Tone

YZ Chin

Tone

I love it when my friends introduce me to new people, although I never let on. I love the proud and honorable expression they wear when they say "This is Sandy - she's deaf", as if I were evidence of their benevolence. I also love the split-second shocked expression on the new people, the hasty smiles and their best imitations of what they think of as their "normal faces". If they do the ritual well enough I turn my head ever so slightly and tuck my hair behind one of my ears, whichever one's closer to them. They never fail to say something nice about my pink hearing aids, while my regular friends beam on.

I'm thinking of starting a hearing aid collection, actually. They'd make better accessories than earrings. I once saw a catalog for clip-on hearing aids and hearing aid covers, and the products were most definitely fashion statements in various shapes and hues. It'd be like the exquisitely expensive handbag Esther's dad got her when we were in high school. The rest of us could only admire, but could not imitate, because our dads weren't rich enough to spoil us that way. And now, only I can wear hearing aids. My friends can do nothing but gush.

To be honest, I quite like my deafness. It wasn't easy the first few years after the car accident and the stupid exploding airbag, but now it's become something that makes me special among my friends. None of my close friends are hearing impaired, simply because I wasn't born deaf. By the time I lost my hearing, I'd already accumulated a fixed circle of people, and they mostly rushed to participate in the drama.

You know how when you talk about your friends, you refer to them as Drew the Bartender, Carol the Feminist, Greg the Guy Who Can Knot a Cherry Stem with His Tongue and so on? I'm Sandy the Deaf Girl. I like it. I don't have any other particularly outstanding traits or skills. Never did.

It's more than just standing out, too. I'm sure a lot of important events in my life wouldn't have happened or worked out quite the same way if I weren't wearing pink hearing aids. For example, the thing with Colin.

I first met Colin at an apartment party. When Carol the Feminist introduced us to each other, I tucked my hair behind both my ears and leaned closer, not because he did the ritual particularly well, but because he was a stud. You should have seen his recovery smile after the inevitable surprise.

< 2 >
We went in search of drinks after the handshakes, and somewhere between what was functioning as the wine bar and the couch, we lost Carol.

"Do you usually read lips like this? Or do you sign too?" he asked after a while.

"I mostly just read lips because it was easier to pick up than signing, although that's not the only reason I was staring at your lips," I told him.

He laughed. We talked more, and then the host upped the music volume and dimmed the lights for the "dance floor", and I had to lean in much, much closer to be able to continue reading his lips in the semi-darkness. And read his lips I did.

We did the usual and exchanged numbers, and a week later Colin did the unthinkable and called. We went out, satisfied ourselves that the other person still looked good in sober daylight, and read more lips. Within two months Colin and I were dating.

Colin was the first after the accident, and now that I think about it, I wonder if my dismal post-accident love life had anything to do with feelings of self-consciousness. I don't know. I try not to think about the first few years when it was hard.

There were minor difficulties and awkwardness, of course. On our fourth date, Colin invited me back to his apartment to watch a Blockbuster movie. Apparently it was his modus operandi, and I can't say I didn't see it coming, although I felt a little miffed when he didn't realize immediately what he was doing wrong.

We'd turned the lights off and the subtitles on for the movie, of course. Halfway through I suddenly had a disorientating sensation - I thought Colin had melted into or had somehow become his couch, and that I was sitting on and being enveloped by Colin, floating isolated in darkness and unable to look away from the bright pulsating other-world five feet away. It was strange. And then Colin leaned in and started whispering sweet nothings into my hearing-impaired left ear. All I got were spurts of warm breath against my ears.

I pushed him away. I suppose I just got weirded out by the reminder that I was deaf, and that coupled with the darkness...the sensation of losing two senses was a little too much.

< 3 >
It was the first hiccup we'd had, and such a tiny one that we got over it instantaneously. The rest of the night was spent researching how his lips could be fully utilized in ways I could understand, even in the dark.

So Colin learned. It was no different from figuring out each other's quirks over time, really. I sometimes thought it made the relationship fun and interesting for him, sort of like an added twist to a game that he had perfected long ago, so that the game was once again challenging. He did play the dating game quite well, from what I found out.

Our first birthday was his twenty-third. I got him a pair of tickets to the Rammstein concert; I knew he loved that band. When I flashed the tickets, he started exclaiming and laughing, but then abruptly stopped.

"Sandy, are you sure? I mean, can you...enjoy the concert?"

I tucked my hair behind my left ear and smiled at him.

"First of all, who said I want to enjoy the concert? I never did like those kinds of violent, head-exploding noise you call music..."

"Hah!"

"...Second of all, I can hear most everything above a really loud shout, remember? So we're fine for the concert."

His smile was beautiful. I tucked my hair behind my other ear.

It turned out to be quite a success, the Rammstein concert. I'd never seen him so shot full of enthusiasm, so propelled by energy before, nor did I ever see him like that again. We weren't even close enough to see much of the band, since I wasn't exactly raking in the money for front row seats. Colin was just driven purely by the music. I imagined his eardrums, the pair of them vibrating like mad, writhing in non-stop orgasms somewhere inside his ears, unseen by the naked eye.

I felt a little jealous then and there, actually, something I thought I'd stopped doing for good when I'd quit asking "why me?"

I looked at Colin for most of the night, taking in his jumping up and down, his whoops, his huge grin, and his sweat glistening in the colored lights that traveled as if they were alive. I could hear the amplified electric guitar parts and the screams just fine, and I could feel the drum beats through the floor. But it wasn't the same.

< 4 >
A month and a half later, Colin presented a pair of tickets on my birthday, tucked into the band of his trousers and only discovered after his shirt came off. They were for a book signing and reading event featuring Emily Barnes, a writer I absolutely adored.

"I'm sorry the thing is next weekend and not today, but I thought we could celebrate your birthday a second time just the same," he winked.

I was more than thrilled. The week leading up to the event, I re-read all of her books and agonized over which one of the four I should bring to have her sign, since we were only allowed one signature each. Colin laughed at me and said I was acting like a teenybopper when I made him promise to get in line as well, so that I could have two signed books instead of just one.

On the day of the event, we arrived at the bookstore early. They had cleared a section of the store by pushing bookshelves back, so that the whole place looked denser than I remembered, like a jungle that had turned magical and overgrown itself overnight. I certainly felt the magic, looking at the temporary stage and the half-filled rows of chairs in worship before it.

Colin held me by my hand and led me to seats in the last row. When I protested, he smiled and pointed to the speakers mounted just behind us.

"But I can read her lips if we sit up front!"

"But that's not the point of readings, is it?"

"But-"

"Do you admire her words or her looks? Would you rather hear her own interpretation of her text or see her face?"

I sat down, clutching two of Emily Barnes' books, convinced of the evening, and also of Emily Barnes, of Colin, of us.

It would have been perfect. Sometimes I still think about it.

The store manager walked up the temporary stage promptly at 6 PM. Her turquoise green heels were precarious, and I imagined the clicking that came with each step.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen," she said.

The P.A. system was not of very high quality, and the bookstore really wasn't set up for that kind of thing, but I could make out every word of the store manager's introduction of Emily Barnes if I focused. Colin squeezed my hand and raised his eyebrows at me. I gave him my sweetest smile and nodded.

< 5 >
Then Emily Barnes herself stepped onto the temporary stage. Hands clapped in every row ahead of us, all the way up to the stage. Emily Barnes bowed a little, and smiled, then accepted the microphone from the manager's outstretched arm.

"Hello." She said from behind me, from the speakers. After a pause she smiled apologetically and said, "I never really liked these things."

And then she put the microphone down on the floor of the stage. She straightened up, and her lips started moving. I didn't notice this at first, or if I did, my brain didn't process the first few seconds of it. I was caught by surprise.

A second later, when it occurred to me to start reading Emily Barnes' lips, I felt Colin's eyes on me. I looked up and caught his eye, and he started to raise his arm.

"No!" I hissed and grabbed the arm.

Colin gestured towards Emily Barnes angrily. Seeing his forehead in creases, his eyebrows in frowns, I suddenly had a very clear mental video of him at the Rammstein concert. How excited he was. His jumping up and down, his whoops, his huge grin, and his sweat glistening in the colored lights that traveled as if they were alive.

"No." I told him. Sitting in my plastic chair with the video of his birthday running in my head, I suddenly had the most ferocious desire to be happy, to be excited, to jump up and down and whoop and grin. I was determined to be happy, here and now, with my birthday present.

"Why not?" Colin asked.

"I can read the tone of expression from her lips," I told him.

"What?"

"Shhh."

I stood up, inched my way past knees and walked until I took up a spot near the stage where I could stand without occluding anyone's view. Colin remained in his plastic chair for a while, but he eventually came up from behind and slipped his arms around me. I twisted around to smile up at him, a smile as bright as I felt inside.

For the record, Emily Barnes' reading was exceptional. She breathed life into her own words. Made them alive in ways I had not been able to imagine. Her lips moved, parted, close, moved, and I heard the subtle sadness, the cautious joy, the gentle regret - all of it contained in her prose all along, never fully discovered until then.

< 6 >
"So how exactly do you determine tone of expression from reading lips?" Colin asked on the way out.

I smiled down at my autographed books.

"That's a silly question. It's like asking blind people what they dream of when they sleep."

I walked faster. Colin kept up. We didn't talk on the drive back to my apartment.

*

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If two people argue, and one of them doesn't hear the argument, can the damage be undone?

*

A few weeks after the book reading, Colin and I fought for the first time. He wanted to cancel a dinner we'd planned long ago. The reason was the premiere of his indie filmmaker friend's first movie.

"Premiere? What premiere? It's going to be in his fucking basement, for God's sake!"

"It doesn't matter, okay, his specialty is low-budget films, and besides, he spent one whole year on the damn movie, all right? You just can't appreciate movies, that's all!"

"Don't you use that kind of tone with me!"

It took me a moment to comprehend his silence.

"Right," he eventually said. "right. You can read my tone of expression from my lips. That's it, right?"

And he left. For the premiere.

It went downhill from then on, and I suppose we both knew it. The last argument we had, he yelled at me so loud I thought I'd regained my hearing.

"I'm breaking up with you!"

I didn't say anything for a while, and when I did, it was nothing but a "Are you serious?"

"Why?" He sneered. "Can't you tell whether or not I'm serious from my lips?"

And that was it. Colin and I broke up.

I have few nice memories of the last months of the relationship. The most vivid one of them is of Colin fussing with my bangs and tucking my hair behind my ears.

"You look pretty like that. How come you never do it anymore?" he'd said.

