Open Lines / Giacomo Casanova / History of My Life

Giacomo Casanova

OPEN LINES

HISTORY OF MY LIFE

by Giacomo Casanova

I begin by declaring to my reader that, by everything good or bad that I have done throughout my life, I am sure that I have earned merit or incurred guilt, and that hence I must consider myself a free agent. ... Despite an excellent moral foundation, the inevitable fruit of the divine principles which were rooted in my heart, I was all my life the victim of my senses; I have delighted in going astray and I have constantly lived in error, with no other consolation than that of knowing I have erred. ... My follies are the follies of youth. You will see that I laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me

Giacomo Casanova 
History of My Life. New York 
Everyman's Library, New York, 2006, pages 15 -16.

Casanova, Histoire de ma vie, Gérard Lahouati and Marie-Françoise Luna, ed., Gallimard, Paris (2013) 

Famous first words / Well begun is half done

SUMMER READING

SUMMER READING; FAMOUS FIRST WORDS: WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE

Published: June 2, 1985

In the spirit of summer playfulness, The Book Review asked several writers: What is your favorite opening passage in a work of literature, and why? Some recalled their favorites instantly; others pondered the question for a while before choosing. But all these authors revealed a fondness for other writers' enticements, a willingness to be grabbed and held captive from the start. Elmore Leonard Author of ''Glitz.''

''La Fiesta Brava'' by Barnaby Conrad. ''On August 27, 1947, a multimillionaire and a bull killed each other in Linares, Spain, and plunged an entire nation into deep mourning. The bull's name was Islero, and he was of the miura strain. The man's name was Manolete, and he was the essence of everything Spanish. His story is the embodiment of la fiesta brava.'' It must be my favorite, because it's the only opening passage of a book I can recall and recite word-for-word some 35 years later, and be moved by it. With a simple documentary sound, the passage sets the stage for drama, tragedy, and never fails to give me a chill. Walker Percy Author of ''Lost in the Cosmos.'' My choice is the first sentence of the first novel ever written - and perhaps still the best - ''Don Quixote.'' It goes: ''In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of those gentlemen who always have a lance in the rack, an ancient buckler, a skinny nag, and a greyhound for the chase.'' My pleasure derives both from the sense of what Cervantes must have been feeling when he wrote it and from the anticipation of the coming adventures of the Knight of the Mournful Countenance.

Here is Cervantes, a failed writer in his late 50's, who has come to that fateful pass when failure is just that, defeat, or by some mysterious dispensation reverses itself and confers a freedom all its own. ''What the hell,'' one can imagine Cervantes saying to himself, ''I've tried it their way all my life. Now I'll amuse myself. What's to lose?''

And so there comes to life before one's very eyes that marvel of all great literature, the character or characters who, drenched in the particularities of a place and a time, achieve the universal human experience without seeming to - humor but something more, satire and philosophy without one single lapse into that overkill and dead prose to which satirists and philosophers fall prey.

All Cervantes did in this sentence was to show all future novelists and readers what the novelist can do and what the novel is about. Angela Carter Author of ''Nights at the Circus.'' ''Call me Ishmael.'' I should think Melville whooped and hollered with glee when he thought of that. The effect is as if some demented stranger with whom you have made casual eye contact in the street, an ancient mariner perhaps, suddenly grabs your collar and demands: ''Call me Ishmael.'' Why Ishmael? Why not Tom, Dick or Harry? Or Herman? Surely his name is Herman? But no, he wants you to call him Ishmael. He insists on it. And you're hooked. You know this man has a story. You know he is about to mesmerize you with it. And his story is ''Moby-Dick,'' the best novel in the entire world. This Ishmael or Herman or whoever he is turns out to be no half-crazed seafarer but possibly the most rational person ever to live on the Eastern Seaboard. Thomas McGuane Author of ''Something to Be Desired.'' Famous opening passages all seem to deserve their fame even when time gives the prominent ones a Polonian air of wise old stuff. One of my favorites has stayed fresh for years, retaining a special insolence and truth, however loosely applied.

''Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments.'' - Joseph Conrad, ''The Shadow Line.''

