visit to a sick person at an outlying cottage the better part of two miles away.  He paid the visit, and started on his return journey at about half-past six.  This is the last that is known of him.

And who expected him in that cottage, visited subsequently for the sake of reconnaissance by the narrator?  One man who was "very weak," and a wife and children who "of course, could do nothing themselves."  Uncle Henry seemed normal to these witnesses, wore his bands in glory, and traipsed happily back homewards after his work of consolement was accomplished.  The narrator indicates that he himself ventured out in an attempt to trace his uncle's course, but only during the day, as he "was not in trim for wandering about unknown pastures, especially on an evening when bushes looked like men, and a cow lowing in the distance might have been the last trump."  He interrupts his letter-writing for a visit from the curate with the heartfelt observation that had Uncle Henry appeared on that copse "carrying his head under his arm," he would have been little surprised.

The oddness of Uncle Henry’s last hours cannot be gainsaid, and how odd could they possibly have been?  The narrator enters the King’s Head with the hopes of a detective; he is informed, with no small acrimony, that his Uncle was particularly unkind to the barkeep soon before his disappearance.  On Christmas Day proper, the narrator and the selfsame hosteler take to the greens anew, and after questioning some women and "pointing with his stick, to distant cattle and labourers," the old fellow declares the resources exhausted.  Later that night, the narrator meets a tramp who proves to be equally uninformed.  In the course of conversation, however, the tramp produces this classic puppet set which triggers in our narrator one of the greatest nightmares in literature:

I believe someone once tried to re-write Punch as a serious tragedy; but whoever he may have been, this performance would have suited him exactly.  There was something Satanic about the hero.  He varied his methods of attack: for some of his victims he lay in wait, and to see his horrible face – it was yellowish white, I may remark – peering round the wings made me think of the Vampyre in Fuseli's foul sketch.  To others he was polite and carneying – particularly to the unfortunate alien who can only say Shallabalah – though what Punch said I never could catch.  But with all of them I came to dread the moment of death.  The crack of the stick on their skulls, which in the ordinary way delights me, had here a crushing sound as if the bone was giving way, and the victims quivered and kicked as they lay.  The baby – it sounds more ridiculous as I go on – the baby, I am sure, was alive.  Punch wrung its neck, and if the choke or squeak which it gave were not real, I know nothing of reality. 

The stage got perceptibly darker as each crime was consummated, and at last there was one murder which was done quite in the dark, so that I could see nothing of the victim, and took some time to effect.  It was accompanied by hard breathing and horrid muffled sounds, and after it Punch came and sat on the foot-board and fanned himself and looked at his shoes, which were bloody, and hung his head on one side, and sniggered in so deadly a fashion that I saw some of those beside me cover their faces, and I would gladly have done the same.  But in the meantime the scene behind Punch was clearing, and showed not the usual house front, but something more ambitious – a grove of trees and the gentle slope of a hill, with a very natural – in fact, I should say a real – moon shining on it.  Over this there rose slowly an object which I soon perceived to be a human figure with something peculiar about the head – what, I was unable at first to see.  It did not stand on its feet, but began creeping or dragging itself across the middle distance towards Punch.

The only regret I have about this amazing passage is that it cannot, for space and other reasons, be included in its entirety.  And while the detail about Punch stopping to fan himself after his massacre may rank among most the chilling in this master's works, one should be more worried about the dream's even more disgusting conclusion.  Suspicions grow like copses on those darkest of winter nights that once echoed with Pagan festivals, those nights on which all kinds of hairies and nasties surfaced without the slightest peep of a trump.  Then again, maybe someone simply gave poor Uncle Henry the hairy eyeball.

The Willows

Probably the phrase most commonly associated with this famous story is "primordial terror" – and you will not have to wait long to discover why.  Despite this near-consensus, the story lacks clarity as to the origin of the powers that exist along the uninhabited stretches of this fabled river.  Are we dealing with superstition or the crevices of psychological horrors that so often beset those long without substantial human contact?  What precisely are the intentions of the forces involved?  Why does the narrator's Swedish companion leer at him as if contemplating a decision?  And there are many decisions to be made when mankind's nearest enclave lies two days away.

