approaching us

0

    My smile broadened. That was another thing about Hassan. He always knew when to say the right thing--the news on the radio was getting pretty boring. Hassan went to his shack to get ready and I ran upstairs to grab a book. Then I went to the kitchen, stuffed my pockets with handfuls of pine nuts, and ran outside to find Hassan waiting for me. We burst through the front gates and headed for the hill.We crossed the residential street and were trekking through a barren patch of rough land that led to the hill when, suddenly, a rock struck Hassan in the back. We whirled around and my heart dropped. Assef and two of his friends, Wali and Kamal, were .

     

    Assef was the son of one of my father's friends, Mahmood, an airline pilot. His family lived a few streets south of our Home, in a posh, high-walled compound with palm trees. If you were a kid living in the Wazir Akbar Khan section of Kabul, you knew about Assef and his famous stainless-steel brass knuckles, hopefully not through personal experience. Born to a German mother and Afghan father, the blond, blue-eyed Assef towered over the other kids. His well-earned reputation for savagery preceded him on the streets. Flanked by his obeying friends, he walked the neighborhood like a Khan strolling through his land with his eager-to-please entourage Baba lifted his head from the pages flapping in the breeze..

     

    His word was law, and if you needed a little legal education, then those brass knuckles were just the right teaching tool. I saw him use those knuckles once on a kid from the Karteh-Char district. I will never forget how Assef's blue eyes glinted with a light not entirely sane and how he grinned, how he _grinned_, as he pummeled that poor kid unconscious. Some of the boys in Wazir Akbar Khan had nicknamed him Assef _Goshkhor_, or Assef "the Ear Eater.?Of course, none of them dared utter it to his face unless they wished to suffer the same fate as the poor kid who had unwittingly inspired that nickname when he had fought Assef over a kite and ended up Fishing his right ear from a muddy gutter. Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist:
    "sociopath.?

     

    Of all the neighborhood boys who tortured Ali, Assef was by far the most relentless. He was, in fact, the originator of the Babalu jeer, _Hey, Babalu, who did you eat today? Huh? Come on, Babalu, give us a smile!_ And on days when he felt particularly inspired, he spiced up his badgering a little, _Hey, you flat-nosed Babalu, who did you eat today? Tell us, you slant-eyed donkey!_Now he was walking toward us, hands on his hips, his sneakers kicking up little puffs of dust.


    lengths of cordwood

    0

      Bascom Pentland clothed his angular figure with an assortment of odd garments which seemed to have the same durability: they were immensely old and worn, but they also gave no signs of ever wearing out, for by their cut and general appearance of age, it seemed that his frugal soul had selected in the ‘nineties materials which it hoped would last for ever. His coat, which was originally of a dark dull pepper-and-salt grey, had gone green at the seams and pockets, and moreover it was a ridiculously short skimpy coat for a gaunt big-boned man like this: it was hardly more than a jacket, his great wristy hands burst out of it like , and the mark of his high-humped narrow shoulders cut into it with a knife-like sharpness .

       

      His trousers were also tight and skimpy, of a lighter grey and of a rough woolly texture from which all fuzz and fluff had long ago been rubbed; he wore rough country brogans with raw-hide laces, and a funny little flat hat of ancient black felt, which had also gone green along the band. One understands now why the policeman called him “Bud”: this great bony figure seemed ruthlessly to have been crammed into garments in which a country fledgling of the ‘eighties might have gone to see his girl, clutching a bag of gumdrops in his large red hand. A stringy little neck-tie, a clean but dilapidated collar which by its bluish and softly mottled look Bascom Pentland must have laundered himself (a presumption which is quite correct since the old man did all his own laundry work, as well as his mending, repairing, and cobbling)— this was his costume, winter and summer, and it never changed, save that in winter he supplemented it with an ancient blue sweater which he wore buttoned to the chin and whose frayed ends and cuffs projected inches below the scanty little jacket As he uttered these words he took a book from one of the shelves..