Apart from disparaging youth, always a festive thing, Conrad lights one of his famous smoldering fuses. By the time the thing goes off, we have traveled - while Conrad gradually dissolves into his own pages - from no-moments to excruciating momentousness and beyond; miraculously polishing for another age the chestnut that life is but . . . a moment! The starting line, the deadline, the finish line are all interstices between innocence and experience, and all underline the sumptuousness of mortality. But ''The Shadow Line'' has a navigational air. And the word ''shadow'' is not used accidentally. Frank Herbert Author of ''Chapterhouse: Dune.'' I'm a collector of narrative hooks, and I always hunt for beautiful examples of them. They are the essence of suberb writing. One is from M. F. K. Fisher's ''Consider the Oyster'': ''The oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.'' I choose it for brevity and because it does what a narrative hook is supposed to do - it gives you the key, the essential of what you're going to read about in a tantalizing way. It grabs you and hauls you bodily into the story. Bobbie Ann Mason Author of ''Shiloh and Other Stories.''

I love the first page of

Nabokov's ''Lolita.'' It starts, ''Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'' It goes on in that vein and then you get to ''You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.'' The actual beginning of the novel is the ironic foreword by ''John Ray Jr., Ph.D.,'' in which we learn that both Humbert Humbert and Lolita are dead, but that isn't the beginning one remembers. The first chapter, four paragraphs long, evokes the whole sordid story of scheming, professorly Humbert and all-American schoolgirl Dolores Haze. ''She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.'' Lolita and Humbert are two of the most unforgettable characters in literature - an ordinary little girl and a man sick with the disease of romanticism. He thought of Dolores Haze as Lolita, a ''nymphet,'' instead of a real little girl in dirty socks. Herman Wouk Author of ''Inside, Outside.'' Opening passage, Genesis 1: ''In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.'' Direction of interest is at the heart of literature, and here in the very first sentence of the book we meet the Protagonist in action. The picture of Creation could not be more forceful and stark. Dramatically, the effect is smashing. We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eyeblink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves. And we already know the master theme of the book, the primal giving of form to chaos by a Presence; the enigmatic and still unfathomed great event of our beginnings. Stephen King Author of ''Skeleton Crew.''

''All the King's Men'' by Robert Penn Warren. ''To get there you follow Highway 58 . . . You look up the highway and it is straight for miles . . . with the black line down the center coming at you and at you . . . and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you . . . and if you don't quit staring at that line and don't take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you'll hypnotize yourself and you'll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab . . . and maybe you'll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. But you won't make it, of course.'' I like it because it invites the reader in. He is addressed directly with his name, which is always ''you.'' It's a very intimate opening, very welcoming. There's a photographic reality that I respond to. The road he's describing is a negative of what I'm used to -instead of a black road with a white stripe it's a white road with a black stripe. Reynolds Price Author of ''A Palpable God.'' The opening sentence I can quote from memory is a famous stunner - ''Call me Ishmael'' - but most of the novels I return to in affection or need are clandestine in their strategies. They don't so much open as start. They mean to go far on a minimum of wind; and it's their deceptive shyness, their refusal to strut, that wins me. (Commanded to ''Call me Ishmael,'' I'm tempted to irreverent replies - ''Call me anything; just don't call me late to dinner!'') Of living novelists, none has produced a book I admire more than ''A Sport and a Pastime,'' by James Salter. In its peculiar compound of lucid surface and dark interior, it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know. But it sidles at the start, in an ostensibly phlegmatic but somehow desperate voice: ''September. It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up again. It is being replenished.'' Published in 1961, the novel has often been unavailable but is due back soon. Any reader who's missed it - and who can face an extraordinary (and extraordinarily tender) sexual candor - should repair the omission. Gloria Vanderbilt Author of ''Once Upon a Time.'' ''In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.'' - ''The Divine Comedy'' by Dante.

This strikes into the center of the dark night of the soul. Unforgettable, haunting, mysterious - the spirit plunges into the abyss. At the same moment it gives a kind of wild hope - a surge of will, a determination to find the road back from darkness into light. Gloria Naylor Author of ''Linden Hills.'' ''Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow. A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that did not sprout; nobody's did. Not even the gardens fronting the lake showed marigolds that year. . . . We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair. . . . Cholly Breedlove is dead; our innocence too. The seeds shriveled and died; her baby too.