I never told Colin that he sometimes shouted so loudly at me that I didn't need to read his lips to know his tone of voice. Colin was never very good at determining at what level I could start hearing clearly. I also never told him what it felt like to realize that he didn't sound like what I'd imagined, because, of course, I had never heard his voice until he started shouting and cursing at me.

< 7 >
I've had a haircut since. I wear my hair really short these days. Shows off my new fluorescent green hearing aids better. I still love it when my friends introduce me to new people. Sometimes I forget, and lift my hand to tuck my hair behind my ears, but the reaction is never the same anymore, now that my hearing aids are unconcealed. They see it coming.

My girlfriends asked, of course. I told them that it was human nature. That people just can't accept other people who see or hear or feel or know things they aren't supposed to. If you see UFOs, you're crazy. If you see spirits, you're a fraud. If you sense true love when he just wants a fuck, you're a whackjob, and if you can read the tone of his voice just from the way he moves his lips, you're a bad girlfriend. And deaf, of course.

Paris, at Night

Sung J. Woo

Paris, at Night

Today was rice day, fifty-pound sacks of white rice in trucks bearing an elephant logo. The same happy elephant appeared on the bags, its head raised to the sky, the trunk curved like an S.
"Elephant," Todd said.
He said it because a laborer was staring at it intently. Which meant he wasn't working.
"That's right," the man said. "I couldn't remember the word."
He was the only other human at the loading dock this morning. The man didn't have a name, just a number, like the rest of the robots.
"Let's get back to it, 8831, okay?"
"Yessir," the man said.
That could be me, Todd thought as he watched him work side by side with his silent mechanical counterparts, lifting, carrying, and dropping bags of rice from the back of the truck to the warehouse. A bad car accident, a bad fall from a ladder, and that could be me.
Or a bad memrip.

AT LUNCH, Todd thought of things he could sell. Everything he owned of any value, he could touch: his grandfather's watch, his grandmother's wedding ring, a gold necklace belonging to some forgotten relative. His car, too, but that was out of the question as he needed it to work.
He got up from his chair and scanned the floor below, the robots still working away, a sea of metallic shoulders rising and falling in unison, strangely beautiful in a way. Over by the forklift sat 8831, his eyes as blank as the piece of bread he was eating.
Two weeks from today was Todd's thirtieth wedding anniversary, and even if he were to pawn the watch, the ring, and the necklace, he knew he wouldn't even come close to having enough for Paris. That's where Sue had wanted to go for as long as he could remember. They didn't have the money to honeymoon there, but that was okay because back then, there had been plenty of time. They were young, both healthy and working, so they would save a little here and there and in a couple of years, they would be walking up to the Eiffel Tower at night arm in arm, find themselves underneath the arch and look up at the beacon that shined on this city of lights.
But then came two sons and three recessions and a second mortgage. A hysterectomy for her, a double bypass for him, and now here he was, nine years short of retirement, supervising a team of robots and a retarded man, thinking about folks who could sell things they couldn't touch, like stocks and bonds and whatever else he couldn't even fathom, people with money who would pay to experience another's most cherished moments.

< 2 >
Silly. That would be Sue's word for it if this were a story she'd overheard. For a trip, a goddamn trip, what a silly thing to do.
But it was more than a trip. It was their life together. There was life and there was death, and it seemed to Todd that if he waited any longer, there wouldn't be a difference between the two.
He opened the filing cabinet and rifled through the folders. In all the years he'd been here, only a handful of human workers had come and gone. All of them were handicapped in some way; they came through the city welfare program, and 8831 was no exception.
Name: Lopez, Manny
Age: 46
Tax Status: Married
Disability: Neural Trauma

Neural Trauma. It was worth a shot.
Manny's wife picked up on the second ring. Todd told her who he was, and after he assured her that her husband was not hurt, he was fine, he was a great worker, he asked her what he wanted to know. She listened without interrupting him, then there was a lengthy silence.
"Why?" she asked.
"Does it matter?"
"I can report you."
"I know."
More silence.
"He did it because he loved me. Loved," she said, hardening. "Not loves."
"I heard you."
Then she hung up on him, and for the rest of the day, Todd replayed the conversation in his mind. Should he have lied to her, made up some story about a sick mother, a dying child? He wasn't good at talking, especially on the phone. People thought he was unfriendly, hostile. A woman once told him his voice sounded like broken stones rattling in a cage.
The horn blared at five, time for the two humans to go home and the robots to be reconditioned and put in standby.
Todd was walking out to his car when Manny touched his shoulder.
"Boss," he said, sounding uncertain. He held out his phone. "My wife, she wants to talk to you?"

THE HOUSE was quiet when he returned, and it seemed to Todd that he wanted to keep it that way. Take small, measured steps, like a thief. He carefully pulled the door shut, holding onto the doorknob and turning it by hand until it locked.
Above, the floorboards creaked, Sue's footsteps as she walked from their bedroom to the bathroom. Then a flush, and the trill of water climbing up to refill the toilet tank. And now the muffled voice of the late-show host on TV, the encouraging laughter of the studio audience, the one-two punch repeating until they cut to commercial.

< 3 >
Todd sat at the dining table and peeked inside the microdome, at the plate Sue had made for him. Pork chops, a bunch of broccoli spears, a hill of mashed potatoes with a well of gravy. He touched the REHEAT button and watched his plate spin slowly, the inside of the dome steaming up.
One thing for sure, my clients never tire of wedding proposals.
The man Todd had met after work was funny, friendly, utterly normal. It didn't seem possible that they were talking about something that could land both of them a minimum of two years in prison.
I'm not going to lie to you, Todd. There's a risk to this. People do get hurt, like your friend Manny. But keep in mind that Manny didn't follow our simple yet extremely important directions. We told him over and over again that he wasn't to consume any alcoholic beverages twenty-four hours before the procedure. We even hired a Portuguese translator to make sure he understood what was required of him. See, this is why Mrs. Lopez still led you to us, because she knows we do good work. Her cousin's a regular sourcer, comes in once a month, has been for years. We don't mess up, Todd. It's the sourcers who mess up. And I can see we'll have a smooth ride, because you're a smart guy.
Though he introduced himself as Richard Gibbons, he also immediately admitted that it was an alias.
In my opinion, Todd? In my opinion, I think it's something the government should regulate. Because let's face it, everybody's doing it. But think how long it took for marijuana to become legalized. Hell, it's still not legal in Alabama.
Todd opened the microdome and took out the plate. The pork had gotten a little tougher, but it still tasted wonderful, his wife's signature flavors of mint and garlic in every bite.
The way I see it, you're getting peak value for something that is going to eventually disappear. I'm not just talking about Alzheimer's. Once you go past sixty, memories fade at an alarming clip. It's what happens because the brain can only retain so much. Like all of our other organs, it's about usage. When was the last time you thought about your honeymoon? Honestly? The less you use, the more you lose. It's the foundation of how our bodies work. The health benefits of memripping, they're not some urban legend. You're cleaning house. You're taking out the garbage and putting in out on the curb, but here's the difference: you're getting paid for that trash.

< 4 >
It was a painless, quick procedure. All you had to do was remember what you wanted to have ripped while the machine was plugged into you. The surgery was completely automated and technologically sound.
Memory is free. Not for our clients, of course, haha! But for you, Todd. Think of all the new memories you'll create with the money you'll have. Our government wants to equate our enterprise to organ trafficking, but nothing could be further from the truth. You grow memory like a crop, and when you want to, you harvest it. Are there people picketing against farmers every time they cut down a bushel of corn? Of course not. It's natural. It's life.
"Todd?"
Sue met him at the sink. She reached for the dish towel hanging off the hook, but Todd angled his body to block her.
"It's just one dish," he said. "You can let it dry."
"You had a long day."
Todd wiped his hands on the towel and turned around to face her. Even though she looked prettier with her makeup on, he also liked seeing his wife like this, right before they went to bed, because only he saw her like this. Nobody else in the world knew this Sue, only him.
Though it was possible that wouldn't be true after the memrip. But was that a bad thing? Was it so terrible to share his love for his wife with someone else?
Todd waited to turn off the kitchen lights, for Sue to switch on the lamp at the landing of the staircase. It was their unspoken routine to retire to their bedroom. There were many other small routines like that one, and now, as he climbed the stairs with her, Todd thought how wonderful it was to know another person so well, that this was comfort, that this was home.

TRIANGULAR BOXES. That was the shipment that waited for him when he arrived at work the following morning. There were blue ones and red ones and yellow ones and green ones, and each contained a like-colored chair from a Korean designer. Todd couldn't see how a box like that could hold a comfortable chair, so he opened one up and sat in it.
"Jesus Christ," he said.
Four auto-adjusting palm-shaped prongs supported him in ways that seemed impossible: his lower back, his love handles, and his neck. If he had his way, he would sit here forever. But he couldn't, as the whistle blew and the robots came to life.

< 5 >
He thought the oddly-shaped boxes might pose a challenge for them, but they didn't miss a step. The robots saw the way the boxes were stacked inside the truck, right side up and upside down, staggered to maximize space, and they replicated the exact pattern in the warehouse.
Manny worked in perfect tandem with his mechanized brothers as the morning turned into afternoon. Like yesterday, he went back to the forklift to eat his lunch, and Todd wondered if perhaps he used to run one of those. He considered asking him but changed his mind. If Manny did so before, he certainly didn't now, so what was there to talk about?
In his office, Todd dug into the brown paper bag of his own lunch and thought that today was very much like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. But tomorrow would be different because tonight would be different. If the memrip went according to plan – and he had no reason to believe it wouldn't, because he hadn't had a beer in the last twenty-four hours, hadn't washed his hair this morning, followed everything Gibbons had told him – tomorrow he would call up that travel agent who advertised in the paper and tell her to book the platinum romantic getaway to Paris for two.
For a trip, a goddamn trip, what a silly thing to do.
He could almost hear her say it. But she would be telling him as they were flying over the Atlantic in first-class seats. They'd never sat in those large leather chairs, only walked past them on their way to the narrow discomforts of coach.
Sue had made him the perfect egg salad sandwich, just enough mayo to keep the egg bits and chopped slivers of celery together. As he ate, he took out his flexphoto to watch the twelve-picture slideshow from Uncle Patrick's wedding. Gibbons had given him the paper-thin disposable device, which was programmed to turn on just once. According to Gibbons, the worst thing a sourcer could do was overprepare, try to remember too much and turn an emotional memory into an intellectual exercise.
My client has been waiting seven years for this, Todd.
Each picture only stayed on for five seconds, but it seemed much longer than that when the first one came up. How was it possible that they were both so thin, so young? Sue was in a blue sleeveless dress. She was in attendance because she was a friend of Uncle Patrick's sister. She was nineteen years old, and Todd was twenty. In the picture, they were both in the frame, sitting down at adjacent tables as dinner was being served. They had yet to meet, and somehow that made the moment even more special.