       

      He had never been known to wear an overcoat, not even on the coldest days of those long, raw, and formidable winters from which Boston suffers.The mark of his madness was plain upon him: intuitively men knew he was not a poor man, and the people who had seen him so many times in State Street would nudge one another, saying: “You see that old guy? You’d think he was waitin’ for a hand-out from the Salvation Army, wouldn’t you? Well, he’s not. He’s GOT it, brother. Believe me, he’s GOT it good and plenty: he’s GOT it salted away where no one ain’t goin’ to touch it. That guy’s got a sock full of dough!”“Jesus!” another remarks. “What good’s it goin’ to do an old guy like that? He can’t take any of it with him, can he?”“You said it, brother,” and the conversation would become philosophical.

       

      Bascom Pentland was himself conscious of his parsimony, and although he sometimes asserted that he was “only a poor man,” he realized that his exaggerated economies could not be justified to his business associates on account of poverty: they taunted him slyly, saying, “Come on, Pentland, let’s go to lunch. You can get a good meal at the Pahkeh House for a couple of bucks.” Or: “Say, Pentland, I know a place where they’re havin’ a sale of winter overcoats: I saw one there that would just suit you — you can get it for sixty dollars.” Or: “Do you need a good laundry, Reverend? I know a couple of Chinks who do good work.”


       


      accordingly

      0

        Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was above the meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a lady—only he could not help cleverly confiding to Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding Miss Rebecca—that she was a sharp one, a dangerous one, a desperate flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions Crawley agreed laughingly, and with every one of which Miss Rebecca was made acquainted before twenty-four hours were over. They added to her original regard for Mr. Osborne. Her woman’s instinct had told her that it was George who had interrupted the success of her first love-passage, and she esteemed him .

        “I only just warn you,” he said to Rawdon Crawley, with a knowing look—he had bought the horse, and lost some score of guineas after dinner, “I just warn you—I know women, and counsel you to be on the look-out.”“Thank you, my boy,” said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude. “You’re wide awake, I see.” And George went off, thinking Crawley was quite right.He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon Crawley—a devilish good, straightforward fellow—to be on his guard against that little sly, scheming Rebecca And so impressedwas Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought proper to write offby that very night’s post. .

        “Against whom?” Amelia cried. “Your friend the governess.—Don’t look so astonished.” “O George, what have you done?” Amelia said. For her woman’s eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a secret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and above all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig, Lieutenant Osborne. For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these two friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and conspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to Rebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, “Rebecca, I see it all.”

        Rebecca kissed her. And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by either of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long. Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness’s house in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir Pitt Crawley’s house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet’s demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment to Sir Pitt’s old mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt’s mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt was a widower again.


        a considerable time

        0


          “She was as bad as he,” said Tinker. “She took the law of every one of her tradesmen; and turned away forty-eight footmen in four year.”“She was close—very close,” said the Baronet, simply; “but she was a valyble woman to me, and saved me a steward.”—And in this confidential strain, and much to the amusement of the new-comer, the conversation continued for. Whatever Sir Pitt Crawley’s qualities might be, good or bad, he did not make the least disguise of them. He talked of himself incessantly, sometimes in the coarsest and vulgarest Hampshire accent;sometimes adopting the tone of a man of the world. And so, with injunctions to Miss Sharp to be ready at five in the morning, he bade her good night. “You’ll sleep with Tinker to-night,” he said; “it’s a big bed, and there’s room for two. Lady Crawley died in it. Good night.”

           

          Sir Pitt went off after this benediction, and the solemn Tinker, rushlight in hand, led the way up the great bleak stone stairs, past the great dreary drawing-room doors, with the handles muffled up in paper, into the great front bedroom, where Lady Crawley had slept her last. The bed and chamber were so funereal and gloomy, you might have fancied, not only that Lady Crawley died in the room, but that her ghost inhabited it. Rebecca sprang about the apartment, however, with the greatest liveliness, and had peeped into the huge wardrobes, and the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers which were locked, and examined the dreary pictures and toilette appointments, while the old charwoman was saying her prayers. “I shouldn’t like to sleep in this yeer bed without a good conscience, Miss,” said the old woman. “There’s room for us and a half-dozen of ghosts in it,” says Rebecca. “Tell me all about Lady Crawley and Sir Pitt Crawley, and everybody, my dear Mrs. Tinker All that day Jos never came. But Amelia had no fear about this; for the little schemer had actually sent away the page, .”

