I
WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.
She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."
"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"
"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But, Miss Emily--"
"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."
II
So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.
That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man then--going in and out with a market basket.
"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.
"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "
"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."
The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.
"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. .."
"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.
III
SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.
The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -
without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.
And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."
She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.
"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.
"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"
"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."
The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"
"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"
"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"
"I want arsenic."
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."
IV
So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.
So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time since--was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro
He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
V
THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men --some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
-END-
The Bet
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life. "I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"
"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the same object - to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."
Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said:
"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."
A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:
"It's not true! I'll bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."
"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years."
"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two million!"
"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man. And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said:
"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two million is a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison. I am sorry for you."
And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two million? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money ..."
Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the young man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He might have anything he wanted - books, music, wine, and so on - in any quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through the window. The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there exactly fifteen years, beginning from twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the obligation to pay him the two million.
شب پاییزی تاریکی بود. بانکدار پیر، آرام آرام داشت مطالعه می کرد و در ذهن خود میهمانی ای را بیاد می آورد که پاییز پانزده سال پیش ترتیب داده بود. آدمهای باهوشی در آن میهمانی حضور داشتند و مکالمه ای بسیار جالب توجه پیش آمده بود. در خلال سایر مسایل، در مورد مجازات اعدام صحبت کردند. مهمانان، که میانشان روزنامه نگار و تحصیل کرده کم نبود، از نقش بسیار ناپسند اعدام، گفتگو کردند و آن را یکی از ابزارهای کهنه و غیراخلاقی مجازات شمردند. برخی از آنان این تفکر را داشتند که شایسته است که مجازات حبس ابد بطور جهانی جایگزین مجازات اعدام شود.
میزبان گفت: من با شما موافق نیستم. بنده شخصاً، نه اعدام را تجربه کرده ام و نه حبس ابد را. اما، اگر قرار برقضاوت باشد، به نظر من اعدام بسیار اخلاقی تر و انسانی تر از حبس ابد است. اعدام بلافاصله می کشد و حبس ابد به تدریج. چه کسی جلاد دل رحم تری است؛ آن که طی چند ثانیه شما را می کشد یا آنکه زندگی تان را برای سال ها مداومت می دهد؟ یکی از مهمانان متذکر شد: هردو به طور مساوی غیر اخلاقی هستند چرا که هدف هردو یکی است؛ گرفتن حیات. دولت، خدا نیست. دولت این حق را ندارد چیزی را بگیرد که نمی تواند برگرداند؛ چیزی که خیلی مطلوب است.
در میان جمع، وکیل جوانی بود حدوداً بیست ساله. وقتی نظر او را خواستند، گفت: اعدام و حبس ابد، هردو غیراخلاقی اند. اما اگر پیشنهاد انتخاب یکی از میان آن دو را به من می دادند، بطور قطع، دومی را انتخاب می کردم. کمی بیشتر زنده بودن بهتر است از اصلاً زنده نبودن. بحث پویایی ادامه پیدا کرد. بانکدار، که جوان تر و عصبی تر به نظر می رسید، ناگاه کنترل خود را از دست داد؛ مشتش را روی میز کوبید و درحالیکه به طرف وکیل جوان می چرخید فریاد زد: دروغ است! سر دو میلیون با تو شرط می بندم که حتی پنج سال هم نخواهی توانست در یک سلول دوام بیاوری. وکیل پاسخ داد: اگر در سخنت جدی هستی پس من... نه تنها پنج سال که پانزده سال خواهم ماند. بانکدار فریاد کشید: پانزده سال؟! بمان! و ادامه داد: آقایان... سر دو میلیون شرط می بندم! وکیل گفت: موافقم، تو سر دو میلیون خود شرط بندی کن و من سر آزادی ام!
بدین ترتیب، شرط بندی دیوانه وار و مضحکی تصویب شد و بانکدار، که در آن زمان پول زیادی برای شمردن داشت، حظ می کرد. در طول صرف شام، با لحن مطایبه آمیزی رو به وکیل گفت: به هوش بیا مرد جوان... پیش از آنکه خیلی دیر شود. دو میلیون برای من هیچ است و تو مقاومت می کنی که سه یا چهار سال از بهترین سالهای عمرت را از دست بدهی. من! سه یا چهار سال می گویم چرا که تو بیش از این هرگز تاب نمی آوری. بیچاره، این را هم فراموش نکن که به خواست خود محبوس شدن بسیار سنگین تر از بالإجبار محبوس شدن است. نظری که بوسیله آن میگویی «هر آن حق رهاندن خود را داری» تمام زندگی ات را مسموم می کند. دلم به حالت می سوزد.
