That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen—Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne—and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the...
When I pulled Teresa’s postcard from the mailbox it was three in the afternoon. I didn’t read it at first, just glanced at it quickly as I stepped into the house, the card still clutched in...
Katherine Farquhar was a handsome woman of forty, no longer slim, but attractive in her soft, full, feminine way. The French porters ran round her, getting a voluptuous pleasure from merely carrying her bags. And she...
“Sonya, how could you? How can you wear those short dresses covered with pea-green dots?” “Sonya, have you said your prayers?” “Sonya, how can you listen to those fascists?” “Sonya, have you read Sholem Aleichem?”...
Sunshine crept into the room, forming a white frame around the short dark curtain that barely covered the window. The glow around the darkened window reminded him of Malevich’s black square. He sighed. Vera would have...
David stared at Mimi’s picture, taken at his bar mitzvah twenty-five years ago. She was his cousin, a second cousin, and she and her family had come out to Milwaukee from Brooklyn for the occasion. He...
It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home...
When I was a little girl my mother had a fungus on one of her toenails. On her left pinkie toe to be exact. From the moment she discovered it she tried everything to get rid...
Almost, almost there, but not quite. Something woke me up. A noise. I’m dripping wet, but I didn’t get there. I’m still half asleep. Nearly, but not quite. The wind is blowing through the coffee groves;...
There often used to be two of us. Three of us. Four, five, or six. I had brothers, sisters, a tarantula. Parents, yes, them too. Plus there was my Uncle Nikolai and the guy from the...
It Would Be Better If Some Continents Had Never Been Discovered. Europe, For Instance, Has Never Been Anything But Trouble.
Michel Decar
Elli wouldn’t let me stop until we’d crossed the line into Utah. She was a nail in the passenger seat—rigid, sharp, her blue eyes darting back and forth between the speedometer and the double yellow lines....
In September everyone’s looking for an apartment. Especially in Jerusalem. Especially students. This is the busy season for Yochanan Dvir, apartment renovator and owner of a few of them himself. Two small apartments which he renovated...
That summer, I’d go there sometimes, and this week, I went again. It was a hot day at the end of summer. A hot wind blew from time to time, stopped suddenly and returned suddenly, full...
Cracks Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It appears you’ll...
Mr. Harlamov was a big man. He was a fearless man too and when he sat himself down at the harmonium (which was a kind of piano played with a foot bellows, or a kind of...
It has to be done, that’s clear, and today’s the day. Anne has an appointment – today, not tomorrow – and she’ll go there, and they’ll suck the embryo out of her. She’s going on her...
Someone, probably the ticket inspector, told him that his was the only suitcase. No one else was going to Alquila today. There’s no way it can get lost. But Hernández insisted on taking it with him....
According to Ashin’s “Essentials of Salvation,” the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In that Land the earth is made of emerald and the...
What you might think just after you’ve said goodbye to him and just before you leave the house: 1. What’s that photo on the wall? 2. Is that her in the photo on the wall? 3....
How quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate. CAVAFY, “Candles” (Tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) “It used to be that wars would thin the herd. Now that there’s peace,...
It was the whole matter of the gifts that made her think back to that night. Whenever they fought and he threw her out of the house, he always made her return the gifts he’d given...
It’s a rough summer morning in Misiones, with all the sun, heat and tranquility that the season can provide. Mother Nature, open to the skies, seems proud of herself. Like the sun, the heat, and the...
The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of...
For half a century the housewives of Pont-l’Eveque had envied Madame Aubain her servant Felicite. For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry,...