< 6 >
Love at first sight. People say it, but they rarely mean it. My client has gone through sixteen memrips and still has yet to find a real one. That's why he's willing to pay big.
He and Sue dancing, his left hand clasping her right hand, his right arm around her waist, their youthful faces glowing like a pair of full moons.
I know the risk is more on your side, but you have to understand, the destinator also faces dangers. Emotional dangers. The disappointment can be so crushing that they often need to seek psychological and spiritual guidance. This client who'll be installing your memrip, he's got one therapist and two holistic advisors on permanent payroll. So needless to say, he's counting on you.
Their first kiss, and the angle showed Sue's surprise and delight. She was slightly drunk and so was he, but Todd remembered that moment more than any other, the warmth and wetness of her lips, the way they parted as the kiss transformed into a smile.
I know you'll do your best. That's all we ask.
The flexphoto blinked off, and lunch was over.

"READY?" Gibbons asked.
They were in a dentist's office, and from the looks of it, not a very successful dentist. There was a leak in the corner of the ceiling, turning half of the tile brown, and the muzak that flowed out of the speakers was at times staticky.
Todd sat in the chair, his head tipped back and immobilized inside an octagonal metal cage. He couldn't see the machine anymore, but he knew it was there, a black cylinder with a silver arm. At the end of the arm was a clear tube too thin for the naked eye to see, which would enter through his left ear, travel through the auditory nerve, and make its way to his brain.
"You're not gonna feel a thing."
"Okay," Todd said, and soon there was a whirring in his left ear.
Indeed, he felt nothing as the tube burrowed inside. The pills Gibbons had given him were working, too, making his eyes a little dry but calming him.
"And we're in," Gibbons said.
Gibbons slid a flexphoto into a slot in front of the cage, filling Todd's view with blackness. Then the slideshow started again, and this time Todd held nothing back. Uncle Patrick's wedding, thirty-two years ago, meeting his future wife for the first time. Realizing he'll never again remember this moment filled him with regret, and for a second he felt an intense desire to scream, that he didn't want to do this, that his memory was his and no one else's, but then the feeling passed.

< 7 >
Just buyer's remorse, Todd thought, and went back to the task at hand, which was to remember.
At some point, Gibbons said, "The buffer's getting full, so it's going to scrape."
Scrape.
Todd didn't think there were words that could describe it. Clean? Was that what it was, that he felt clean? But it wasn't like washing his hands or taking a shower. Suddenly there was a lightness in him, fresh, impossible pockets of air inside his mind. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation because it wasn't a sensation at all. That was it: whatever this was, it was the antithesis of something, but it wasn't exactly nothing, because the concept of nothingness existed in relation to a somethingness before it. What the scrape did was more than just remove his personal history; it removed the concept of history itself.
This should hurt, Todd thought. Something like this should be painful.
The next photo came into his vision, he and Sue at the bar, waiting for their drinks, but what had he been thinking about just before?
"Don't back up, just see forward, Todd," Gibbons said. "Let it go."
There were two more scrapings, and then they were done. The whirring in his ear stopped, and Gibbons unlatched the harness around his head. Todd rotated his neck left and right and back again, stiff from two hours of stillness.
On the top of the memrip machine was a round clear disc, a petri dish, with just a smidge of gray matter.

PARIS WAS stubborn. While other cities around the world were busy upgrading concrete with organic alloys and replacing old street lamps with compact photon bulbs, this city looked no different than the way it did a hundred years ago. The stone bricks, the gargoyles, the wrought-iron fences, they looked like they'd always been here.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Sue asked.
Paris, at night. It was what she had always wanted, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
These questions, these doubts. If only he could make them disappear.
"I think so," Todd said, walking past signs he couldn't read.
For a while things were fine, and then they weren't. Gibbons found a neurologist who was willing to examine Todd without notifying the authorities. Just bad luck, the doctor had said. You can never tell how these things will go. That's why it's not legal.

< 8 >
Memory is like a million little houses. Taking one out is like lifting a house from a community. Not a big deal, because you can just build another in its place. The community remains unaffected.
But some memories are like skyscrapers. If you're careful, you might be able to take away the first floor of a tall building and leave it standing, but never for long. Sooner than later, walls start to crack. Ceilings leak. It's just a matter of time until the structure groans and loses integrity.
You still have lots of houses, though, Todd. A strong, stable community. That's why you're capable of doing everything else, like your job, like walking and eating and enjoying a movie. But your wife will remain problematic. Even new memories you form with her, they're going to reference this skyscraper because the damage was so extensive.
I'm so sorry.
Just one more street, Todd thought. When he glanced at Sue, he saw the way she was favoring her left leg. Why was that?
He didn't know.
If only they could find their way. How could they be lost, trying to find the tallest structure in the city? It was stupid. It was infuriating.
"Oh my," Sue said, pointing.
And there it was, finally, having hidden behind a row of buildings on this side street. There was no buildup to their encounter: the tower was not there, not there, and then…just there, in its entirety, tall and strong and sharp.
And still far away. It would take another fifteen minutes for them to reach the Eiffel Tower, where Todd would stand with the woman he was supposed to love underneath the arch, holding her hand, and listen to the wind whipping through the girders.

The Banana Season's Over

Jon Mallalieu

The Banana Season's Over

"Poison." It's one of the kibbutzniks that speaks, a large woman probably in her forties. "We poison the wildlife every now and again you know, to keep things under control."
She must have just finished her night shift because she is wearing work overalls: a pair of beige, stained dungarees. I gather by the smell that she works in the cowsheds.
"It's the pigeons mainly," she says; "they're a real pest, shit all over the dairy buildings, eat the cattle feed. Unfortunately some of the cats get it too but they're only strays."
I am incensed. "I don't think that's quite the point."
We all turn toward the cat which is now making a rasping choking sound as it tries to clear its blocked airways. Its tongue, cherry red, flashes desperately against the white spittle that fills its tiny mouth. I feel physically sick at the sight of its writhing body turning over the dead leaves. The others mutter in agreement, unhappy with her casual attitude. I continue, "And the pigeons, Jesus, look at the pigeons," all gathering in the same corner, huddled between the road and the yellow shower block. I can't work out why at first and then I figure that it's probably the wind gathering them, trapping them helplessly in a whirling eddy of feathers. Below us more pigeons have appeared on the corrugated roofs of the volunteer huts while others circle and fall from the sky as if the air is too thin to support their weight. Unhappy with her audience she waddles off towards the block of members' housing. We watch her fat rolling backside and her uneven heavy gait. Eddie mutters, "Bitch," under his breath and Tom says, "bloody Israelis," just loud enough to make her turn her head before disappearing from view.

That was kind of how it was on the kibbutz. When I mentioned the incident to Motti the next day in the banana fields he looked a little perplexed and motioned me to climb up onto the warm trailer. He pointed up over the top of the tattered banana leaves at the kibbutz.
"Look Blake, you see the kibbutz?" I nod courteously, shielding my eyes with my palm from the glare of the sun.
"When my parents arrived you know there were no buildings there? Just this bare hill and a row of white tents. Of course there was no running water, no power, no nothing. Well look now, eh? Isn't she beautiful? It's our home and we made it by working on the land. I don't know, maybe it's hard for you to understand, but we have to place things into some kind of order, and animals, well they come low down. You know the history, Blake, our history. Think about the history."

< 2 >
I jump down from the trailer and think about the history.

Work in the bananas is hard graft and by mid-morning I am already exhausted. The sun is high in the clear sky and the dappled shade under the trees is disappearing fast. To make things worse my bare arms are covered in the thin sticky residue of the banana trees and I am stood shin deep in a carpet of dead leaves. I am working with Egal, a grey haired kibbutz elder. He doesn't say much but we have an efficient working partnership. His faded T-shirt is pulled tight around his middle and on his bony hip hangs the blackened leather scabbard, home to his banana knife. It's a beauty: twelve inches long and a butcher's delight. I follow him to a particularly tall tree and watch while he lifts the heavy knife slowly above his head. He brings it swiftly down making a single deft slash in the moist trunk. The knife is stuck fast and he has to pull heavily with both hands on the wooden handle to release it. As it drags free, it emits a wet squeak like the sound of a finger down a wet bathroom mirror. Then the tree slips forward obediently, dutifully, dipping the hard green bananas to a height that can be reached by an expert arm. I grab the fat purple bud that hangs pendulously beneath the bunch with one sticky hand and, leaning forward, push it gently away until the fruit is slanted high above my right shoulder. Then I stand beneath with my knees bent in anticipation until another powerful blow slices through the woody stem and releases the weighty bunch down onto me. The trick is to dip with the falling fruit, to absorb the weight and only then to stand. I now have to find the trailer but it's often hard because the trees can be disorientating and the dusty track is the same colour as the dried fallen leaves. So I stand still momentarily and listen for the voices of other labourers.
When I arrive Tom is sitting on the tailgate of the dented trailer, right on the very edge so his skin doesn't touch the hot sunburned metal. I gasp as I dump my load heavily onto the trailer. Tom looks up, he is chewing gum whilst opening the lid on the polystyrene flask of cold water. He hands it to me and I raise it to my chapped lips. The water traces an icy path to my stomach and I realise then that I never really knew what water was, not until I worked the bananas.

< 3 >
From around the corner Motti appears driving the John Deer. He is pulling another open trailer and in it are the rest of the volunteers grimacing and huddled like weary cattle. They lift and thump with every pothole and cling tightly to the side of the vehicle. I can see Eddie and he raises a pale hand lazily in recognition.
"Typical," says Tom in a resigned drawl jumping to his feet. "Been working like a dog all morning and Motti sees me sitting on my arse, now I'll be for it." But Motti says nothing. He has stopped and is waiting patiently for us to jump up. Egal has appeared red-faced and spectacled at the edge of the track and we all amble silently toward the ticking tractor.
From here the road sweeps neatly along the edge of the wide fields and on past the Roman springs where the water is not only deep but clean and still. It is a favourite swimming spot after a hard hot day's work. Along the edge of the wide pools amongst the avocado trees Roman buildings are gradually disintegrating, giving up their history to the hungry water. In any other country they would be in museums but here it seems you can prop up your garden shed with a Roman column. We move on, wheels grinding over the bleached stone track until we see the square limestone hut. Within minutes we are drinking sweet black coffee flavoured with cardamom and fighting over the tasteless kibbutz biscuits. Sitting outside in the shade of the hut we light our cigarettes and rest our bare elbows on the grubby floor of the trailer, copper-coloured legs splayed out behind us.