حالا، درحالی که معامله ای را که سرگرفته بود، مرور می کرد از خود پرسید: چرا سر آن موضوع شرط بندی کردم؟ چه حسنی داشت؟ وکیل پانزده سال از زندگی اش را از دست می دهد و من دو میلیون را. آیا این ماجرا، مردم را قانع می کند که حبس ابد بهتر یا بدتر از اعدام است؟ نه، نه! اینها همه چرند است. بخشی از من، در این شرط بندی، مرد هوسباز خوش اشتهایی بود و بخشی از وکیل مردی عاشق محض پول.
بانکدار مجدداً بیاد آورد که بعد از مهمانی عصر چه اتفاقی افتاد. تصمیم گرفته شد که، وکیل، حبس خود را، در بخش جداگانه ای از خانه بانکدار تحت نظارتی سخت تحمل کند. در این شرط بندی، موافقت شد که وکیل در طول دوره حبس خود از خروج از اتاقش برای دیدن اطرافیان، شنیدن صدای آدمها و دریافت نامه یا روزنامه محروم باشد. اجازه داشت تا ساز داشته باشد. کتاب بخواند. نامه نگاری کند. شراب بنوشد و دخانیات مصرف کند. با این توافق نامه، تنها در سکوت، با دنیای بیرون خود، از طریق پنجره ای که مخصوصاً برای این هدف تعبیه شده بود، ارتباط برقرار کند. با فرستادن یک یادداشت از طریق این پنجره می توانست هر چیز ضروری را –کتاب، نوشیدنی، موسیقی- به هر مقدار که می خواست دریافت کند. توافق نامه برای کوچکترین جزئیات ترتیب داده شده بود که طی آن، زندانی را مجبور به تنهایی می کرد و وکیل متعهد بود که دقیقاً پانزده سال از ساعت 12نیمه شب 14 نوامبر 1870 تا 12 نیمه شب 14نوامبر 1885 در محبس بماند. کوچکترین تلاش از طرف وکیل برای نقض شروط و خلاصی پیش از موعد مقرر حتی برای دو دقیقه، بانکدار را از تعهدش برای پرداخت دو میلیون به او خلاص می کرد.
در طول سال نخست، وکیل، تا آنجا که امکان داشت از طریق نوشته های کوچک خود حکم می داد؛ اما به طرز وحشتناکی از تنهایی و ملالت –روزها- رنج می کشید. شب و روز، از مکان او در ساختمان، نوای پیانو به گوش می رسید. شراب و سیگار را نپذیرفت. نوشت: شراب تمایلات را تحریک می کند و تمایلات سر دسته دشمنان یک زندانی اند. هیچ چیز خسته کننده تر از نوشیدن تنها یک شراب خوب نیست. و سیگار، هوای اتاقش را فاسد می کند.
در طول اولین سال، کتابهایی برای وکیل فرستاده شد؛ کتبی سرگرم کننده. رمانهایی با دلبستگی عاشقانه پیچیده، داستانهایی از جنایت و تخیل، کمدی و نظایر اینها.
در سال دوم، آوای پیانو چندان به گوش نرسید و وکیل، تنها موسیقی کلاسیک را تقاضا کرد.
در سال پنجم، نوای موسیقی دوباره شنیده شد و زندانی درخواست شراب کرد. آنهایی که که او را تماشا می کردند، می گفتند که تمام طول سال می خورد و می نوشید و روی تختش دراز می کشید. اغلب خمیازه می شکید و خشمگینانه با خود سخن می گفت. دیگر کتاب نخواند. گاهی اوقات شب ها می نشست و می نوشت. مدتها می نوشت و صبح همه آنها را پاره می کرد. بارها صدای گریه اش را می شنیدند.