           

          But old Tinker was not to be pumped by this little cross-questioner; and signifying to her that bed was a place for sleeping, not conversation, set up in her corner of the bed such a snore as only the nose of innocence can produce. Rebecca lay awake for a long, long time, thinking of the morrow, and of the new world into which she was going, and of her chances of success there. The rushlight flickered in the basin. The mantelpiece cast up a great black shadow, over half of a mouldy old sampler, which her defunct ladyship had worked, no doubt, and over two little family pictures of young lads, one in a college gown, and the other in a red jacket like a soldier.

           

          When she went to sleep, Rebecca chose that one to dream about. At four o’clock, on such a roseate summer’s morning as even made Great Gaunt Street look cheerful, the faithful Tinker, having wakened her bedfellow, and bid her prepare for departure, unbarred and unbolted the great hall door (the clanging and clapping whereof startled the sleeping echoes in the street), and taking her way into Oxford Street, summoned a coach from a stand there. It is needless to particularize the number of the vehicle, or to state that the driver was stationed thus early in the neighbourhood of Swallow Street, in hopes that some young buck, reeling homeward from the tavern, might need the aid of his vehicle, and pay him with the generosity of intoxication.


          might be acquired

          0


            Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground, spelling over a favourite copy of the Arabian Nights which he had apart from the rest of the school, who were pursuing their various sports—quite lonely, and almost happy. If people would but leave children to themselves; if teachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts, and dominating their feelings—those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world- corrupted person who rules him?)—if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children alone a little more, small harm would accrue, although a less quantity of as in praesenti .

             

            Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, or with Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peribanou in that delightful cavern where the Prince found her, and whither we should all like to make a tour; when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie; and looking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little boy.It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer’s cart; but he bore little malice, not at least towards the young and small. “How dare you, sir, break the bottle?” says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging a yellow cricket-stump over him Sedley nolonger thought of executingher threatswith regard to MissSharp;for though nothing is more keen, nor more common..

             

            The boy had been instructed to get over the playground wall (at a selected spot where the broken glass had been removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the brick); to run a quarter of a mile; to purchase a pint of rum-shrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor’s outlying spies, and to clamber back into the playground again; during the performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a perfectly guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch.

             

            “How dare you, sir, break it?” says Cuff; “you blundering little thief. You drank the shrub, and now you pretend to have broken the bottle. Hold out your hand, sir.”Down came the stump with a great heavy thump on the child’s hand. A moan followed. Dobbin looked up. The Fairy Peribanou had fled into the inmost cavern with Prince Ahmed: the Roc had whisked away Sindbad the Sailor out of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far into the clouds: and there was everyday life before honest William; and a big boy beating a little one without cause.
            “Hold out your other hand, sir,” roars Cuff to his little schoolfellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin quivered, and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothes.
            “Take that, you little devil!” cried Mr. Cuff, and down came the wicket again on the child’s hand.—Don’t be horrified, ladies, every boy at a public school has done it. Your children will so do and be done by, in all probability. Down came the wicket again; and Dobbin started up. I can’t tell what his motive was. Torture in a public school is as much licensed as the knout in Russia. It would be ungentlemanlike (in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dobbin’s foolish soul revolted against that exercise of tyranny; or perhaps he had a hankering feeling of revenge in his mind, and longed to measure himself against that splendid bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, circumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, in the place. Whatever may have been his incentive, however, up he sprang, and screamed out, “Hold off, Cuff; don’t bully that child any more; or I’ll—


            the candidate put forward

            0

              “Nay, has not your friend here been rebuking me for speaking my mind? I am going to be as mum as a mouse. Let us talk about the election,” and the provoking lawyer would say no more on a subject possessing a dismal interest for poor Phil.“I have no more right to repine,” said that philosopher, “than a man would have who drew number x in the lottery, when the winning ticket was number y. Let us talk, as you say, about the election. Who is to oppose Mr. Woolcomb?”
              Mr. Bradgate believed a neighbouring squire, Mr. Hornblow, was to be against the Ringwood nominee.