The view from here is magnificent. To the west through the hazy shimmer of rising heat we can make out the Mediterranean Sea and the terracotta roofs of the houses in the coastal town of Naharia. It sparkles like a tiara with a hundred glinting solar panels. To the east through the fug the Golan Heights rise proudly like bony knuckles, lifting gently away from the fertile plains. Behind us, high above the tops of the stately avocado trees, is the kibbutz. It stands splendid and palatial amongst the heavily scented pine trees. The gentle slopes that form the ramparts of the community are, however, barren. Weed-less and rocky, they descend monotonously to the main road.

< 4 >
Eddie is smoking and sitting on the trailer swinging his large feet in a rhythmic motion. "Does it ever snow?" He speaks quietly looking up at me through his cherubic curls. I glance upwards. "What, you mean here on the kibbutz?"
"I mean in Israel, does it snow in the winter? That would be nice that would, picking bananas in the snow, not having these damn peeling shoulders" He plucks a flake of skin from one of his broad freckled shoulders and lets it fall gently like a spent leaf onto the dirt. He shifts position, leans back, and raises his legs so that his heavy boots rest in his cupped hands.
"Only up in the mountains," I say, "I think you can ski up there. Motti told me he fought up there in the war, up in the Golan Heights. It's always cold when you're high up."
"Right," he sounds enthused, "the wind I guess." But I look confused so he adds thoughtfully, "That's what makes it cold?"
"I guess," but now I'm off imagining snow falling quietly in Jerusalem capping the golden Dome of the Rock. Muting the honking traffic and settling gently, silently on the ancient twisted branches of the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.
"It reminds me of home," says Eddie, looking doleful, "makes me think of London in the winter. We used to have a laugh, when it snowed I mean." He jumps down from the trailer and stands with his legs slightly apart in the dust. His face has suddenly become animated. "You know I remember once," he pauses as a small bird flits past us and into the warm shade of the avocado trees, "I think I'd just finished a short stretch inside. Anyhow we'd had a few beers when we saw this Asian guy waltzing down the high street. He was walking slowly, carefully picking at a big soggy bag of chips. I could see the steam rising off them and smell the salt and vinegar in the cold air. And it was cold that night. We were spent up from drinking so we followed him quietly, stealthily. And all that I can remember is that I really wanted that warm bag in my freezing fingers. It was still snowing hard, you could see it when he passed under the street lights, big fat wet flakes." He holds his plump hand six inches from the floor of the trailer to illustrate its depth.

< 5 >
"The guy wore his woolly hat pulled down over his ears, probably off home after a hard day's work. Well, we crouched down low behind some oak trees, sniggering, and made snowballs, tight ones. We squeezed them hard as stones then crept up carefully behind him. We let him have it. The first one smacked him squarely on the head; he didn't know what hit him. He yelled out like a school girl, tried to run but we got him from every angle, the back, the side, the front, took his glasses clean off. His chips were splashed out in the snow, and he started screaming, you bastards, you bloody bastards, come back. I give you bloody hiding, bastards!" (He gets the intonation just right.)
"We could hear him minutes later still yelling looking for his specs in the snow whilst we were laughing, screaming, running through the park. Be great if it snowed here, bloody great."
I want to react. I want to make disapproving noises, to tut or draw my breath sharply over my teeth, but the longer I wait the more it seems unlikely. It's partly because the picture in my head is so damn clear, so beautifully intact, and partly that I enjoyed its clarity, how he took me effortlessly to the exact spot where the warm chips have sunk making dark holes in the fresh snow. And there's this guy, his ears still stinging, ringing, on his knees still looking helplessly for his glasses. I want to ponder on it, to turn the picture over in my head and examine how I feel. The silence is uncomfortable and I know we can all feel it but I can't help myself. I start to laugh, crouching down low, my palms on my bare dirty knees. Quietly at first but then I can't contain it. It's Tom, his laugh is infectious, a kind of high pitched hen-like cackle. And then we are all taken with the moment, and dancing with delight skipping over the dirt track. Eddie grabs a ripe banana from the trailer and lobs it to me; I catch it two handed. The exchange is part of the contract and Eddie, awash with confidence, bounces back, "We never did get any chips."

I spend the rest of the morning walking the pipes with Tom. The irrigation pipes meander along the narrow aisles of banana trees. They provide each tree at its wide base with an allotted dose of water and nutrients. We are checking for leaks and every now and then one of us stops abruptly, kneels on the dried banana leaves and studies a faulty joint in the line. Sometimes the droppers are simply blocked with dirt and it's an easy job to clear the eye with a needle, but other times the pipe needs cutting and reconnecting. While one of us busies ourselves dealing with the problem, the other leans lazily against a tree or patiently takes a drink of water from the flask. We walk for miles accompanied only by our soft voices and the soporific rustle of dead leaves. Sometimes we don't talk for hours and then neither of us wants to break the delicate silence. Other times we while a morning or afternoon away lobbing rotten bananas at each other or singing Simon and Garfunkel tunes.

< 6 >
Last week, where the pipe had split and left a wide puddle in the dirt, we came across a family of tortoises drinking gently at its ragged edge. Laying down quietly on our fronts, hands under our chins we watched them dip and raise their horny heads for an age. Tom eventually looked up at me. "Nature," he said grinning. "Bloody marvellous," and then we were up and off again.
I like Tom. Something about him makes me feel safe. It might be the neatness of his physical frame. He has the lithe, taut body of a rock climber and his skin is a deep chestnut tan. Sometimes, when we go jogging together in the early evening I watch the sweat running down the muscular ridges of his naked back. His posture is athletic, self assured. The way he comfortably plants his grey trainers in the loose dirt of the mud track, the natural rhythm of his pace, his breathing, all these things breed a kind of unspoken respect in me. There is a stillness about him too that holds your attention when he talks. And when he listens his blue eyes shine and behind them you can almost sense his thoughts. But above all these things, it is his smile that beguiles you. It is the natural easy smile of a child and it has the same innocent and honest quality.

I had arrived at kibbutz Briac on a warm September evening; I was tired. The taxi, a yellow Mercedes, dropped me off at the bottom of the hill and I could feel the heat rising from the pitted tarmac. The smell of the tar was reassuring. It reminded me of the summer I had just left behind a thousand miles away. I was eighteen and still a schoolboy fresh from the playing fields, plucked suddenly from the safety of a High School education. If I closed my eyes tightly I could even see my graffiti, bright and yellow, carved like a valley deep into the sloping wooden desk. I walked slowly, lost in my thoughts up the narrow winding road toward the checkpoint. Its red and white striped barrier was slung down low, forbiddingly, across the brow of the hill. My mind was buzzing with fatigue, for the journey had been exhausting and my backpack felt double the burden it had in the morning.

< 7 >
I remember the young man on duty because he was wearing creased army fatigues and smoking a large cheroot. He looked like a captain in some banana republic. Leaning back on his plastic stool, he jumped when he saw me and struck an official-looking pose as if he were being filmed for some documentary. Demanding to see my paperwork, he looked awkward and embarrassed when it was obvious that I had none. Clearly agitated, he picked up the black telephone at his side and pressed it to a greasy ear. He dialled three numbers in rapid succession and spoke briefly in Hebrew, the result of which was that he looked cross but nonetheless allowed me to pass. Then, pointing with a slender finger to a group of low buildings in the distance he sniffed, put his hands in his pockets and mumbled something which I failed to understand.
A few minutes later I was stood perfectly still, staring through a narrow gap between two tall pine trees. There was a fire spitting orange and yellow beads up into the evening sky. It was piled high with freshly cut logs and it gave off an incense of pine resin which hung heavily in the cool air about me. Around the fire there was a group of about six or seven shadowy figures, some sitting cross-legged others kneeling. They were talking and laughing, gently rocking back and forth as if they occupied a small boat which was bobbing on a sea of grass. Their chatter mingled with the crackle of the fire and disappeared with the plume of twisting smoke into the night. Darkness had fallen and above me the first stars were appearing. They looked like chinks of light in a theatre curtain, full of promise. On one of the walls of the yellow huts nearby I noticed that someone had scratched "God shave the Queen" into the thin plaster and I smiled and walked slowly over to meet them.

Standing like a pale castle on top of a rocky hill, the kibbutz was only a stone's throw away from the Lebanese border. Ironically, stones were never thrown, but periodically a shell would whistle angrily across the shapeless mountains only to thump innocuously into the soft brown mud. The craters large as busses filled slowly with tepid water, only to sprout months later with new life. Reeds as thick as broom handles and rangy wind-bent grasses all skirted the static water. In these little ‘manmade' pockets of wildlife coots nested on tiny floating islands and dragonflies hovered reflecting metallic greens and blues in the opaque water. Once or twice at dusk I even spotted terrapins bobbing gently like dark green apples under the gloomy surface.

< 8 >
The earth was a rich golden brown and the valley was blanketed green and yellow by banana plantations and lines of dull green avocado trees. There were fresh water springs which bubbled clear and blue and that ran like veins lazily curling across the patchwork of fields. Here and there the streams met and pooled, swirling in deep dark blots like eyes studying the tumbled-down remains of ancient sandstone buildings.
In the early mornings the sun rose sluggishly from behind the snow-capped Golan Heights, and in the evening it fell swiftly into the listless Mediterranean Sea. It was a fertile landscape in every sense of the word, not least because of the succulent fruit it provided, but also because it held securely in its generous palm this community rich in culture and diverse in origin, the wandering Jews, the Diaspora. The people who tilled and planted the earth did so because they were driven, because the land bound them as walls bind a prisoner. It was their sweat and their breath that gave life to the valley and their history which bound them to each other. It was a good place to be.