Our narrator and his Swedish friend embark on one of the more ambitious canoeing itineraries in Europe, only to find themselves somewhere between Vienna and Budapest in "a region of singular loneliness and desolation."  While the adventuresome among us would not hesitate to delight in such a trip, we should also recall the time and place: the turn-of-the-century Hapsburg Empire.  Only two decades later would a controversial tract, based predominantly on late nineteenth-century sources, be published, and theories as to pre-Christian cults would be bandied about by both scholars and dilettantes, providing endless fodder for fantastic fiction and speculative anthropology alike (the tract itself, a dull and subpar work, need not concern us).  I would aver, however, that all these details are quite irrelevant.  The tone of The Willows presupposes a terrestrial evil, ostensibly sylvan in nature, that will haunt every uncolonized patch of the earth until it is safely uprooted or razed – and even that much might not be enough to extinguish it.  We are not dealing so much with witchcraft and its spells as the bestowers of that magic, great beings who seem to lurk, at certain moments of dark and treacherous night, behind the titular plant life:

These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive.

The resemblance to a mass of grovelling worshippers is hardly coincidental, as is the notion of a lack of dignity among these myrmidons.  They are simply following orders, and those orders may or may not contain instructions for securing a sacrifice.  It is a bromide of the modern atheist to reject religion and its deities because they "demand worship," something for which, of course, no greater being would ever bother asking.  Yet this observation is less callous than insipid.  The greatest among us, and here I mean our fellow species, the lords of mammals and all other beasts, will oftentimes bask in the glory of their accomplishments; but just as often do we laud them without their knowledge.  We find gods among our own because we are born to gaze upon the heavens and wonder about their secrets.  Ultimately, only the basest of dictators wish their boots licked and their imprecations regurgitated as law and commandment.  Real gods will gain our following through the simple method of awe.

Which brings us back to our willows.  As our duo progresses they encounter a plethora of omens: an otter, initially thought dead because "it had looked exactly like the body of a drowned man," with gleaming yellow eyes; a man "standing upright in a sort of flat-bottomed boat, steering with a long oar ... at a tremendous pace," who will call out to the strangers then make them the sign of the Cross; and then the telltale traces at their very campsite.  The latter will include perforations in the sand that gain in width and depth as the story advances, as well as an eerie sound that cannot be readily explained.  Our narrator is clearly of the Romantic bent, and for that reason, among others, does he cherish his Nordic partner for his "stolid, practical nature," and for being "not imaginative."  Just consider his horror, then, as his once-impassive friend becomes increasingly brooding and perturbed, even going so far as to talk in conspiratorial whispers and warn the narrator "not to think" as "our thoughts make spirals in their minds."  There is also the matter of an unplaceable noise that is neither birdsong nor heathen paean – but of the two some wicked combination:

The curious sound that I have likened to the note of a gong became now almost incessant, and filled the stillness of the night with a faint, continuous ringing rather than a series of distinct notes.  At one time it was behind and at another time in front of us.  Sometimes I fancied it came from the bushes on our left, and then again from the clumps on our right.  More often it hovered directly overhead like the whirring of wings.  It was really everywhere at once, behind, in front, at our sides and over our heads, completely surrounding us.  The sound really defies description.  But nothing within my knowledge is like that ceaseless muffled humming rising off the deserted world of swamps and willows.

Another author once deemed The Willows "the greatest weird tale ever written," and for good reason.  The atmospheric resonance of the trees and their setting does more than suggest the pagan gods that may still masquerade as our own; the hollow woods, bars of black against black, the wind that seems to be reveling in its own abilities, the encroachment of countless pattering steps – all of this is the vital stuff of nightmares beyond immediate explanation.  We recall anew that most frightening proposition in deadest night: the horror of not knowing what is occurring yet knowing why.  That is the conscience of the guilty, of those who have committed unspeakable acts and sense that their comeuppance may be waiting behind their eyelids.  Which is not to say that our men have done anything wrong except, perhaps, one thing:

We allowed laughingly to one another that we ought by rights to have held some kind of special passport to admit us, and that we had, somewhat audaciously, come without asking leave into a separate little kingdom of wonder and magic – a kingdom that was reserved for the use of others who had a right to it, with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers for those who had the imagination to discover them.

We know that the Swede has "no imagination" – and then we come to know something utterly opposed to that presumption.  Perhaps then either one of the travellers could explain what happened to their second oar.  An oar, one notes, that could be very handy for a ferryman.