''There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.''

Each writing seminar I teach begins with having my students read Toni Morrison's ''Bluest Eye.'' I believe that by taking apart the first novel of any great writer, we can see plainly what strategies failed since it is a first work and where the germ of artistic brilliance lies since it is that particular author. With this passage, one of the novel's opening sections, I can demonstrate all the major elements of a writer's art simply through an exegesis of three short paragraphs. While the novel handles a weighty subject - the demoralization of black female beauty in a racist society - it whispers in the mode of minimalist poetry, thus resulting in the least common denominator for all classics: the ability to haunt. It alerts my students to the fact that fiction should be about storytelling, the ''why'' of things is best left to sociologists, the ''how'' is more than enough for writers to tackle, especially beginning writers. Laid out here before them are the plot, the characters, the pervading metaphor, and the voice that will weave them together. One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work. That first sentence is the DNA, spawning the second sentence, the second the third. ''The Bluest Eye'' - wasted beauty, thwarted dreams, and social complicity for it all: ''Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.'' Robert Ludlum Author of ''The Aquitaine Progression.'' ''It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.''

My God, what a grabber! As familiar as this is, the impact is still astonishing. The sweeping use of opposing extremes, the dramatic juxtaposition of times and ages and epochs - one just knows that a giant's at work and an enormous ball of a yarn is about to be unraveled. The author has at once set in motion the forces of storytelling by promising just about everything. A reader can't wait to enter the world of Charles Dickens's ''Tale of Two Cities.'' Judith Rossner Author of ''August.'' ''The small room was warm and moist.'' What I find when I look through books I've loved for wonderful opening lines are words so gripping as to make explanations unnecessary, such as:

''The boy Etzel had a presentiment of evil even before the man wearing a captain's cap turned up.'' ''The Maurizius Case,'' Jakob Wassermann.

''I am writing this book because I understand that 'revelations' are soon to appear about that great man who was once my husband, attacking his character, and my own.'' ''Prisoner of Grace'' Joyce Cary. But always I come back to that opening of infinite promise from a seminal work of my childhood: ''The small room was warm and moist. Furious blasts of thunder made the window-panes rattle and lightning seemed to streak through the room itself. No one had dared say what each was thinking -that this storm, violent even for mid-March, must be an evil omen.''

The woman giving birth in that room dies there, but the baby lives. Her name is Forever Amber, and her creator is Kathleen Winsor.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Open Lines / Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton
BIOGRAPHY
ETHAN FROME

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

If you know Starckfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was.

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starckfield, though he was but the ruin of a man. It was not so much his great height that marked him, for the ‘‘natives’’ were easily singled out by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in this face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Strarckfield in pre-trolley days and knew he chronicle of all the families on his line.

Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction

New York, Bantam Books, 1987

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

ETHAN FROME

Esta historia me la contaron, fragmentariamente, varias personas y, como suele suceder en tales casos, cada vez era una historia distinta.

Si conoce usted Starkfield, Massachusetts, sabrá dónde está la oficina de correos, tiene que haber visto subir hasta allí a Ethan Frome, soltar las riendas de su bayo de hundido lomo y cruzar cansinamente el suelo de ladrillo hasta la columnata blanca: y seguro que alguna vez se ha preguntado quién es.

Fue allí donde le vi por primera vez, hace ya varios años, y la verdad es que me impresionó mucho su aspecto. Todavía era el personaje más sorprendente de Starkfiield, pese a ser ya sólo una ruina de hombre. No era su elevada estatura lo que le hacía destacar, pues los «nativos» se diferenciaban claramente por su flaca altura de las gentes de origen extranjero, más bajas y achaparradas: era aquel aspecto vigoroso e indiferente, pese a una cojera que frenaba cada uno de sus pasos como el tirón de una cadena. Había algo lúgubre e inabordable en su rostro y estaba tan tieso y canoso que le tomé por un viejo y me sorprendí mucho al enterarme de que no tenía más de cincuenta y dos años. Me lo dijo Harmon Grow, que había conducido la diligencia de Bettsbridge a Starkfield en los tiempos en que aún no había ferrocarril y que conocía la crónica de todas las familias del trayecto.

Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome

Barcelona, Ediciones B, 1997

Open Lines / The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

THE GREAT GATSBY

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

Great Britain, Penguin Books, 1950

F. Scott Fitzgerald

EL GRAN GATSBY

En mi primera infancia mi padre me dio un consejo que, desde entonces, no ha cesado de darme vueltas por la cabeza.

«Cada vez que te sientas inclinado a criticar a alguien —me dijo— ten presente que no todo el mundo ha tenido tus ventajas…»

F. Scott Fitzgerald

El  gran Gatsby                                

Barcelona, Plaza y Janés S.A. Editores, 1971

Open Lines / Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

OF MICE AND MEN

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees—willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool.

They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other. Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both were black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags in paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely.

John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men

New York, Penguin Books, 1993

John Steinbeck

DE RATONES Y HOMBRES

Unas millas al sur de Soledad, el Río Salinas se ahonda junto al margen de la ladera y fluye profundo y verde. Es tibia el agua, porque se ha deslizado chispeante sobre la arena amarilla y al calor del sol antes de llegar a la angosta laguna. A un lado del río, las doradas cuestas de la ladera se van curvando y trepando hasta las montañas de Gabilán, fuertes y rocosas, pero del lado del valle el agua está bordeada por árboles: sauces frescos y verdes con cada primavera, que en las junturas más bajas de sus hojas muestran los rezagos de la crecida invernal; y sicomoros de troncos veteados, blancos, recostados, y ramas que se arquean sobre el estanque. En la arenosa orilla, bajo los árboles, yacen espesas las hojas, y tan quebradizas, que las lagartijas hacen un ruido como un chisporroteo si corren entre ellas. Los conejos salen del matorral para sentarse en la arena, al atardecer, y los húmedos bajíos están cubiertos por las huellas nocturnas de los coatíes, y por los manchones donde se han revolcado los perros de los ranchos, y por las marcas como cuñas partidas dejadas por los cuervos que llegan a abrevar en la oscuridad.

Hay un sendero a través de los sauces y entre los sicomoros, un sendero de piso endurecido por el paso de los niños que vienen de los ranchos a nadar en la profunda laguna, y por el de los vagabundos que a la noche llegan cansados desde la carretera a levantar campamento cerca del agua. Frente al bajo tronco horizontal de un sicomoro gigante se alza una pilada de cenizas, resto de muchos fuegos; el tronco está pulido por los hombres que se han sentado en él.

El atardecer de un día cálido puso en movimiento una leve brisa entre las hojas. La sombra trepó por las colinas hacia la cumbre. Sobre la orilla de arena, los conejos estaban sentados, quietos como grises piedras esculpidas. Y de pronto, desde la carretera estadual, llegó el sonido de pasos sobre frágiles hojas de sicomoro. Los conejos corrieron sin ruido a ocultarse. Una zancuda garza se remontó trabajosamente en el aire aleteó aguas abajo. Por un momento estuvo sin vida el lugar, y luego los dos hombres emergieron del sendero y asomaron en la abertura junto a la laguna.

John Steinbeck

De ratones y hombres

Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana S.A., 1953

Open Lines / Jaws

Peter Bachley

JAWS

PART 1

Chapter 1

The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills. There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin – as a bird changes direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain. The fish might have been asleep, save for the movement dictated by countless millions of years of instinctive continuity: lacking the flotation bladder common to other fish and the fluttering flaps to push oxygen-bearing water through its gills, it survived only by moving. Once stopped, it would sink to the bottom and die of anoxia. The land seemed almost as dark as the water, for there was no moon. All that separated sea from shore was a long, straight stretch of beach – so white that it shone. From a house behind the grass-splotched dunes, lights cast yellow glimmers on the sand. The front door to the house opened, and a man and a woman stepped out onto the wooden porch. They stood for a moment staring at the sea, embraced quickly, and scampered down the few steps onto the sand. The man was drunk, and he stumbled on the bottom step. The woman laughed and took his hand, and together they ran to the beach."First a swim," said the woman, "to clear your head."