The single dusty track that swung gently up the incline from the main road met, at its summit, the high steel fence. The fence ran for a gleaming mile surrounding and ensnaring the community, its posts driven firmly into the stony ground and its rim topped angrily with razor wire. The fence both protected but simultaneously managed to create a feeling of siege among its occupants. There were pine trees, gangling and ungainly, leaning lazily into the slope. Their cones spread out like litter at the base of their rutted trunks and amongst them the members' housing was scattered like popcorn. There was grass too, wide watered lawns criss-crossed by rough concrete paths and dotted with freshly turned rose beds.
The paths all seem to converge like wheel spokes toward the dining room, which was at meal times as cavernous and busy as a train station. It was the hub of kibbutz life, where the workers grumbled over their morning coffee before taking the wagons and trailers down into the dew-covered valley. Where the dark-haired school kids copied out homework and ate their soft-boiled eggs, eggs that had been inside a chicken only the evening before, and that now dripped orange streaks down clean white T-shirts.

< 9 >
Kettles gleamed along one side, simmering and agitated, whilst fresh vegetables were set out in wide steel trays ready for the next meal. Deep, welcoming tubs of Schnitzel and couscous, fish and boiled new potatoes, artichoke hearts in olive oil and vats of buttermilk were all tended to fastidiously by women dressed neatly in dark blue dungarees. From the dining room one could sit and watch the ocean through the narrow windows which ran along one side. A thin strip of bright blue light against the grey-blue horizon. Often when I think back to my life here this is where I am at three in the morning. Alone in the dining room. Alone in the marbled darkness and leaning back on a hard wooden chair. I'm drinking sweet black tea and although it is night I can still make out the ocean because the moon is out and full and the water is fat and still.

I am in the dining room now, its lunchtime and I have just come in from the fields. Motti the banana boss has driven us up in the trailer, the bone-shaker all the way from the far side of the Jezreel valley. The room is a beehive, awash with noise. The banter of relieved hungry workers, the chink of cheap cutlery on cheap china. The chuckle of cool water being poured from glass jugs into white handle-less cups.
You can tell who works in the bananas by the stains on their clothes. The thin sticky sap that runs from the wounds in the fleshy trunks leaves deep brown welts on cloth. No amount of washing can remove it and anyway it is our mark, our badge, the banana logo. Tom and Eddie are already seated spooning down chicken and potato hungrily. Steffi is over at the urns making tea, tall and shapely. Her shorts are far too small and I can't help but gaze at the back of her pale dimpled thighs.
"I know what you're doing," Tom says with a wry smile.
Eddie looks up guiltily from his plate. "What?" A mop of curly blonde hair flops down over his blue eyes. There is a morsel of food lodged in the corner of his mouth.
"Not you, you fool. Blake, he's ogling Steffi again." He looks me in the eye almost apologetically. "You know you've not a hope. She's a tease. I've heard she scours the laundry room for clothes two sizes too small just to tantalise us all with those long legs." He smirks and glances over again as if to reaffirm his observation.

< 10 >
"Well she can tantalise all she likes as far as I'm concerned," I mutter and sit myself down opposite them. "Sometimes it's better to travel than to arrive, isn't that what they say?"
"Don't know what you all see in her myself," says Eddie, "I mean she's pretty and all but too precious for my liking." Tom and I exchange careful glances as she makes her way toward the table. He moves over to let her in. Smiling guiltily, Tom asks how her morning has been.
"Oh not too bad you know. Those damn chickens are a nightmare. I'm mean literally, I dreamt about them last night. I was choking on feathers."
"Don't tell me, when you woke up you'd eaten your pillow." Eddie, amused with his own wit, bangs his fist on the table.
"No," says Steffi looking confused. "I woke up crying, I think it's my asthma." Her eyes look moist, red rimmed. "Sometimes I just want to go home." She curls her hair delicately behind one ear. It's a habit that she has and one that Tom and I agree is a rather ‘knowing' one. It is nevertheless an attractive, somewhat delicate movement and it makes me feel protective of her.
"Never mind eh, it's Shabbat," I say soothingly, "nothing that a few cold beers won't fix."
"I suppose," she smiles at me and takes a sip of her tea. I feel something like butterflies inside; it's not that I want her or anything but something about her makes me feel, well, tender. Maybe it's because of the night she slept in the spare bed in our room. I woke early with the birds as the cold morning air was pouring down through my open window. When I glanced across the room her thin duvet had fallen onto the tiled floor. Tom was still sleeping but I lay there for an hour caressing her naked goose-bumped curves with my eyes. Do I feel guilty? I suppose I do but although she doesn't know it I think we bonded then. I smile to myself at the thought of it and stir my tea.
Steffi is talking to me but I'm no longer listening "Blake?" she says gently…
"Sorry, I was just thinking about… about those damn pigeons." I was always a good liar. She nods approvingly as she tears a piece of bread in two and dips a piece into her chicken soup.

< 11 >
"What about Carl's dog, Blackie? He'd go crazy if it were poisoned." I say, warming to the theme.
"He'd probably shoot someone," she says, looking nervous. "Didn't he do that before?"
"I think he took a pot shot at some guy who cut him up at the lights once. Blew a couple of his tyres out. Well that's what I heard from Motti anyway."
Eddie, oblivious to the conversation, lights up a Noblesse, the cheapest of the Israeli cigarettes. We are allowed seven free packs a week as part of our allowance. He stands the soft green pack on its end and stares at it, elbows resting firmly on the plastic table. From a distance you would be forgiven for thinking that he had varicose veins, but close up as I am now you can see that his arms are covered in tattoos. The outline of the Pink Panther is sketched poorly on the inside of his thick white forearm. He has spent time in Maidstone prison and the letters HMP grace three of the red knuckles on each hand. At one time, he borrowed a friend's tattooing needle and most of his body now resembles my old school rough book, covered in a mixture of adolescent doodles and obscure graffiti. The cigarettes smell cheap and he smokes every last millimetre, taking the last drag deep into his lungs then stubbing it out into a mound of leftover mashed potato on Tom's plate.
Tom shoves the plate away across to the other side of the table and throws Eddie a withering look.
"You'd finished, hadn't you?" says Eddie defensively. "You're like a bloody old woman sometimes. Here, look, I'll take it away myself."
He stacks his tray hurriedly, untidily, and heads off for the slops bin. We all watch the flakes of mud from his suede boots trace his path across the polished floor.
"Me too, I guess," I say under my breath. "See you all back at the ghetto."

It's December now and although it's not cold, there is a chill in the air as I walk across the kibbutz towards the ghetto. Past the cowsheds and the tumbling stinking piles of rotting pomelos. Past the steaming laundry and the kolbo, the supermarket where we spend our hard earned vouchers on crates of Gold Star beer and cheap shampoo. There are rooks perched like sentries way up in the pine trees. A bird's eye view would certainly afford you a wonderful vision of the whole kibbutz. High above you would clearly see the metal fence that traps this community in a fat bubble on the landscape. The kibbutz is alive. It's a self-sufficient organism, swimming with vivid colours and movement. Right now as I'm walking I'm aware that hundreds of others are still busy at their work. Busy in the fruit fields and the glass factory, in the humid kitchens and the sprawling filthy cowsheds. There are kids playing basketball on the red clay court, their faces streaked with dirt and sweat; and there by the primary school is the swimming pool, green and stagnant during the cool winter months. There is no secondary school. The teenagers have to travel out of the kibbutz for that. It is there they learn about the world outside the fence and where they develop their unsavoury taste for another life. A life in which they can own their own house and wash their car quietly on a Saturday morning. The young yearn to escape from the confines of the kibbutz and dream constantly of leaving the unhealthy dark shadows of their forefathers. But the old, well you can see it in their yellow eyes that they are afraid. Afraid that they will be forgotten, but even more fearful that their history will forgotten with them.

< 12 >
I have reached the volunteer housing known amongst its inhabitants as the ghetto. It is scattered haphazardly across an acre of poor soil and pushed up aggressively against the tough wire meshed fence. And although the view across the valley is a fine one the ghetto feels like it is isolated from the rest of the kibbutz. Which I suppose it is and is meant to be. We are the outsiders, the untouchables, cheap labour that can be called upon in times of desperation and disposed of during the lean months. We are a transient population, the European Bedouin, and like them we appear and disappear bouncing from kibbutz to kibbutz and from job to monotonous job.
The huts in the ghetto, with their grey corrugated asbestos roofs, lie in a broad rectangle around an enclosed ramshackle plot. Clumps of dry grasses and untamed straggling bushes have invaded most of the space. There is, however, a small circle in the middle which has been lovingly cleared, and in which a fire still smoulders. A gentle reminder of the previous night when Tom, fuelled with alcohol, launched into the fire a bucket of blue paraffin. We were all rocked backwards by the flame burst and had, after a shocked pause, laughed hysterically. Only the week before he had disappeared for an hour and returned triumphantly, dragging a telegraph pole behind him. The damn thing burned for four straight days.
Outside each hut is a concrete veranda invariably strewn with muddy work boots and empty beer bottles. From one porch hangs a whole five-foot bunch of ripe bananas, and from another washing is strung out to dry along a sagging piece of orange twine. Inside, the rooms are basic. A cold tiled floor, a hand basin against one bare wall, and against another a cheap plywood wardrobe.
We live by easy rules in the ghetto. Under the corrugated gutter-less roofing and between the damp plaster walls we whisper and shout, dream of Marmite and of home. In winter we curse the draughts but nurse the yellow flame that warms our hands with the same delight, the same intensity. And when the walls of our room grow green with mould we stare at the glowing bars drying our damp socks, our faces chiselled in the shifting flickering shadows like Van Gogh's ‘Potato Eaters'. I always loved that picture.

< 13 >
Now I feel like an old hand in my kibbutz-issue ankle boots and torn blue work top. Making my way into the bare room I kick off my boots, fling my dirty shirt into the corner and lay myself prostrate on the low creaking bed. There is nothing like the deep sleep of a siesta.

In the late afternoon I wander down to the Refet, the cowsheds, plastic jug in hand and pour myself a few pints of cool creamy milk from the huge stainless steel cauldron. Uri, the dairy boss, raises an arm when he sees me and ambles over. He is wearing his trademark yellow Wellingtons. We chat about this and that over the pulsating drone of the milking machines. He has a son my age at university in Jerusalem, a daughter in high school. He worries about them both; there has been a spate of bombings recently on busses and in shopping malls. He often talks of leaving the country for Europe but as he always says, palms raised toward the heavens, "This is my homeland, where else would I go?"
Then, behind him I notice the pigeons, scattered over the roofs and the muddy grassless fields. They are eating the cattle feed, an unappetising mixture of pomelo rind and chicken shit. Out in one of the fields is the woman in the beige dungarees. She looks even heavier than I remember. She is cajoling the cattle, coaxing them aggressively into the aluminium corral with a large wooden stick. Glancing up at me as she enters the shed, her face remains expressionless, cold. Connecting up the cows to the machine, her movements seem graceless. I've seen Uri do it a hundred times and with the polished ease of a gymnast, but there is something awkward about her and I start to wonder then if the poisoning was her idea.