در نیمه دوم سال ششم، زندانی مشتاقانه شروع کرد به مطالعه زبانها، فلسفه و تاریخ. او این موضوعات را با اشتهای تمام می خواند تا آنجا که بانکدار برای تهیه آن کتاب ها به سختی زمان پیدا کرده بود. در طول چهار سال، حدود صد جلد کتاب بنابر نیازش به او رسید و زمانی آمد که اشتاقش به اوج خود رسید؛ بانکدار نامه ای با این مضمون از طرف زندانی دریافت کرد: زندانبان عزیزم! مشغول نوشتن این خطوط به شش زبان هستم. آنها را به کارشناسان نشان بده. بگذار تا بخوانند. اگر هیچ اشتباهی در نوشت هام نیافتند از تو خواهش می کنم دستور بدهی تا با تفنگ، تیری در هوا شلیک کنند. با صدای شلیک خواهم فهمید که تلاش من بیهوده نبوده است. نوابغ در هر سنی و اهل هر کشوری به یک زبان صحبت نمی کنند اما در تفکر مشترک هستند. آه! اگر شما می فهمیدید شادی آسمانی ام را آن طور که من قادر به درک آنهایم. خواسته زندانی انجام و دو تیر به دستور بانکدار در باغ شلیک شد. پس از آن و بعد از ده سال، وکیل بی حرکت پشت میزش نشست و تنها انجیل را خواند. برای بانکدار عجیب بود که مردی که طی چهار سال، استاد ششصد جلد کتاب دشوار بود، حال باید نزدیک به یک سال از عمر خود را برای خواندن یک کتاب سپری کند. کتابی قابل فهم و بی هیچ معنی دشواری! نوشته های انجیل جای خود را به تاریخ مذاهب و خداشناسی داد. در طول دو سال پایانی حبس، زندانی به خواندن حجم غیرمعمولی –از کتب- پرداخت بدون هیچ برنامه یا نظمی. حال، او می خواست خود را قربانی علوم طبیعی کند؛ پس به خواندن آثار شکسپیر و بایرون متمایل شد. نوشته هایی از جانب او معمول شده بود که در آن درخواست می کرد بلافاصله کتابی در باب علم شیمی، رساله ای پزشکی، یک رمان و یک سری مقاله درباره فلسفه یا خداشناسی برای او فرستاده شود. او می خواند، چنانکه گویی داشت در دریا و میان قطعات شکسته یک لاشه کشتی، شنا می کرد. و طبق میلش، که زندگی اش را حفظ کند، مشتاقانه داشت سعی می کرد تکه ای را بعد از دیگری تحت تصرف خویش درآورد.
بانکدار به یادآورد و با خود اندیشید: فردا ساعت دوزاده آزادی خود را بدست می آورد. طبق قرار، باید دو میلیون به او بپردازم. تمام شد... برای همیشه نابود شدم!
پانزده سال پیش او پول زیادی داشت و اکنون می ترسید که از خودش بپرسد بیشتر پول دارد یا بدهی؟ قمار کردن روی دارایی اش و بی احتیاطی با پولش، شغلش و تجارت، او را به تدریج به سمت افول کشانده بود و مرد مغرور و نترس و خودخواه تجارت، یک بانکدار معمولی شده بود؛ هراسان از هرگونه افت و خیزی در بازار. پیرمرد، درحالیکه سرش را ناامیدانه میان دستانش نگاه میداشت، زیر لب شکوه کنان زمزمه کرد: شرط بندی لعنتی! چرا مردک نمرد؟ تنها چهل سال دارد... هرچه را که دارم خواهد گرفت... زندگی زناشویی و لذات زندگی را از من خواهد گرفت. و من...چون گدایی حسود هر روز همان کلمات را از او خواهم شنید...
- من مرهون لطف توام بخاطر شادی زندگی ام... بگذار کمکت کنم!
نه! این خیلی زیاد است. تنها راه فرار از فقر و شرم، مرگ است...مردن.