"Forget my head," said the man. Giggling, he fell backward onto the sand, pulling the woman down with him. They fumbled with each other's clothing, twined limbs around limbs, and thrashed with urgent ardor on the cold sand. Afterward, the man lay back and closed his eyes. The woman looked at him and smiled. "Now, how about that swim?" she said.

 "You go ahead. I'll wait for you here."

 The woman rose and walked to where the gentle surf washed over her ankles. The water was colder than the night air, for it was only mid-June. The woman called back, "You're sure you don't want to come?" But there was no answer from the sleeping man.

She backed up a few steps, then ran at the water. At first her strides were long and graceful, but then a small wave crashed into her knees. She faltered, regained her footing, and flung herself over the next waist-high wave. The water was only up to her hips, so she stood, pushed the hair out of her eyes, and continued walking until the water covered her shoulders. There she began to swim – with the jerky, head-above-water stroke of the untutored.

A hundred yards offshore, the fish sensed a change in the sea's rhythm. It did not see the woman, nor yet did it smell her. Running within the length of its body were a series of thin canals, filled with mucus and dotted with nerve endings, and these nerves detected vibrations and signaled the brain. The fish turned toward shore.

The woman continued to swim away from the beach, stopping now and then to check her position by the lights shining from the house. The tide was slack, so she had not moved up or down the beach. But she was tiring, so she rested for a moment, treading water, and then started for shore.

 The vibrations were stronger now, and the fish recognized prey. The sweeps of its tail quickened, thrusting the giant body forward with a speed that agitated the tiny phosphorescent animals in the water and caused them to glow, casting a mantle of sparks over the fish.

The fish closed on the woman and hurtled past, a dozen feet to the side and six feet below the surface. The woman felt only a wave of pressure that seemed to lift her up in the water and ease her down again. She stopped swimming and held her breath.

Feeling nothing further, she resumed her lurching stroke. The fish smelled her now, and the vibrations – erratic and sharp – signaled distress. The fish began to circle close to the surface. Its dorsal fin broke water, and its tail, thrashing back and forth, cut the glassy surface with a hiss. A series of tremors shook its body.

 For the first time, the woman felt fear, though she did not know why. Adrenaline shot through her trunk and her limbs, generating a tingling heat and urging her to swim faster. She guessed that she was fifty yards from shore. She could see the line of white foam where the waves broke on the beach. She saw the lights in the house, and for a comforting moment she thought she saw someone pass by one of the windows.

The fish was about forty feet from the woman, off to the side, when it turned suddenly to the left, dropped entirely below the surface, and, with two quick thrusts of its tail, was upon her.

 At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up, feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot. She reached higher on her leg, and then she was overcome by a rush of nausea and dizziness. Her groping fingers had found a hub of bone and tattered flesh. She knew that the warm, pulsing flow over her fingers in the chill water was her own blood.

Pain and panic struck together. The woman threw her head back and screamed a guttural cry of terror.

The fish had moved away. It swallowed the woman's limb without chewing. Bones and meat passed down the massive gullet in a single spasm. Now the fish turned again, homing on the stream of blood flushing from the woman's femoral artery, a beacon as clear and true as a lighthouse on a cloudless night. This time the fish attacked from below. It hurtled up under the woman, jaws agape. The great conical head struck her like a locomotive, knocking her up out of the water. The jaws snapped shut around her torso, crushing bones and flesh and organs into a jelly. The fish, with the woman's body in its mouth, smashed down on the water with a thunderous splash, spewing foam and blood and phosphorescence in a gaudy shower.

Below the surface, the fish shook its head from side to side, its serrated triangular teeth sawing through what little sinew still resisted. The corpse fell apart. The fish swallowed, then turned to continue feeding. Its brain still registered the signals of nearby prey. The water was laced with blood and shreds of flesh, and the fish could not sort signal from substance. It cut back and forth through the dissipating cloud of blood, opening and closing its mouth, seining for a random morsel. But by now, most of the pieces of the corpse had dispersed. A few sank slowly, coming to rest on the sandy bottom, where they moved lazily in the current. A few drifted away just below the surface, floating in the surge that ended in the surf. The man awoke, shivering in the early morning cold. His mouth was sticky and dry, and his wakening belch tasted of Bourbon and corn. The sun had not yet risen, but a line of pink on the eastern horizon told him that daybreak was near. The stars still hung faintly in the lightening sky. The man stood and began to dress. He was annoyed that the woman had not woken him when she went back to the house, and he found it curious that she had left her clothes on the beach. He picked them up and walked to the house.