Now Christmas had crept up on us slowly and tapped our shoulders gently. The volunteer huts are festooned in gaudy decoration and on Christmas Eve we drive the minibus into Jerusalem. We all sing White Christmas at the top of our voices and Tom leans out of the small window shouting felicitations gleefully at passers by. The city is beautiful, glistening with the headlights of the evening traffic. It is as vibrant and as warming as a rum punch.

< 14 >
On we drive, along the narrow roads and through the golden sandstone gorges of the old city. The huge wooden gates to the city are open wide and people flow through them like melted butter, running softly, easily down the busy streets. Outside the city the street lights begin to disappear and the land falls away steeply on one side of the road. Yellow buildings give way to green coniferous forest and the air outside drops in temperature. It is dark in the bus and we talk excitedly about Christmas and home and family.
Bethlehem, when we arrive, is alive and thronging with hundreds of people and Manger Square is bedecked with cheap wooden tables and chairs. There are lights strung up overhead in brilliant gleaming rows whilst the church of the nativity looks graciously over the whole festive scene. We are all swept along willingly with the tide of religious fervour. Although none of us is a practising Christian it feels churlish to deny anything tonight, so we become believers for the evening and drink cheap red wine and sing carols with the mass of happy revellers. Later we even queue for an hour to get our passports stamped with Joyeux No'l and the crest of a black eagle. Then we dance late into the night holding hands with friends and strangers alike. I'm dancing with Steffi, whilst Tom dances with the new Danish girl Hanni. She arrived last week and is still fresh and pink from home. He winks at me. Eddie sits alone smoking black tobacco and drinking warm beer. Although Steffi and I don't talk I can feel our hands silently exchanging heat in the cool night. Later on as we walk down the hill she says "It's been a great evening, hasn't it?" She has eyes like a calf, large and curious and they kind of draw you in helplessly. I nod silently just as Tom starts to sing drunkenly in front of us at the top of his voice. I laugh and say to Steffi that it has indeed been a wonderful night. We stop, facing each other, and I touch her on the cheek with the back of my cold fingers. There is something between us but I don't think either of us really knows what it is. Her breath smells of cigarettes and wine.

< 15 >
We all drink hot sweet tea in an Arab café halfway down the hill, the owner insisting that Tom and I play backgammon with him. We teach him the backgammon chant that we yell as we throw the dice back in the ghetto, "Big doubles!" When he has mastered the chant and has soundly beaten both of us, he rips up the bill laughing loudly through his thick black moustache. As we walk out into the dawn the morning breeze is just beginning to kick up the yellow dust. It flicks it over the shop fronts and parked cars like icing sugar. At the bottom of the long hill, where the main road runs by like some dark river, there is a small park. It is surrounded by a high fence and fronted with a wide arched gate. It is locked; Tom rattles it angrily then starts to climb. The rest of the group, oblivious, walk on to meet up with the bus. I quickly follow Tom and in seconds we are both stood knee high in the thorny rose bushes, laughing. Wading to the centre of the garden, we find a patch of dry grass and sit down. I can hear the faint chatter of the group still walking slowly away towards the rising sun, crimson on the horizon. Its light is seeping between the branches of the eucalyptus trees and I can smell the perfumed leaves on the cool air. Hanging pendulously above us is a beautiful rose, its flowers dark red and just tantalisingly half open. Tom says that we should take one each for the girls and before I can reply he has leapt ferociously on the plant. I join him, twisting the wiry stems till the tight buds are released and our fingers are raw and stained green. We clamber gecko-like back over the thick iron railings and catch up with the group. I pass my rose to Steffi and Tom hands his to Hanni, chuckling as we realise that they are crawling with green fly. They take the flowers gratefully, gracefully, like athletes at a medal ceremony. Steffi smiles at me and climbs quietly, wearily onto the bus.

It's Christmas day and without lifting my head from the pillow I can see the weak shaft of light that has cut its way through the crack in my door and into my room. In it are a million flecks of dust sparkling like bubbles in champagne, rising in the thermals and bursting in the hushed darkness. I am still half asleep, aware of my breathing although separate from its hissing rise and fall. Across the room I can see my work clothes heaped and blue on the back of the wooden chair. I won't need them today. Eyes closed and lead-heavy, feet exposed at the end of the short bunk, I curl into a ball cupping my hands between my warm legs. It makes me feel safe.

< 16 >
Tom wakes later and we wish each other a happy Christmas. Sitting up in bed we look like an old married couple as we eat dried apricots wrapped around warm blocks of milk chocolate.
We spend the day in Jerusalem. First visiting the Garden of Gethsemane then walking the Stations of the Cross ending up in the beautiful church of the Holy Sepulchre. Tom has a fit of giggles when the silence and solemnity of the place gets too much for him. We have to leave the church quickly for fear of being accosted by one of the priests.
It is a beautiful day outside. The skies are clear and blue and it's a day which I never forget.

During the next few weeks there is a perceptible change of atmosphere on the kibbutz. Down in the bananas, Motti has taken to drinking his morning coffee alone and the friendly banter amongst the crew has subsided a little. There is talk in the papers of a Palestinian uprising and the road blocks and recent police presence around Naharia all seem to confirm the stories. Last week I watched a small group of elderly women clearing out one of the air-raid shelters. They had laid out the dusty gas masks on the grass in small bundles and were struggling into the shelter with large plastic packs of bottled water.
There is a rumour going round that there are no gas masks for volunteers but when I ask Motti if this is true, he laughs so loud that even Egal grins softly. It is the first time I have seen Motti smile since last week when I complained about the freezing dew on the banana leaves. "Blake my friend, I never promised you a rose garden, eh?" Then he had slapped me on the back and turned back toward the tractor, cigarette in hand.

Then it happens; later that month, after a frugal supper of vegetables and cottage cheese, I go to bed early only to be woken hours later. It is black, moonless. So dark in fact, that I'm unable to see my hand in front of my face. I'm aware however that something has woken me, aware that there is someone else in the room. I can feel a presence, a band of heat that one would expect from the bar of an electric fire. Then without warning there is a silent explosion of light, as intense and as blinding as a flash bulb. The mesh mosquito netting at the window scatters the white light across the walls of the room; it's chequered like graph paper. As my eyes adjust I can make out a figure. Steffi is standing in the centre of the room. She is barefoot, frozen on the cold tiles. All the while I'm expecting the light to suddenly vanish so I find myself studying the room, memorising the location of all objects in readiness to be plunged back into vulnerable blindness. It doesn't happen. Instead the light begins to shift slowly and the shadows start to move around the room. I'm still waking, disorientated, confused, and then there is a cold hand on my shoulder and an earnest voice, "Blake, wake up, there's fighting down in the valley."

< 17 >
Almost immediately I hear a soft "phut phut phut" from across the valley. The sound of a moped misfiring. I know what it is immediately: gunfire. Outside in the ghetto others are appearing from their doorways; Tom has moved gingerly out onto the road to get a better view. More gunfire now; it's rapid, getting louder as I clamber shakily onto the wooden pallets stacked up against my hut. From the roof I can see clearly into the valley below. The scene is incredible. High in the night sky is a star so brilliant that it has lit up the countryside as far as the eye can see. The light is hanging, perhaps falling slowly: a flare? It is so beautifully white that it has drained the landscape of any colour. The view is monochromatic, a moonscape, and the light is so powerful that it has penetrated into every crevice, every hollow in the countryside. There is shouting but it's too far away to be intelligible. Leaning over the edge of the thin roof I reach down and pull up Steffi who is still struggling vainly on the pallets. We sit down now and watch the scene together. The action is some miles away and we are in no immediate danger, but it nonetheless feels exciting. It reminds me of a black and white photograph I once saw in a school history book about the American Civil War. It showed a family perched on a grassy hillside picnicking, whilst below in the valley a bloody battle raged between the forces of the North and South. At the time something about it profoundly shocked me. And there is no doubt that there is something shocking, but at the same time slightly titillating about this scene, the uncomfortable mixture of danger and security.
The "star" is lower in the sky now and its light, although bright, is waning just slightly, but the voices seem to be louder, more intense. I wonder if she is thinking the same thing. This "star", radiant, alluring in the night sky over towards Bethlehem. It feels as if there is two thousand years of history spread out there in front of us.
Then, because it feels like a film and for no other reason, I lean forward and kiss the nape of her neck. It is perfumed and warm. For a split second I feel like a child again, driven by the same impulse that makes one reach out for the electric fence on a country ramble, just to see. She responds by rolling back gently into my arms and for a minute we sit in silence as the flare dips softly into the trees on the far side of the valley and then there is darkness.

< 18 >
The incident makes all the morning papers. A Palestinian attack on an Israeli home in Naharia. They came in from the Lebanon by boat and have left a family devastated, a boy motherless, a husband alone with his grief. By the evening there is the inevitable retaliation. The Israeli army have bulldozed a row of whitewashed homes down one dusty street in Gaza. Helicopter gun ships have taken out the car of a Hamas leader. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye… God knows who they killed; God knows if they cared, it's just a mess. There is no right and wrong anymore it seems, just an exponential anger.
Strangely, however, what stays in my mind even more clearly about that winter is my visit weeks later to Steffi's old room. She has since departed, returned to Denmark and the nursing career she always talked of. Behind her bed and above her thin pillow, pinned to the wall, is the rose I gave her that night in Bethlehem. It is dried and dark, like some Chinese herbal remedy, and something about it makes me feel empty.

It's raining. I can hear it rattling on the roof like tin tacks. Outside on the veranda I lace my work boots and kick the stanchion, loosening the dried mud from their treads. There is a low cold mist and the rainwater is beginning to run down the walls of the hut, collecting in puddles and running rivulets over the dusty earth. I'm leaving in a week so I'm trying to savour these moments. I breathe in deeply and the air smells of vegetation.
Eddie left last month, disappeared one night taking with him the wallets of several volunteers, a camera, and Tom's twelve-string guitar. I don't think anyone was surprised and something about it even amuses me. I wonder if I'll ever see him again? But Tom is staying on, he's found a nice Jewish girl and it all looks hunky-dory. I'll miss them both.
Sometimes in my quieter moments I find myself wishing I could stay here, wishing I belonged. I'm jealous; the Jews have an identity, they belong and they are something and I, I kind of feel a little lost sometimes, a little aimless. But I know it's not easy, only last week the Palestinians attacked again, blew up a night club in Tel Aviv. The kids' phones were ringing as they cleared up the bodies. Jesus Christ, I've queued outside those clubs.