Final del juego (part 2)

The conclusion to a story ("End of the game") by this Argentine.  You can read the original here.

Before going to sleep Holanda and I discussed the matter.  It wasn't so much Ariel's note that was bothersome; after all, from a train things look the way they look.  But it seemed that Leticia was exploiting her advantages over us.  She knew that we weren't going to say anything to her.  She also knew that in a home where someone has a physical defect and a lot of pride everyone, beginning with the afflicted, pretends to ignore the shortcoming.  Or rather, the best off are those who pretend that they don't know that the afflicted knows.  And yet much exaggeration had accompanied Leticia to the dinner table, and her willfulness in keeping the paper was simply too much.  That evening my train nightmares recurred, and as dawn spread its rosy fingers I found myself wandering on enormous railroad beaches covered with tracks full of junctions.  From a distance I could make out the red lights of the oncoming locomotives.  I calculated with no small angst what would happen if the train passed to my left, all the while worried about the possible arrival of an express train into my back or – what was even worse – that at the last second one of the trains would be shunted and run me over.  By the morning, however, I had forgotten my adventures since Leticia had woken up very sad and we had to help her get dressed.  She seemed somewhat contrite about what had happened yesterday and we were very good to her, telling her that such things occurred when she walked too much and that perhaps it would be better if she just stayed in her room reading.   She said nothing but came to the table for lunch.  She answered Mom's questions by saying that she was very well and that her back hardly hurt any more.  She said this to her and looked at us.

That afternoon I won, but then God knows what came over me and I told Leticia that I would let her take my place – without, of course, telling her why.  Because he preferred her and never tired of gazing at her.  As the game indicated statue, we selected simple things for her so as not to complicate her life, and she invented a type of Chinese princess filled with shame, her eyes cast down upon the floor and her hands together as was the habit of Chinese princesses.  When the train passed, Holanda lay down on her back below the willows.  But I watched and saw that Ariel only had eyes for Leticia.  He kept looking at her until the train had compassed the curve, and Leticia stayed still not knowing that he was no longer looking at her.  Yet once she came to relax beneath the willows we saw that she did indeed know and that she would have liked to keep the ornaments on the whole afternoon, the whole evening, the whole night.

That Wednesday Holanda and I drew lots since Leticia told us that it was fair for her to step down.  Holanda won with her confounded luck, but Ariel's paper fell on my side.  When I picked it up I had the impulse of giving it to Leticia, who said nothing.  But then I thought that this was not a good time to indulge her, and I opened the letter slowly.  Ariel claimed that the next day he would get off at the neighboring station and come to the embankment to chat for a while.  Everything was horribly written, but the last sentence was beautiful: "My best regards to the three statues."  His signature resembled a doodle although his personality shone through.

While we were stripping Holanda of her ornaments, Leticia looked at me once or twice.  I had already read them the message and no one had commented, which was kind of annoying since Ariel was finally coming and one had to ponder this novelty and make a decision.  If anyone in the house found out or if by sheer misfortune one of the Lozas, those envious dwarves, were to spy on us, there was going to be a brouhaha of the first order.  Moreover, it was very strange for us to remain quiet about such a matter and almost ignore one another while we gathered the ornaments and made for the white door.

Aunt Ruth asked Holanda and me to wash José as Leticia had to undergo treatment, so at long last we were able to let off some steam quietly.  It seemed wonderful that Ariel was going to come; we had never had such a friend.  We couldn't count our cousin Tito, a crybaby who assembled figurines and believed in the first communion.  We were nervous in expectation and it showed in our care of José, poor angel.  I didn't know what to think; on the one hand, it seemed awful that Ariel had become privy to the game, although it was also fair that such matters would be clarified since no one needed to be harmed because of someone else.  What I would have wanted was not to have Leticia suffer.  She bore a large enough cross as it was with her new treatment and all those other things.