ساعت سه بار زنگ زد و بانکدار گوش می کرد. در خانه همه خواب بودند و تنها یک نفر - خودش – می توانست صدای درختان سرمازده آن سوی پنجره را بشنود. سعی کرد صدایی ایجاد نکند؛ از گاو صندوقش کلید دری را که پانزده سال گشوده نشده بود بیرون آورد. اورکتش را پوشید و از خانه خارج شد. باغ، تاریک و سرد بود. باران می بارید. باد رسوخ کننده نمناکی در باغ زوزه می کشید و خواب را از درختان گرفته بود. او هر چند به سختی سعی می کرد، اما قادر به دیدن زمین و درختان و مجسمه سپید نبود. با رسیدن به اتاق وکیل، نگهبان را دوبار صدا زد. جوابی نشنید. واضح بود که نگهبان در برابر این هوای بد، پناهگاهی یافته و حال جایی در آشپزخانه به خواب رفته است. پیرمرد با خود اندیشید: اگر جرأت انجام قصدم را داشته باشم ظن ِ به قتل وکیل، اول از همه گریبان نگهبان را خواهد گرفت.
او در تاریکی می کوشید که پله ها و در را پیدا کند. وارد هال و بعد وارد راهرویی باریک شد و کبریتی روشن کرد. حتی روحی هم آنجا نبود. تخت یک نفر بدون روکش گوشه اتاق بود و در آن تاریکی، اجاق گازی کنج اتاق نمایان شد. مهر و موم روی دری که به اتاق زندانی ختم می شد شکسته نشده بود. با خاموش شدن کبریت، رعشه براندام پیرمرد افتاد. به پنجره کوچک نگاه کرد. در اتاق زندانی، شمعی با نوری خفیف داشت می سوخت. خود زندانی مقابل میزش نشسته بود و تنها پشت او، موی سر و دستانش قابل دیدن بودند. کتابهایی گشوده شده روی میز پراکنده بودند، و دو صندلی روی قالیچه نزدیک میز بود.
5 دقیقه گذشت و زندانی حتی تکانی هم نخورد. حبس پانزده ساله به او آموخته بود بی حرکت بنشیند. بانکدار با انگشت خود به نرمی ضربه ای به پنجره زد اما زندانی در جواب حرکتی نکرد؛ بانکدار محتاطانه مهر و موم را از در جدا و کلید را در قفل فرو کرد. قفل استفاده نشده ناله خشنی سر داد و در با صدای غژغژ لولاهای روغن نخورده باز شد. او انتظار داشت که بلافاصله فریادی هیجان آلود یا صدای گامهایی را بشنود.
سه دقیقه گذشت و اتاق مثل قبل ساکت بود. بانکدار تصمیم گرفت وارد شود. پشت میز مردی نشسته بود که شباهتی به یک انسان معمولی نداشت. یک اسکلت! با پوستی سخت کشیده. موی مجعد بلند مثل موی زن و ریشی پرپشت. رنگ چهره اش زرد بود. گونه هایی فرو رفته، کمر خمیده و باریک. و دستی که سر پر مویش را به آن تکیه داده بود چنان لاغر به نظر می رسید که تماشا کردنش دردناک بود. موهایش تقریباٌ نقره ای و خاکستری شده بود و هیچ کس با یک نظر کوتاه به صورت باریک و لاغرش باور نمی کرد که او تنها چهل سال دارد. روی میز، جلوی دستان خمیده اش، تکه کاغذی قرار داشت که روی آن با دست خط بسیار ریز چیزی نوشته شده بود. پیرمرد اندیشید: شیطان بدبخت! احتمالا خواب است و خواب پولها را در رویایش می بیند. من فقط این جسم نیمه جان را می گیرم و روی تخت می اندازمش. خفه اش می کنم. با بالش. دقیق ترین آزمایش هم هیچ نشانه ای از مرگ غیرطبیعی نخواهد یافت. اما اول! بگذار این نامه را بخوانم تا ببینم چه نوشته.بانکدار کاغذ را گرفت و مشغول خواندن شد.
«فردا، در ساعت 12 نیمه شب، باید به آزادی و حق ارتباط با مردم رسیده باشم. اما پیش از آنکه اتاق را ترک کنم و خورشید را ببینم، به گمانم ضروری است تا چند کلمه ای با شما بگویم. با وجدانی پاک و پیش از آنکه خداوند مرا ببیند به شما اعلام می دارم که از آزادی، زندگی، سلامتی و همه آن چیزهایی که کتابهای شما موهبت می دانند، بیزارم.