< 19 >
I climb the cold stone steps, hands deep in my coat pockets. There is a pigeon lying in the road in front of me; one of its wings is still twitching but I think it's dead. I flick it with the toe of my muddy boot and watch it settle in the long wet grass. I can hear the hollow rattle of the diesel engine in the distance, and as I stand and wait for the wagon to take me down to the valley I think about the poison. There is so much of it in this small country I wonder how it will ever survive.

The Wicker Husband

Ursula Wills-Jones

The Wicker Husband

Once upon a time, there was an ugly girl. She was short and dumpy, had one leg a bit shorter than the other, and her eyebrows met in the middle. The ugly girl gutted fish for a living, so her hands smelt funny and her dress was covered in scales. She had no mother or brother, no father, sister, or any friends. She lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of the village, and she never complained.
One by one, the village girls married the local lads, and up the path to the church they'd prance, smiling all the way. At the weddings, the ugly girl always stood at the back of the church, smelling slightly of brine. The village women gossiped about the ugly girl. They wondered what she did with the money she earnt. The ugly girl never bought a new frock, never made repairs to the house, and never drank in the village tavern.
Now, it so happened that outside the village, in a great damp swamp, lived an old basket-maker who was famed for the quality of his work. One day the old basket-maker heard a knock on his door. When he opened it, the ugly girl stood there. In her hand, she held six gold coins.
'I want you to make me a husband,' she said.
'Come back in a month,' he replied.
Well, the old basket-maker was greatly moved that the ugly girl had entrusted him with such an important task. He resolved to make her the best husband he could. He made the wicker husband broad of shoulder and long of leg, and all the other things women like. He made him strong of arm and elegant of neck, and his brows were wide and well-spaced. His hair was a fine dark brown, his eyes a greenish hazel.
When the day came, the ugly girl knocked on the basket-maker's door.
'He says today is too soon. He will be in the church tomorrow, at ten,' said the basket-maker. The ugly girl went away, and spent the day scraping scales from her dress.

< 2 >
Later that night, there was a knock on the door of the village tailor. When the tailor opened it, the wicker husband stood outside.
'Lend me a suit,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church naked.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the tailor, and ran out the back door.
The tailor's wife came out, wiping her hands. 'What's going on?' she said.
'Lend me a suit,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I cannot go to my wedding naked.'
The tailor's wife gave him a suit, and slammed the door in his face.
Next, there was a knock on the door of the village shoe-maker. When the shoe-maker opened it, the wicker husband stood there.
'Lend me some shoes,' he said. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to church barefoot.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the shoe-maker, and he ran out the back door.
The shoe-maker's wife came out, her hands trembling.
'What do you want?' she said.
'Lend me some shoes,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married in the morning, and I cannot go to my wedding barefoot.'
The shoe-maker's wife gave him a pair of shoes, and slammed the door in his face. Next, the wicker husband went to the village inn.
'Give me a drink,' said the wicker husband. 'I am getting married tomorrow, and I wish to celebrate.'
'Aaaaaaargh!' yelled the inn-keeper and all his customers, and out they ran. The poor wicker husband went behind the bar, and poured himself a drink.
When the ugly girl got to church in the morning, she was mighty pleased to find her husband so handsome, and so well turned-out.

When the couple had enjoyed their first night of marriage, the wicker husband said to his wife: 'This bed is broken. Bring me a chisel: I will fix it.'

< 3 >
So like a good husband, he began to fix the bed. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she came back at the end of the day, the wicker husband looked at her, and said: 'I was made to be with you.'
When the couple had enjoyed their second night of marriage, the wicker husband said: 'This roof is leaky. Bring me a ladder: I will fix it.'
So, like a good husband, he climbed up and began to fix the thatch. The ugly girl went out to gut fish. When she returned in the evening, the wicker husband looked at his wife, and said: 'Without you, I should never have seen the sun on the water, or the clouds in the sky.'
When the couple had enjoyed their third night of marriage, the ugly girl got ready to out. 'The chimney needs cleaning,' she said, hopefully, 'And the fire could be laid...' But at this, the wicker husband - she was just beginning to learn his expressions - looked completely terrified. From this, the ugly girl came to understand that there are some things you cannot ask a man to do, even if he is very kind.
Over the weeks, the villagers began to notice a change in the ugly girl. If one of her legs was still shorter than the other, her hips moved with a swing that didn't please them. If she still smelt funny, she sang while she gutted the fish. She bought a new frock and wore flowers in her hair. Even her eyebrows no longer met in the middle: the wicker husband had pulled them out with his strong, withied fingers. When the villagers passed the ugly girl's house, they saw it had been painted anew, the windows sparkled, and the door no longer hung askew. You might think that all these changes pleased the villagers, but oh no. Instead, wives pointed out to husbands that their doors needed fixing, and why didn't they offer? The men retorted that maybe if their wives made an effort with new frocks and flowers in their hair, then maybe they'd feel like fixing the house, and everybody grumbled and cursed each other, but secretly, in their hearts, they blamed the ugly girl and her husband.

< 4 >
As to the ugly girl, she didn't notice all the jealousy. She was too busy growing accustomed to married life, and was finding that the advantages of a wicker husband outweighed his few shortcomings. The wicker husband didn't eat, and never complained that his dinner was late. He only drank water, the muddier the better. She was a little sad that she could not cook him dinner like an ordinary man, and watch him while he ate. In the cold nights, she hoped they would sit together close to the fire, but he preferred the darkness, far from the flames. The ugly girl got in the habit of calling across the room all the things she had to say to him. As winter turned to spring, and rain pelted down, the wicker husband became a little mouldy, and the ugly girl had to scrub him down with a brush and a bottle of vinegar. Spring turned to summer, and June was very dry. The wicker husband complained of stiffness in his joints, and spent the hottest hour of the day lying in the stream. The ugly girl took her fish-gutting, and sat on the bank, keeping him company.
Eventually the villagers were too ridden with curiosity to stand it any longer. There was a wedding in the village: the ugly girl and her husband were invited. At the wedding, there was music and dancing, and food and wine. As the musicians struck up, the wicker husband and the ugly girl went to dance. The villagers could not help staring: the wicker husband moved so fine. He lifted his dumpy wife like she was nought but a feather, and swung her round and round. He swayed and shimmered; he was elegant, he was graceful. As for the ugly girl: she was in heaven.
The women began to whisper behind their hands. Now, the blacksmith's wife was boldest, and she resolved to ask the wicker husband to dance. When the music paused she went towards the couple. The ugly girl was sitting in the wicker husband's lap, so he creaked a little. The blacksmith's wife was about to tap the wicker husband on the shoulder, but his arms were wrapped round the ugly girl.

< 5 >
'You are the only reason that I live and breathe,' the wicker husband said to his wife.
The blacksmith's wife heard what he said, and went off, sulking. The next day there were many frayed tempers in the village.
'You've got two left feet!' shouted the shoe-maker's wife at her husband.
'You never tell me anything nice!' yelled the blacksmith's wife.
'All you do is look at other women!' shouted the baker's wife, though how she knew was a mystery, as she'd done nothing but stare at the wicker husband all night. The husbands fled their homes and congregated in the tavern.
'T'aint right,' they muttered, 'T'isn't natural.'
'E's showing us up.'
'Painting doors.'
'Fixing thatch.'
'Murmuring sweet nothings.'
'Dancing!' muttered the blacksmith, and they all spat.
'He's not really a man,' muttered the baker. 'An abomination!'
'He don't eat.'
'He don't grumble.'
'He don't even fart,' added the tailor, gloomily.
The men shook their heads, and agreed that it couldn't go on.
Meanwhile the women congregated in each other's kitchens.
'It's not right,' they muttered. 'Why does she deserve him?'
'It's an enchantment,' they whispered. 'She bewitched him.'
'She'll be onto our husbands next, I expect,' said the baker's wife. 'We should be careful.'
'She needs to be brought down a peg or two.'
'Fancies that she's better than the rest of us, I reckon.'
'Flowers in her hair!!'
'Did you see her dancing?'
And they all agreed that it couldn't go on.
One day the wicker husband was on his way back from checking the fish-traps, when he was accosted by the baker.

< 6 >
'Hello,' said the baker. The wicker husband was a little surprised: the baker never bothered to speak to him. 'You made an impression the other night.'
'I did?' said the wicker husband.
'Oh yes,' continued the baker. 'The women are all aflutter. Don't you ever think - well...'
'What?' said the wicker husband, completely confused.
'Man like you,' said the baker. 'Could do well for himself. A lot of opportunities...' He leaned forward, so the wicker husband recoiled. The baker's breath smelt of dough, which he found unpleasant. 'Butcher's wife,' added the baker meaningfully. 'Very taken. I know for a fact that he's not at home. Gone to visit his brother in the city. Why don't you go round?'
'I can't,' said the wicker husband. 'My wife's waiting for me at home.' And he strode off, up the lane. The baker went home, annoyed.
Now the wicker husband, who was too trusting, thought less of this of this than he should, and did not warn his wife that trouble was brewing. About a week later, the ugly girl was picking berries in the hedgerow, when the tailor's wife sidled up. Her own basket was empty, which made the ugly girl suspicious.
'My dear!' cried the tailor's wife, fluttering her hands.
'What d'you want?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife wiped away a fake tear, and looked in both directions. 'My dear,' she whispered. 'I'm only here to warn you. Your husband - he's been seen with other women.'
'What other women?' said the ugly girl.
The tailor's wife fluttered her hands. This wasn't going as she intended. 'My dear, you can't trust men. They're all the same. And you can't expect - a man like him, and a woman like you - frankly -'
The ugly girl was so angry that she hit the tailor's wife with her basket, and ran off, up the lane. The ugly girl went home, and - knowing more of cruelty than her husband did - thought on this too much and too long. But she did not want to upset her husband, so she said nothing.

< 7 >
The tailor's wife came home fuming, with scratches all over her face. That night, the wives and husbands of the village all agreed - for once - that something drastic had to be done.

