vanished. Maybe lions don’t roar in the winter, she thought. They’re sitting there somewhere in one of those windowless buildings that maintain the proper temperature. Maybe all the animals are quiet in winter if they live in cages. Her thoughts grew vague. They lingered for a moment on the Japanese giant spider crab that lives so far down on the bottom of the sea that its ten legs aren’t bothered by the waves, and then she drifted into sleep.
She was awakened by Mr Shimomura touching her hand. It was time to go. She was very cold. They walked down the hill and past the pavilion. She didn’t look at the cages and didn’t try to say anything in English. After all, he had his wolf. One day, God knew in what remarkable place, Mr Shimomura would sit down and, with a few obvious, long-considered lines, he would draw a wolf, brutally, sensitively, the most living, breathing wolf that had ever been drawn.
The little motor launch was there to receive them. The driver said nothing.
The only thing I’d like to know, she thought, is which wolf he’ll draw. The one he saw or the one he imagines.
The Rain
T HREE MOTORBOATS RUSHED across the water, their bows abreast. The sun shone and the boats they met waved and assumed they were having a race.
In the middle boat, the broadest of the three, an old woman lay on a litter. The litter was made of an old red deckchair stretched out full length and supported with oars. It was narrow enough to carry through a door.
She lay with her head turned away. Her hair was very white and she seemed suddenly and surprisingly small.
The boats maintained the same speed all the way to the bus pier, where they slowed and beached at the well-trampled landing where the cars and boats of the summer people came and went and where everything was proceeding normally until the ambulance arrived. Then everyone put down their bags and baggage and thought, Dear Lord, right in the midst of vacation, and they took a grip on their children to keep them from running over to look. An old woman in a sunhat bent over and tried to look into the unfamiliar, averted face.She wasn’t being nosy, she just recognised the situation and said to herself, Poor soul.
In the general store they tried to figure out what might be needed in the ambulance and bought Vichy water, candy, and tissues.
It was hot in the ambulance. The driver knew his stuff. “Do you have any nitro?” he asked. Apparently the people who drive ambulances have to know a lot; maybe they get special training. The attendant who sat beside her just sat there, quiet and serious. He was very young and looked as if really, by natural right, he should have been somewhere else entirely. The road twisted and turned its way through the parched landscape. Once, perhaps, it had been a path, threading its way among houses and boulders and small fields. Then it grew broader, and no one stopped to think that it widened and hardened into a motor road precisely because it had always avoided obstacles.
It was a hot day and there was a thunderstorm that night. The hospital was long and low and a corridor ran through it from one end to the other. It was the darkest time of the night, but no lights were needed now in summer. All the doors stood open, and the people who lived inside them were quiet. Maybe they slept and maybe they listened to the thunder.
It was a beautiful thunderstorm. The architect who built the hospital had included a large balcony at one end of the corridor. From it, one could see the solemn garden with its asphalt paths, black with rain. A few nighttime cars drove past at long intervals. The wholelandscape was filled with the storm’s cold, greenish light, the trees unmoving, like painted scenery in a long and lonely stage perspective. The thunderstorm sailed over the garden, its lightning bolts white and chilly blue, losing themselves in the summer night.
The hospital was near the coast and now, just before dawn, the gulls were screaming
She was awakened by Mr Shimomura touching her hand. It was time to go. She was very cold. They walked down the hill and past the pavilion. She didn’t look at the cages and didn’t try to say anything in English. After all, he had his wolf. One day, God knew in what remarkable place, Mr Shimomura would sit down and, with a few obvious, long-considered lines, he would draw a wolf, brutally, sensitively, the most living, breathing wolf that had ever been drawn.
The little motor launch was there to receive them. The driver said nothing.
The only thing I’d like to know, she thought, is which wolf he’ll draw. The one he saw or the one he imagines.
The Rain
T HREE MOTORBOATS RUSHED across the water, their bows abreast. The sun shone and the boats they met waved and assumed they were having a race.
In the middle boat, the broadest of the three, an old woman lay on a litter. The litter was made of an old red deckchair stretched out full length and supported with oars. It was narrow enough to carry through a door.
She lay with her head turned away. Her hair was very white and she seemed suddenly and surprisingly small.
The boats maintained the same speed all the way to the bus pier, where they slowed and beached at the well-trampled landing where the cars and boats of the summer people came and went and where everything was proceeding normally until the ambulance arrived. Then everyone put down their bags and baggage and thought, Dear Lord, right in the midst of vacation, and they took a grip on their children to keep them from running over to look. An old woman in a sunhat bent over and tried to look into the unfamiliar, averted face.She wasn’t being nosy, she just recognised the situation and said to herself, Poor soul.
In the general store they tried to figure out what might be needed in the ambulance and bought Vichy water, candy, and tissues.
It was hot in the ambulance. The driver knew his stuff. “Do you have any nitro?” he asked. Apparently the people who drive ambulances have to know a lot; maybe they get special training. The attendant who sat beside her just sat there, quiet and serious. He was very young and looked as if really, by natural right, he should have been somewhere else entirely. The road twisted and turned its way through the parched landscape. Once, perhaps, it had been a path, threading its way among houses and boulders and small fields. Then it grew broader, and no one stopped to think that it widened and hardened into a motor road precisely because it had always avoided obstacles.
It was a hot day and there was a thunderstorm that night. The hospital was long and low and a corridor ran through it from one end to the other. It was the darkest time of the night, but no lights were needed now in summer. All the doors stood open, and the people who lived inside them were quiet. Maybe they slept and maybe they listened to the thunder.
It was a beautiful thunderstorm. The architect who built the hospital had included a large balcony at one end of the corridor. From it, one could see the solemn garden with its asphalt paths, black with rain. A few nighttime cars drove past at long intervals. The wholelandscape was filled with the storm’s cold, greenish light, the trees unmoving, like painted scenery in a long and lonely stage perspective. The thunderstorm sailed over the garden, its lightning bolts white and chilly blue, losing themselves in the summer night.
The hospital was near the coast and now, just before dawn, the gulls were screaming
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