That night Mom was puzzled to find us so quiet.  She said it was a miracle and asked whether mice hadn't eaten our tongues; then she looked at Aunt Ruth and both of them certainly thought that we had been up to no good and were now silent out of remorse.  Leticia ate very little, said she was in pain, and asked that she be allowed to go to her room and read Rocambole.  Holanda held out her arm although she really didn't want to do so, whereas I began to scheme – which is what I do when I'm nervous.  On two separate occasions I entertained the notion of going to see Leticia in her room, and no one told me what the two of were doing in there by themselves.  But then Holanda returned with an air of great importance and remained at my side without saying so much as a word until Mom and Aunt Ruth had cleared the table.  "She won't be going tomorrow.  She wrote a letter and said that if he asks too many questions, we should give it to him."  In the half-open pocket of her blouse she flashed a purple envelope.  We then were asked to dry the dishes and that night, from all the emotions and the fatigue incurred from bathing José, we fell asleep almost immediately.     

The next day it was my turn to do some shopping at the market.  I didn't see Leticia, who had remained in her room that whole morning.  Before we were called for lunch, I went in for a moment and found her beside the window with a pile of pillows and the new volume of Rocambole.  One could see she was not well; yet she began to laugh and told me about a funny dream that she had had and a bee that couldn't find its way out.  I told her it was a pity she wasn't coming to the willows, but it seemed so difficult to tell her that properly.  "If you want," I offered her, "we can tell Ariel that you've got the runs."  But she said no and then fell silent.  I insisted a bit more that she should come and in the end I mustered the courage to tell her that she should have no fear whatsoever.  As an example, I mentioned that real love knew no boundaries as well as other lovely ideas we had culled from El Tesoro de la Juventud, yet each time it became more difficult to tell her anything because she kept looking out the window as if she were about to burst into tears.  In the end I found myself saying what Mom had asked me to say.  Lunch seemed to take days, and Holanda got a slap from Aunt Ruth for splashing the table cloth with tomato sauce.  I don't remember how we dried the dishes because suddenly we were by our willows embracing one another full of happiness and without the slightest trace of jealousy.  Holanda told me everything we had to say about our studies to make a good impression on Ariel since high school boys looked down upon girls who hadn't finished anything more than elementary school and were only studying dressmaking and embossing.  When the 2:08 came by, Ariel stuck out his arms enthusiastically and we welcomed him waving our patterned handkerchiefs.  Some twenty minutes later we saw him arrive on the embankment; he was taller than we expected and all in gray. 

I don't remember much of what we talked about initially; he was quite shy despite his visit and papers, and said things that were terribly overwrought.  Almost right away he praised our statues and postures, asked us our names, and then asked why number three was not present.  Holanda told him that she hadn't been able to come, and he said what a pity and that Leticia struck him as such a pretty name.  He told us some stories about his high school, which unfortunately was not an English school, then wanted to know whether we would show him our ornaments.  Holanda lifted up the stone and we had him take a look at our things.  They seemed to interest him greatly, and more than once he grabbed one of the ornaments and said, "Leticia wore this one time," or "This was for the oriental statue," by which he meant the Chinese princess.  We sat down in the shade of a willow and he was happy if distracted; it was clear that he was sticking around only out of politeness.  Holanda shot me two or three looks when conversation waned, which was so very hard for both of us, making us want to leave or wish that Ariel had never come at all.  He asked again whether Leticia was ill and Holanda looked at me so that I thought that she was about to tell him – but then she answered that Leticia had not been able to come.  With a twig Ariel drew some geometric figures in the ground, and now and then looked at the white door.  We knew what he was thinking, and for that reason Holanda did well in producing the purple envelope and handing it to him.  He was surprised to have the thing placed in his hand, and then turned quite red when we told him that it was from Leticia.  He placed the letter in the inner pocket of his jacket, apparently not wishing to read it in front of us, then almost immediately he said that it had been a pleasure to come by and meet us.  His hand was soft and repulsive to such a degree that it seemed good that the visit was over even though afterwards we did little else but think of his big grey eyes and his sad way of smiling.  We also remember how he told us goodbye – "See you always," a form we had never heard before at home and which seemed both divine and poetic.  We told Leticia everything; she had been waiting for us beneath the lemon tree by the patio, and I would have liked to ask her what her letter said but then she admitted that she didn't know why she had sealed the envelope before giving it to Holanda.  So I said nothing and we only told her what Ariel looked like and how many times he had asked about her.  Telling her all this was no easy matter because it was, at once, a nice and an unpleasant subject, and we realized that Leticia seemed happy and on the verge of tears at the same time.  Until we ended up telling her what Aunt Ruth had wanted us to say, and then left her watching the wasps around the lemon tree.