A few days later the old basket-maker heard a knocking at his door. When he opened it, the villagers stood outside. Right on cue, the tailor's wife began to weep, pitifully.
'What's the matter?' said the old basket-maker.
'She's childless,' said the baker's wife, sniffing.
'Not a son,' said the tailor, sadly.
'Or a daughter.'
'No-one to comfort them in their old age,' added the butcher.
'It's breaking their hearts,' went on the baker.
'So we've come to ask -'
'If you'll make us a baby. Out of wicker.'
And they held out a bag of gold.
'Very well,' said the old basket-maker. 'Come back in a month.'
Well, one dusky day in autumn, the ugly girl was sitting by the fire, when there came a knock at the door. The wicker husband opened it. Outside, stood the villagers. The tailor's wife bore a bundle in her arms, and the bundle began to whimper.
'What's that?' said the ugly girl.
'This is all your fault,' hissed the butcher, pointing at the wicker husband.
'Look what you've done!' shouted the baker.
'It's an abomination,' sneered the inn-keeper. 'Not even human!'
The tailor pulled away the blanket. The ugly girl saw that the baby was made of wicker. It had the same shaped nose, the same green eyes that her husband did.
'Tell me it's not true!' she cried.
But the wicker husband said nothing. He just stared at the baby. He had never seen one of his own kind before, and now - his heart filled up with tenderness. When the ugly girl saw this on his face, a great cloud of bitterness came upon her. She sank to the floor, moaning.

< 8 >
'Filthy, foul, creature!' cried the tailor. 'I should burn it!' He seized the baby, and made to fling it into the blaze. At this, the wicker husband let out a yell. Forward he leapt.
The ugly girl let out a terrible cry. She took the lamp, and flung it straight at her husband. The lamp burst in shards of glass. Oil went everywhere. Flames began to lick at the wicker husband's chest, up his neck, into his face. He tried to beat at the flames, but his fingers grew oily, and burst into fire. Out he ran, shrieking, and plunged into the river.
'Well, that worked well,' said the butcher, in a satisfied manner.
The villagers did not spare a second glance for the ugly girl, but went home again to their dinners. On the way, the tailor's wife threw the wicker baby in the ditch. She stamped on its face. 'Ugh,' she said. 'Horrible thing.'
The next day the ugly girl wandered the highways, weeping, her face smeared in ashes.
'Have you seen my husband?' she asked passing travellers, but they saw madness in her eyes, and spurred their horses on. Dusk fell. Stumbling home, scarce knowing where she was, the ugly girl heard a sound in the ditch. Kneeling, she found the wicker baby. It wailed and thrashed, and held up its hands. The ugly girl saw in its face her husband's eyes, and her husband's nose. She coddled it to her chest and took it home.
Now, the old basket maker knew nothing of all this. One day, the old man took it into his head to see how his creations were faring. He walked into town, and knocked on the tailor's door. The wife answered.
'How is the baby?' he said.
'Oh that,' she said. 'It died.' And she shut the door in his face. The old basket-maker walked on, till he came to the ugly girl's place. The door was closed, the garden untended, and dirt smeared the windows. The old basket-maker knocked on the door. No-one answered, though he waited a very long time.

< 9 >
The old-basket maker went home, disheartened. He was walking the long dark road into the swamp, when he heard something in the rushes. At first he was afraid: he wrapped his scarf closer round his face. But the thing seemed to follow him. From time to time, it groaned.
'Who's there?' called the old man.
Out onto the roadway staggered the most broken and bedraggled, the most pathetic and pitiful thing. The old basket-maker stared at what was left of the wicker husband: his hands consumed by fire, his face equally gone. Dark pits of scorched wood marred his chest. Where he had burnt, he had started to rot.
'What have they done to my children?' cried the old basket-maker.
The wicker husband said nothing: he had lost his tongue.
The old basket-maker took the wicker husband home. As daylight came, the old basket-maker sat down to repair him. But as he worked, his heart grew hot with anger.
'I made you, but I failed you,' he said. 'I will not send you there again.'
Eventually, the wicker husband looked as good as new, though the smell of burning still clung. But as the days passed, a damp black mould began to grow on him. The old basket-maker pulled out the rotting withies and replaced them. But it seemed useless: the wicker husband rotted from the inside, outwards.
At last, the old basket-maker saw there was nothing else to be done. He took up his travelling cloak, set out at night, and passed through the village. He came to the ugly girl's house. In the garden, wreathed in filth, stood the ugly girl, cuddling a child. She was singing the saddest lullaby he had ever heard. The old basket-maker saw that the child was the one he'd made, and his heart softened a little. He stepped out of the shadows.
'Why do you keep the baby,' he said, 'when you cast your husband from home?'
The ugly girl cried out, to hear someone speak to her.

< 10 >
'It is all I have left of my husband,' she said at last. 'Though it is proof he betrayed me, I could not leave it in the ditch to die.'
'You are a fool,' he said. 'It was I that made the child. Your husband is innocent.'
At this, the ugly girl let out a cry, and ran towards the river. But old basket-maker caught her arm. 'Wait - I have something to show you,' he said.
The ugly girl walked behind him, through the swamp where the water sucked and burbled, carrying the baby. As the sun rose, she saw that its features were only those of the old basket-maker, who, like any maker, had passed down his face to his creations.
When they came to the dwelling, the ugly girl opened the door, and saw her husband, sitting in darkness.
'It cannot be you,' she said. 'You are dead. I know: I killed you myself.'
'I was made for you alone,' said the wicker husband, 'But you threw me away.'
The ugly girl let out a cry so loud, birds surfaced from the marches for miles around, and threw herself at her husband's feet.

A few days later, the villagers were surprised to see the old basket-maker standing outside the church.
'I have something to say,' he said. 'Soon I will retire. But first, I am making my masterwork - a woman made of wicker. If you want her, you can have her. But you must bring me a gift for my retirement. Whoever brings me the best gift can have the wicker woman.'
Then he turned round and went back to the swamp.
Behind him, the villagers began to whisper. Hadn't the wicker husband been tall and graceful? Hadn't he been a hard worker? Hadn't he been handsome, and eager to please his wife?
Next day, the entire village denied any interest in the wicker lady, but secretly began to plan. Men eyed up prize cows; women sneaked open jewellery boxes.

< 11 >
'That wicker husband worked like a slave, and never even ate,' said the shoe-maker's wife to her husband. 'Get me the wicker woman as a servant, I'll live like a lady, never lift a finger.'
'That wicker husband never quarrelled with anyone, never even raised his voice. Not like you, you old fishwife,' the inn-keeper said to his wife.
'That wicker husband never tired, and never had a headache,' said the butcher to the baker. 'Imagine...!'
'Lend me a shilling, cousin,' said the shoe-maker's wife. 'I need a new petticoat.'
'I can't,' lied the blacksmith's wife. 'I spent it on medicine. The child was very sick.'
'I need that back-rent you owe me,' said the butcher, who owned the tailor's house.
'Been a very bad season in the tailoring trade,' muttered the tailor. 'You'll get it soon.'
The butcher went into town, hired a lawyer, and got the tailor evicted from his house. The tailor and his wife had to go and live in the shoe-maker's shed.
'But what are you going to do with the empty house?' asked the butcher's wife.
'Nothing,' said the butcher, who thought the place would do admirably to keep a mistress. The butcher's wife and the tailor's wife had a fight in the market, and went home with black eyes. In the tavern, no-one spoke, but only eyed each other, suspiciously. The lawyer was still in town. Rumour had it that the tailor's wife was suing for divorce: the inn-keeper's wife had her husband arrested after she found the stairs had been greased. In short, the fields went uncut, the cows went unmilked, ovens uncleaned: the village was obsessed.
When the day came, the old basket-maker came to town, and sat on the churchyard wall. The villagers brought their gifts. First the tailor, who'd made a luxurious coat. Next the miller, bringing twelve sacks of grain. The baker made the most extravagant cake; the carpenter brought a table and chairs, the carter a good strong horse. The blacksmith's wife staggered up with a cheese the size of a millwheel. Her cousin, the tailor's wife, arrived with a bag of gold.

< 12 >
'Where d'you get that, wife?' said her husband, amazed.
'Never you mind,' she snapped.
The inn-keeper's wife wasn't there: she'd slipped while climbing the stairs.
Last to come was the butcher. He'd really outdone the others: two oxen, four cows, and a dozen sheep.
The old-basket maker looked around him. 'Well,' he said. 'I think the prize goes to... the butcher. I'll just take these and be back, with the wicker lady.'
The butcher was so pleased, spittle ran from his mouth.
'Can I have my grain back?' said the miller.
'No no,' said the old man. 'That wasn't the bargain.' And he began to load all the goods onto the horse. The villagers would have fallen on each other, fighting, but they were so desperate to see the wicker lady, they just stood there, to wait.
It was dusk by the time the basket-maker returned. The wicker woman was seated on the horse, shrouded in a cloak, veiled like a bride. From under the cloak, white flowers fell. As she passed the villagers, a most marvellous smell drifted down.
The butcher stood outside the tailor's old house. He'd locked his wife in the coal cellar in preparation.
The old basket-maker held out a hand, and helped the lady dismount. The butcher smelt her fragrance. From under the veil, he thought he saw her give him a saucy glance. He was so excited, he hopped from foot to foot.
The wicker lady lifted her veil: she took off her cloak. The butcher stared at her. The wicker lady was short of stature and twisted of limb, her face was dark and rough. But worse than that - from head to foot, she was covered in thorns.
'What have you done?' shrieked the butcher.
'Ah,' said the old basket-maker. 'The wicker husband was made of willow. Willow is the kindest of trees: tall, elegant, pliable, of much assistance in easing pain. But I saw that you did not like him. Therefore I made you the wicker lady from blackthorn. Blackthorn is cold, hard, and thorny - it will not be killed, either by fire or frost.'

< 13 >
The villagers would have fallen on the old basket-maker there and then, had not the wicker lady stepped forward. She seized hold of the butcher and reached up to kiss him. The butcher let out a howl. When he pulled his lips away, they were shredded and tattered: blood ran down his chin. Then, with a bang, the butcher's wife broke out of the coal cellar, and ran down the road. Seeing the wicker lady kissing her husband, she screamed, and fell on her. The two of them rolled in the gutter, howling and scratching.
Just then, the lawyer piped up. 'Didn't you check the details first?' he said. 'It's very important. You should always check the small print.'
The men of the village took their butcher's knives and pitchforks and tailoring shears, and chased the lawyer out of town. When they'd run out of breath, they stopped.
'That old fraud the basket-maker,' said the baker. 'He tricked us.'
So they turned round and began to go back in the other direction, on the road into the swamp. In the darkness they stumbled and squelched, lost their way and nearly drowned. It was light by the time they came to the old basket-maker's dwelling, but the old basket-maker, the wicker husband, the ugly girl and the baby, as well as all the villagers' goods, had already upped, and gone.