پانزده سال تمام، با پشتکار، زندگی زمینی را مطالعه کردم. درست است! نه زمین را دیدم و نه مردم را. اما... در کتابهایتان... شرابهای نابی نوشیدم. نوازندگی کردم. درجنگل ها آهو و گراز شکار کردم. به زنان عشق ورزیدم؛ زنانی به زیبایی ابرهای بهشتی که بوسیله جادوی قریحه شاعرانتان خلق شدند... شبانه به دیدارم آمدند و افسانه هایی شگفتی آفرین در گوشم زمزمه کردند که مرا مست می کرد. در کتابهایتان به قله کوه البرز و Mont Blanc صعود کردم و از آنجا دیدم که چگونه خورشید صبحگاهان برمی خیزد و عصرگاهان پرتوش را بر سرتاسر آسمان، اقیانوس و مرز کوه ها، با طلایی باشکوهی، می پراکند. از آنجا دیدم که چطور بر فراز من، آذرخش ها با نور خود ابرها را از هم جدا می کنند. من، جنگل های سرسبز را دیدم، کشتزارها، رودخانه ها، دریاچه ها، شهرها.ن وای نی شبانان را شنیدم. من بالهای شیاطین زیبا را لمس کردم که نزد من آمده بودند تا از خدا سخن بگویند. در کتابهایتان، خود را در گودالهای بی انتها انداختم. معجزه کردم. شهرهای روی زمین را به آتش کشیدم. به مذهبی نو دست یافتم. همه کشورها را فتح کردم...
کتابهای شما به من خرَد داد. تمام افکار نشاط آلود بشریت که در طول قرون متولد گشت، در جمجمه من فشرده شده است. می دانم که از تمامی شمایان زیرک ترم. و من... از کتاب هایتان بیزارم. از تمامی موهبت های جهانی، از خرد جهانی. همه چیز، ناچیز و بی ارج است. ناتوان، خیالی و گمراه کننده چون سراب. به هر حال، پرغرور باشید و خردمند و زیبا؛ تا آن زمان مرگ نابودتان خواهد کرد. و آینده تان،تاریخ تان و ابدیت ِنبوغ ِ مردانتان هیچ خواهد بود.
شما دیوانه اید و مسیر را به غلط رفته اید. شما نادرستی را به جای درستی و زشتی را به جای زیبایی گرفته اید. شگفت زده می شوید اگر درختان سیب و پرتقال، عوض میوه، وزغ و مارمولک بار بدهند. شگفت زده می شوید اگر گلهای رز بویی شبیه بوی عرق بدن اسب بدهند. و من... از شما در شگفتی ام! کسی که بهشت را درازای زمین معامله کرده است.
نمی خواهم درکتان کنم...
ای کاش واقعاً این امکان را داشتم که بیزاریم را نسبت به زندگی ای که در پیش گرفته اید نشان دهم. من دو میلیونی را که زمانی چون بهشت در رویا می دیدمش رها می کنم. پولی که حالا از آن بیزارم؛ تا آنجا که ممکن است خود را از حقوقم نسبت به آن محروم کنم.ب اید پنج دقیقه قبل از زمان مقرر از اینجا خارج شوم. بنابراین باید توافق نامه را نقض کنم...»
بانکدار وقتی نامه را خواند آن را روی میز گذاشت؛ سر مرد عجیب را بوسید و شروع کرد به گریستن. از اتاق خارج شد. هرگز و در هیچ زمانی، حتی به خاطر شکست وحشتناکش در شرط بندی، مثل حالا، نسبت به خودش احساس بیزاری نداشت.
به خانه آمد. روی تختتش دراز کشید اما آشفتگی و اشکهایش برای مدتی مانع خوابیدن او شدند...
صبح روز بعد، نگهبان بینوا دوان دوان نزد او آمد و گفت که آنها مردی را که در آن اتاق زندگی می کرد دیده اند که از پنجره به باغ پریده است. مرد به سمت دروازه رفت و ناپدید شد. بانکدار، فوراً با خدمتکارانش به اتاق رفت و فرار زندانی اش را تأیید کرد. برای اجتناب از بحث غیر ضروری نامه را از روی میز برداشت و در بازگشت آن را در گاو صندوقش گذاشت.
O · Henry
Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door).
Miss Martha was forty, her handbook showed a credit of two thousand dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to Miss Martha’s.