When we went to bed that night, Holanda said to me: "You just wait and see: tomorrow the game will be over."  She was wrong – but not by much.  And the next day Leticia gave us the agreed-upon sign while we were still eating dessert.  We trudged off to wash the china, a little annoyed, but this was utter shamelessness on Leticia's part and not acceptable.  She waited for us at the door and we almost died of fright when we arrived at the willows only to see Leticia pull from her pocket Mom's pearl necklace and all her rings, even Aunt Ruth's large one with the rubies.  If those Lozas, those repulsive dwarves, had been spying on us and seen us with all those jewels, Mom would surely have learned about it right away and would have killed us.  But Leticia was not afraid.  She said if anything happened, she would take full responsibility.  "I would like you to leave today to me," she added, without looking at us.  We got out the ornaments, and we suddenly wanted to get along with Leticia, to indulge her every whim and, in our heart of hearts, this caused us a bit of resentment.  Since the game indicated statue, we chose some lovely things that went well with the jewels, a host of royal peacock feathers placed in her hair, a fur that from a distance resembled a silver fox, and a rose-colored veil which she wore like a turban.  We saw that she was thinking – rehearsing the statue but not moving – and when the train appeared on the curve, she stood up on the slope with all her jewels glittering in the sun.  She raised her arms as if she were doing a posture instead of a statue, and with her hands she signalled to the sky as she threw her head back (the only thing she could do, poor child), doubling herself over enough to give us fright.  All of this struck us as marvelous, the most splendid statue she had ever done, and then we saw Ariel looking at her.  He was halfway out the window looking only at her, turning his head, and looking without seeing us until the train whisked him away suddenly.  I still don't know why the two of us ran over at the very same time to brace Leticia, who had her eyes closed and huge teardrops all over her face.  She pushed us away without being upset, but then we helped her hide the jewels in her pocket and she went alone into the house while we gathered up the ornaments into their box for the very last time.  We almost knew what would occur, but nevertheless the next day both of us went over to the willows after Aunt Ruth ordered us to be absolutely quiet so as not to disturb Leticia, who was in pain and wanted to rest.  When the train arrived we saw to no one's surprise that the third window was empty.  And as we laughed out of something between relief and anger, we imagined Ariel riding on the other side of the car, silent in his seat, gazing at the river with his gray eyes.        

Final del juego (part 1)

The first part to a story ("End of the game") by this Argentine.  You can read the original here.

On hot days, having waited for Mom and Aunt Ruth to begin their naps to sneak out the white door, I would go play with Leticia and Holanda on the tracks of the Central Argentine Railroad.  Mom and Aunt Ruth were always tired from washing the china.  Particularly tired were they when Holanda and I would dry the dishes because of all the arguments, all the spoons hitting the floor, all the things said that only we girls understood.  Everything was saturated with the smell of fat, José's miaows, and the darkness of the kitchen, resulting in a woeful fight and the subsequent spillage.  Holanda specialized in making these type of messes.   For example, letting an already-washed glass drop in the container of dirty water, or recalling en passant how in the Lozas' house there were two servants for every task.  I, however, employed other means.  I preferred insinuating to Aunt Ruth that she would chafe her hands if she continued to scrub casseroles instead of concentrating on plates and cups – precisely the things, as it were, that Mom liked to wash.  This was the easy way to provoke a silent struggle for an unimportant item.  

Once we had gorged ourselves on family counsel and lengthy reminiscences, the heroic alternative was to pour boiling water onto the cat's back.  A tall tale, that old chestnut about the scalded cat – unless one took the reference to cold water literally.  José never shied away from hot water and often seemed, the wretched little beast, to offer himself up to a half-cup at a hundred degrees or a little less (much less most likely, since his hair never fell off).  The terrible consequences notwithstanding, in the confusion crowned by Aunt Ruth's splendid B-flat and Mom's race in search of the cane of justice, Holanda and I would disappear into the covered gallery and the empty back rooms where Leticia would be waiting for us, inexplicably reading Ponson du Terrail.        

Mom would normally pursue us for a good stretch.  But the desire to crack our heads open would soon fade and in the end – we had barred the door and begged, with theatrical emotionality, for forgiveness – she got winded and walked away repeating the same phrase:

"You'll end up on the street, you unfortunate lice."