               

              “Hornblow! what, Hornblow of Grey Friars?” cries Philip. “A better fellow never lived. In this case he shall have our vote and interest; and I think we ought to go over and take another dinner at the Ram.”The new candidate actually turned out to be Philip’s old school and college friend, Mr. Hornblow. After dinner we met him with a staff of canvassers on the tramp through the little town. Mr. Hornblow was paying his respects to such tradesmen as had their shops yet open. Next day being market day he proposed to canvass the market-people. “If I meet the black man, Firmin,” said the burly squire, “I think I can chaff him off his legs. He is a bad one at speaking, I am told At a short distance from the Ringwood Arms, and on the opposite side of the street,is theRam Inn..”

               

              As if the tongue of Plato would have prevailed in Whipham and against the nominee of the great house! The hour was late to be sure, but the companions of Mr. Hornblow on his canvass augured ill of his success after half-an-hour’s walk at his heels. Baker Jones would not promise no how: that meant Jones would vote for the Castle, Mr. Hornblow’s legal aide-de-camp, Mr. Batley, was forced to allow. Butcher Brown was having his tea, — his shrill-voiced wife told us, looking out from her glazed back parlour: Brown would vote for the Castle. Saddler Briggs would see about it. Grocer Adams fairly said he would vote against us — against us? — against Hornblow, whose part we were taking already.

               

              I fear the flattering promises of support of a great body of free and unbiassed electors, which had induced Mr. Hornblow to come forward and, were but inventions of that little lawyer, Batley, who found his account in having a contest in the borough. When the polling-day came — you see, I disdain to make any mysteries in this simple and veracious story — Mr. Grenville Woolcomb, whose solicitor and agent spoke for him, Mr. Grenville Woolcomb, who could not spell or speak two sentences of decent English, and whose character for dulness, ferocity, penuriousness, jealousy, almost fatuity, was notorious to all the world, was returned by an immense majority, and the country gentleman brought scarce a hundred votes to the poll.We who were in nowise engaged in the contest, nevertheless, found amusement from it in a quiet country place where little else was stirring.


              would find a place

              0

                A silence ensued, during which men looked towards Mr. Ringwood, as the “old foe” towards whom the Archdeacon had held out the hand of amity: but Ringwood, who had listened to the Archdeacon’s speech with an expression of great disgust, did not rise from his chair — only remarking to his neighbour Ascot, “Why should I get up? Hang him, I have nothing to say. I say, Ascot, why did you induce me to come into this kind of thing?” Fearing that a collision might take place between Philip and his kinsman, I had drawn Philip away from the place in the room to which Lord Ascot beckoned him, saying, “Never mind, Philip, about sitting by the lord,” by whose side I knew perfectly well that Mr. Ringwood .

                 

                But it was our lot to be separated from his lordship by merely the table’s breadth, and some intervening vases of flowers and fruits through which we could see and hear our opposite neighbours. When Ringwood spoke “of this kind of thing,” Philip glared across the table, and started as if he was going to speak; but his neighbour pinched him on the knee, and whispered to him, “Silence — no scandal. Remember!” The other fell back, swallowed a glass of wine, and made me far from comfortable by performing a tattoo on my chair. The speeches went on. If they were not more eloquent they were more noisy and lively than before The Georgian and Circassian girls, they say, used to submit to their lot very complacently, and were quite eager to get to market at Constantinople and be sold..

                 

                Then the aid of song was called in to enliven the banquet. The Archdeacon, who had looked a little uneasy for the last half hour, rose up at the call for a song, and quitted the room. “Let us go too, Philip,” said Philip’s neighbour. “You don’t want to hear those dreadful old college songs over again?” But Philip sulkily said, “You go, I should like to stay.” Lord Ascot was seeing the last of his bachelor life. He liked those last evenings to be merry; he lingered over them, and did not wish them to end too quickly. His neighbour was long since tired of the entertainment, and sick of our company. Mr. Ringwood had lived of late in a world of such fashion that ordinary mortals were despicable to him. He had no affectionate remembrance of his early days, or of anybody belonging to them. Whilst Philip was singing his song of Doctor Luther, I was glad that he could not see the face of surprise and disgust which his kinsman bore. Other vocal performances followed, including a song by Lord Ascot, which, I am bound to say, was hideously out of tune; but was received by his near neighbour complacently enough.