Two or three times a week she received a customer in whom she began to take an interest. He was a middle-aged man wearing spectacles and a brown beard trimmed to a careful point. He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn and darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others, but he looked neat and had very good manners. He always bought two loaves of stale bread—fresh bread was five cents a loaf and stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything but stale bread.
On one occasion, Miss Martha noticed a red brown stain on his fingers and decided that he was a struggling artist. No doubt he lived in a garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of good things to eat in Miss Martha’s bakery. Her sympathetic heart beat faster at the picture. In order to test her theory as to his occupation, Miss Martha brought from her room one day a painting that she had purchased at a sale and set it conspicuously against the shelves behind the bread counter. It was a Venetian scene, with a perfectly splendid marble palazzo and a lady in a gondola trailing her hand in the water. No artist could fail to notice it.
Two days afterward the customer came in again, and he did notice the picture. “You have here a fine picture, Madame.”
“Yes?” Miss Martha, reveling in her own cunning while wrapping the stale loaves. “I do so admire art and paintings… you think it is a good picture?”
“The balance,” said the customer, “is not in good drawing. The perspective of it is not true. Good morning, Madame.”
He took the stale bread, bowed politely, and hurried out; Miss Martha carried the picture back to her room. How gentle and kindly his eye shone behind his spectacles! To be able to judge perspective at a glance—and to live on stale bread! But Miss Martha realized that, unfortunate thought it is, genius often has to struggle before it is recognized.
Following that incident, the gentle-mannered artist (for so she thought of him now) would chat for while. He continued to order the stale bread—never a cake, never a pie, never one of the other delicious pastries in the showcase. He was beginning to look thinner and very discouraged. Miss Martha became concerned; her sympathetic heart ached to add some delicacy to his meager purchase, but her courage failed. She did not dare affront him, for she understood the pride of artists.
Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the counter. One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase, and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was reaching for them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fire engine came lumbering past.
The kindly customer hurried to the door to look, as anyone will. Struck with sudden inspiration, Miss Martha seized the occasion so opportunely offered. On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pond of fresh butter left by the dairyman minutes before. With a bread knife Miss Martha quickly made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again. When the gentleman turned back to the counter, she was tying the paper around them as usual.
When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha smiled to herself. She was pleased with her daring and generous impulse, but her heart was fluttering in anxiety. Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? Surely he would not; there was no language of edibles, and butter was not emblem of unmaidenly forwardness.
For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the imagined scene when he should discover her little deception. Probably he would lay down his brushes and palette and stand by his easel with the picture he was painting—the perspective, of course, would be beyond criticism. Then he would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water; he would slice into the loaf—ah! Miss Martha blushed at the thought. Would he think of the hand that placed it there as he ate? Would he…
The front door bell jangled viciously, interrupting the delightful speculations. Miss Martha sighed and hurried to the front, because somebody was making a great deal of noise. One was a young man smoking a pipe (she had never seen him before), and the other was the kindly, poverty-stricken artist for whom her sympathetic heart had interceded only this morning.
He did not look or act like his usual self—his face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair was wildly rumpled. He clenched his fists tightly and shook them ferociously at Miss Martha. At Miss Martha!
“Dummkpf!” he shouted with extreme loudness. He made a bass drum of Miss Martha’s counter. “You have spoiled me,” he cried, his blue eyes blazing angrily behind his spectacles. “I will tell you, you are a meddlingsome old cat.”
Miss Martha leaned weakly against the showcase, one hand on her best blue-dotted silk shirtwaist as the pipe-smoking stranger gripped the shouting customer by the collar.
“Come on, you’ve said enough.” He dragged the irate fellow to the door, and then he turned again to Miss Martha.
“Guess you ought to be told, ma’am—that’s Blumberger. He’s an architectural draftsman in the office where I work. He’s been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new city hall. He was going to enter it in a prize competition; he finished inking in the lines yesterday. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil first, and when it’s done he rubs out the pencil lines with stale bread crumbs.”
“Blumberger’s been buying the bread here. Well, today—well, you know, ma’am, that butter isn’t—well, Blumberger’s plan isn’t good for anything now.”
Miss Martha Meacham went into the back room, took off the blue-dotted silk waist, and put on the old brown serge one; then she returned to sit before the counter. (1110 words)