Where we ended up were the tracks of the Central Argentine Railroad.  With the house in silence and the cat leaning under the lemon tree in preparation for his perfumed and wasp-ridden nap, we would slowly open the white door.  Closing the door behind us felt like the wind, like a freedom that slipped from our hands and entire bodies and hastened us forward.  Then we ran impulsively, using our momentum to climb the railroad slope.  And once we reached the top of the world we would contemplate our kingdom in silence.

Our kingdom was as such: a great curve in the tracks ending just before the back of our house.  Nothing more than ballast and crossties and the two tracks.  Sparse and rather stupid-looking blades jutted out from between the cobblestones where the crystals, the quartz and the feldspar – the components of granite – shone like genuine diamonds against the two o'clock sun.  When we would squat down to touch the tracks (without losing a moment, since staying there would have been rather dangerous, less so from oncoming trains than from the possibility of someone from the house spotting us) the heat of the stone would engulf our faces.  Standing against the river's breeze produced a wet sort of warmth on our cheeks and ears.  We liked flexing our legs, down, up, down, entering one now a second zone of heat, admiring the sweat on our faces which had boiled us all into a soup.  And all this time we spoke not a word, gazing at the rear of the tracks or the river on the other side, that slice of river the color of café au lait.

After this initial inspection of the kingdom we would descend the slope and take refuge under the baleful shade of the willows pinned to the fence of our house, onto which opened, as it were, the white door.  This was the capital of the kingdom, the sylvan city, the headquarters of our game.  The first one to start the game was Leticia.  She was the happiest and the most privileged.  Leticia didn't have to dry dishes and could spend the day reading or gluing together figurines.  If she asked, she would be allowed to stay up late in the room exclusively for her with some tasty meat broth and all kinds of other perks.  She had gradually taken advantage of these privileges, and since last summer it was she who had controlled the game – I think in reality she ran the whole kingdom.  In the very least it was she who would go ahead and say things while Holanda and I, something like happy, would accept whatever she said without the slightest protest.  Those long talks with Mom about how we were supposed to behave with Leticia probably contributed to this state of affairs, or perhaps we just loved her enough not to be bothered by her being the boss.  What a shame that in appearance she had nothing of a boss.  She was the shortest of the three of us and she was so thin.  Now Holanda was thin, and I weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds; but Leticia was the thinnest of us all.  To make it worse, her thinness was such that it could even be detected in her neck and ears.  Maybe the hardening of her back made her appear thinner, as if she almost couldn't move her head to both sides like a stiff ironing board, one of those expensive white ones found in homes like the Lozas'.  An ironing board with the narrow end up against the wall.  And she was the one controlling us.

The most profound satisfaction I could ever imagine would be for Mom and Aunt Ruth one day to learn of the game.  And if they did find out, the biggest brouhaha possible would ensue.  Think of it: the B-minor and the fainting spells, the remonstrances of devotion and sacrifice so poorly compensated, the massive accumulation of invocations of the most infamous punishments – all for the purpose of placing the finishing touches on our wicked fates, in other words, our ending up on the street.  This last threat had always left the three of us perplexed because, to us at least, ending up on the street seemed perfectly normal.

First of all, Leticia made us draw lots.  We hid the pieces in our fists, counted until twenty-one, any old thing.  With the count-to-twenty-one system we thought up two or three more girls and included them in the count so as to avoid any traps.  If one them drew twenty-one, we would pull her out of the group and draw lots again until one of us drew the number.  So Holanda and I carried the stone and opened the box of ornaments.  Supposing that Holanda had won, Leticia and I would select the ornaments.  The game had two forms, by statues and postures.  Postures did not require ornaments but did require a lot of expressiveness.  For envy we would show our teeth, wring our hands and manage something akin to a jaundiced air.  For charity the ideal would involve an angelic countenance, the eyes cast towards the heavens and the hands offering something – a rag, a ball, a willow branch – to a poor invisible orphan.  Shame and fear were duck soup; rancor and jealousy, on the other hand, required more extensive preparation.  Ornaments adorned almost all the statues with total freedom of placement.  Now for a statue one had to consider every detail of its attire.  The rules proclaimed that the person chosen could not participate in the selection; the two others would debate the matter and then attach the ornaments as they saw fit; the chosen then had to forge her statue by taking advantage of what had been placed upon her.  And here is where the game became much more complicated and exciting since, at times, there were alliances against the chosen, and the victim found herself garbed in ornaments that did not suit her in the least.  Thus her livelihood depended on her invention of a statue.  In general when the game indicated postures the person chosen came off well, but there were times when the statues were horrible failures.  