                 

                 The noise now began to increase, the choruses were fuller, the speeches were louder and more incoherent. I don’t think the company heard a speech by little Mr. Vanjohn, whose health was drunk as epresentative of the British Turf, and who said that he had never known anything about the turf or about play, until their old schoolfellow, his dear friend — his swell friend, if he might be permitted the expression — Mr. Ringwood, taught him the use of cards; and once, in his own house, in May Fair, and once in this very house, the “Star and Garter,” showed him how to play the noble game of Blind Hookey. “The men are drunk. Let us go away, Ascot. I didn’t come for this kind of thing!” cried Ringwood, furious, by Lord Ascot’s side.


                by a previous monster

                0

                  “You must — you must stay on a little longer. You have only been here five days. Do, Charlotte, ask Philip to stay a little.”
                  All the children sing in a chorus, “Oh, do, uncle Philip, stay a little longer!” Miss Baynes says, “I hope you will stay, Mr. Firmin,” and looks at him How much more comfortably might poor Baynes and his wife have slept had they known what were Philip’s feelings regarding them.

                   

                  “Five days has he been here? Five years. Five lives. Five hundred years. What do you mean? In that little time of — let me see, a hundred and twenty hours, and at least a half of them for sleep and dinner (for Philip’s appetite was very fine) — do you mean that in that little time his heart, cruelly stabbed in female shape, has healed, got quite well, and actually begun to be wounded again? Have two walks on the pier, as many visits to the Tintelleries (where he hears the story of the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope with respectful interest), a word or two about the weather, a look or two, a squeezekin, perhaps, of a little handykin —

                   

                  I say, do you mean that this absurd young idiot, and that little round-faced girl, pretty, certainly, but only just out of the school-room — do you mean to say that they have — Upon my word, Laura, this is too bad. Why, Philip has not a penny-piece in the world.”“Yes, he has two hundred pounds, and expects to sell his mare for ninety at least. He has excellent talents. He can easily write three articles a week in the Pall Mall Gazette. I am sure no one writes so well, and it is much better done and more amusing than it used to be. That is three hundred a year. Lord Ringwood must be applied to, and must and shall get him something. Don’t you know that Captain Baynes stood by Colonel Ringwood’s side at Busaco, and that they were the closest friends? And pray, how did we get on, I should like to know? How did we get on, baby?”

                   

                  “How did we det on?” says the baby.“Oh, woman! woman!” yells the father of the family. “Why, Philip Firmin has all the habits of a rich man with the pay of a mechanic. Do you suppose he ever sate in a second-class carriage in his life, or denied himself any pleasure to which he had a mind? He gave five francs to a beggar girl yesterday.”“He had always a noble heart,” says my wife. “He gave a fortune to a whole family a week ago; and” (out comes the pocket-handkerchief — oh, of course, the pocket-handkerchief) — “and — ‘God loves a cheerful giver!’”

                   

                  “He is careless; he is extravagant; he is lazy; — I do not know that he is remarkably clever — ”“Oh, yes! he is your friend, of course. Now, abuse him — do, Arthur!”“And, pray, when did you become acquainted with this astounding piece of news?” I inquire.“When? From the very first moment when I saw Charlotte looking at him, to be sure. The poor child said to me only yesterday, ‘Oh, Laura! he is our preserver!’ And their preserver he has been, under heaven.”


                  calendar
                       12
                  3456789
                  10111213141516
                  17181920212223
                  24252627282930
                  31      
                  << July 2016 >>
                  PR
                  selected entries
                  categories
                  archives
                  recent comment
                  links
                  profile
                  search this site.
                  others
                  mobile
                  qrcode
                  powered
                  無料ブログ作成サービス JUGEM