Who knows when my story truly began, but matters changed the day the first piece of paper glided down from the train.  Now we clearly didn't put on our postures and statues for ourselves because we would have become disenchanted right away.  Game rules dictated that the person chosen had to place herself on the slope emanating from the shade of the willows and await the 2:08 from Tigre.  The trains went by quite quickly at this height in Palermo so statues or postures could not cause us any embarrassment; we saw, in any case, almost nothing of the people in the windows.  Yet in time we gained more and more practice and came to realize that there were some passengers expecting to see us.  A white-haired gentleman with Carey glasses would stick his head out the window and wave at the statue or posture with a handkerchief; schoolboys on their way home would sit on the running boards yelling things as they went by, although a few more serious lads just stared attentively.  Not that, of course, the statue or posture could see anything at all because of the effort of immobilization.  So the two others beneath the willows would analyze the resultant indifference or smashing success.  

It was a Tuesday when the paper drifted from the second car into our lives.  It landed very close to Holanda, who on that day happened to be slander, then slid on towards me.  The paper was folded many times over and attached to a nut.  In a male and rather ugly hand, it said: "Very pretty statues.  I'm in the second car, third window.  Ariel B."  We thought the note a bit dry considering all the labor necessary to pin it to the nut and throw it out the window, but we were pleased.  We drew lots to see who would keep it and it became mine.  The next day no one wanted to play because we all wanted to see what Ariel B. looked like.  Yet we feared he would misinterpret such an interruption, so we drew lots again and Leticia won.  Holanda and I were very happy: Leticia, poor thing, was an excellent statue.

Her paralysis was not noticeable when she was still.  She was capable of gestures of enormous nobility, and as postures she always chose generosity, piety, sacrifice and renunciation.  As statues she emulated the style of the Venus in the living room that Aunt Ruth called the "Venus de Nile-o."  We selected special ornaments for this statue to make the best possible impression on Ariel.  A piece of green velvet was wrapped around her like a tunic with a crown of willow in her hair, and since we were all in short sleeves, a powerful Greek flavor obtained.  Leticia rehearsed for a while in the shade, and we decided that we would also come out and greet Ariel pleasantly but discreetly.

Leticia was magnificent, not moving a finger once the train arrived.  Since she couldn't turn her head she cast it back, her arms clasping her body as if they weren't there, and apart from the green of the tunic, it was very much like looking at the Venus of the Nile.  In the third window a boy with blond curls and light eyes smiled widely once he saw that Holanda and I were also there to greet him.  The train was gone a second later, but at four-thirty we were still debating whether he was dressed in dark colors, whether he had a red tie on, or whether he was cute or heinous.  That Thursday I did a posture of despondency, to which we received another paper: "I like all three of you a lot. Ariel."  Now he would put his head and one arm out the window as he greeted us with a smile.  We estimated he was eighteen (certain that he was actually no more than sixteen) and decided that he was coming back every day from an English school.  The surest thing about it was the English school; we couldn't accept just any old affiliation.  And Ariel seemed to us to be very good indeed.

Holanda then happened to have the incredible luck of winning three days in a row.  She outdid herself with the postures of disappointment and theft, as well as with the immensely difficult "dancer" statue standing on one leg just as the train entered the curve.  The other day it was I who won, and then I won again.  When I was doing the posture of horror, one of Ariel's papers fairly hit me in the nose.  Admittedly, at first, we didn't quite understand: "The most lovely is the most idle."  Leticia was the last of us to grasp the meaning, and we saw how she blushed and went off by herself to the side while Holanda and I exchanged looks of resentment and frustration.  The first notion that occurred to us was that Ariel was a fool, but we couldn't very well say that to Leticia, poor little angel, given her sensitivity and the cross that she bore already.  She, for her part, said nothing at all.  Yet she seemed to understand that the paper was for her and so she kept it.  That day we returned home in silence and didn't play together that night.  At the table Leticia was cheerful and gay, her eyes sparkled, and Mom even looked over once or twice to Aunt Ruth as if summoning her as a witness to her own happiness.  Those were the days of a new experimental treatment to make Leticia stronger, and it appeared to be working wonders.             

The Priory School

Readers looking for continuity in works featuring serialized characters are often unaware of the amendments (and resulting inconsistencies) that the authors themselves tend to make as the personalities of their creations grow and change.  I remember reading as a child, for example, that there was much acrimony when a comic book artist switched the eye color of a certain super hero from dark brown to bright blue.  Although it was unclear whether the change was made out of ignorance or preference, such tweaks turned out to be far cries from what has subsequently become known at retconning.  If you are not familiar with this term, worry not — it is still in the embryonic stages of its dissemination.  Yet you could define it yourself by thinking about any type of serialized fiction: it is the art of changing past events or facts to induce retroactive continuity.  As you might imagine its most prolific use would be in soap operas or the comic book world, where heroes die and come back to life at alarming rates.  Still, even in more serious literature, retconning allows the author to make up for some indiscretions at the genesis of an idea.  We all know that hindsight is twenty–twenty; but time does often lend itself to less capricious characterizations, especially if the characters end up accompanying their creators through the long walk of life. 

I have mentioned Conan Doyle’s two near–fatal mistakes with his prized sleuth, errata that would have changed the course of Holmesian history (if anyone cares about such matters, as I am suggesting they should).  The first involved Holmes’s love life, which after a brief attempt at generating crossover romance readership, Conan Doyle smartly eliminated; the second, of course, was much more severe and involved the tardy resurrection of Holmes, who had never really died after all but gone traveling in, among other places, these parts.  The masses surely rejoiced when Conan Doyle brought Holmes back to Baker street, although a small slew of detractors insisted that the new Holmes was not quite the same one who left.  And how exactly could he be?  Conan Doyle himself had gone through quite a few changes in his life in the intervening decade (1893–1902, although in the Holmesian chronology, the absence is from 1891—1894), and the Holmes who returns for this magnificent novella is older, wiser, a little less sprightly and a little more considerate of his brethren.  Some of his more insolent, almost prankster qualities are toned down and replaced with a literary irony that belies the observations made by Watson (and we know what to think at times of the good doctor’s observations) in this other novella, Holmes’s first–ever appearance.  Over time, Holmes becomes less of a forensic freak and more of a Renaissance man, which makes much more sense given his innate ability to deduce plausible conclusions from some of the most obscure details.  Yet connoisseurs know that the detective has a few magisterial interests, one of which happens to be the various types of bicycle tire tracks, and his monograph on the subject covers forty–two different impressions.  A rather handy bit of knowledge considering the plot developments of this story.

The son of the Duke of Holdernesse is reported missing, last seen, in fact, traipsing across the Lower Gill Moor with a rather presciently named German teacher called Heidegger.  Actually, this is the assumed course of events.  No one ever saw the departure of Heidegger and the boy — ten years of age and somewhat alone at the prestigious school in the shadow of his father’s massive estate — but both are missing as is the teacher’s bicycle.  Upon the request of the school’s principal but ultimately on the behalf of the Duke himself, Holmes and Watson set off for Northern England.  They talk with the Duke, who rejects the notion that the boy’s mother, his estranged wife living in Southern France, may have had anything to do with the abduction.  The Duke’s secretary James Wilder has other ideas, however, and lets them be known surreptitiously.  

Slowly but suspensefully, details come to light, including the boy’s hat in the possession of gypsies (who were also conveniently included in this story previously reviewed) and the much more grisly mud–laden fate of poor Heidegger.  As in Silver Blaze, our four–legged friends have some role in assisting the investigation, owing in no small part to the fact that, unlike human beings, their actions and reactions can be predicted with much greater accuracy.  Any aberration in their behavior, like a guard dog who doesn’t bark right when he is supposed to be guarding and barking, is more than a tip–off, it is often the key to whole solution.  As one of the finest Holmes adventures, The Priory School benefits from the misty surroundings and murky dealings that make both Victorian London and the gorgeous moors and countryside of England the prototypical settings for the uncanny.  Finally, the new and improved Holmes does something almost completely out of character at the end of this story.  Maybe this is now in character for Holmes, whose values may have been altered by his wanderings, or maybe he’s just making an exception.  A human exception, in any case.