 He tiptoed across the porch and gently opened the screen door, remembering that it screeched when yanked. The living room was dark and empty, littered with half-empty glasses, ashtrays, and dirty plates. He walked across the living room, turned right down a hall, past two closed doors. The door to the room he shared with the woman was open, and a bedside light was on. Both beds were made. He tossed the woman's clothes on one of the beds, then returned to the living room and switched on a light. Both couches were empty.

There were two more bedrooms in the house. The owners slept in one. Two other house guests occupied the other. As quietly as possible, the man opened the door to the first bedroom. There were two beds, each obviously containing only one person. He closed the door and moved to the next room. The host and hostess were asleep on each side of a king-size bed. The man closed the door and went back to his room to find his watch. It was nearly five.

He sat on one bed and stared at the bundle of clothes on the other. He was certain the woman wasn't in the house. There had been no other guests for dinner, so unless she had met someone on the beach while he slept, she couldn't have gone off with anyone.

And even if she had, he thought, she probably would have taken at least some of her clothes. Only then did he permit his mind to consider the possibility of an accident. Very quickly the possibility became a certainty. He returned to the host's bedroom, hesitated for a moment beside the bed, and then softly placed his hand on a shoulder.

"Jack," he said, patting the shoulder. "Hey, Jack."

The man sighed and opened his eyes.

"What?"

"It's me. Tom. I hate like hell to wake you up, but I think we may have a problem."

 "What problem?"

 "Have you seen Chrissie?"

"What do you mean, have I seen Chrissie? She's with you."

 "No, she isn't. I mean, I can't find her."

 Jack sat up and turned on a light. His wife stirred and covered her head with a sheet. Jack looked at his watch.

"Jesus Christ. It's five in the morning. And you can't find your date."

"I know," said Tom. "I'm sorry. Do you remember when you saw her last?"

"Sure I remember. She said you were going for a swim, and you both went out on the porch. When did you see her last?"

"On the beach. Then I fell asleep. You mean she didn't come back?"

"Not that I saw. At least not before we went to bed, and that was around one.

"I found her clothes."

"Where? On the beach?"

"Yes."

"You looked in the living room?"

 Tom nodded.

"And in the Henkels' room."

"The Henkels' room!"

Tom blushed.

"I haven't known her that long. For all I know she could be a little weird. So could the Henkels. I mean, I'm not suggesting anything. I just wanted to check the whole house before I woke you up."

"So what do you think?"

"What I'm beginning to think," said Tom, "is that maybe she had an accident.Maybe she drowned."

Jack looked at him for a moment, then glanced again at his watch.

"I don't know what time the police in this town go to work," he said, "but I guess this is as good a time as any to find out."

Open Lines / The Autumn of the Patriarch

BIOGRAPHY

THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH

By Gabriel García Márquez

Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.

Gabriel García Márquez

EL OTOÑO DEL PATRIARCA

Durante el fin de semana los gallinazos se metieron por los balcones de la casa presidencial, destrozaron a picotazos las mallas de alambre de las ventanas y removieron con sus alas el tiempo estancado en el interior, y en la madrugada del lunes la ciudad despertó de su letargo de siglos con una tibia y tierna brisa de muerto grande y de podrida grandeza.

Open Lines / Pride and Prejudice

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

By Jane Austen

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Jane Austen

ORGULLO Y PREJUICIO

Traducción de Patricia Franco Lommers

Es por todos conocido que un hombre soltero en posesión de una gran fortuna debe encontrarse en búsqueda de una esposa.

         Aunque poco se sepa de los sentimientos u opiniones de tal hombre al llegar a un nuevo vecindario, esta verdad está aceptada de tal forma entre las familias vecinas, que se le llega a considerar una propiedad legítima de otra de sus hijas.

Jane Austen

Obras selectas

Madrid, Edimat Libros, 2002

The World of Jane Austen

Jane Austen

ORGULLO Y PREJUICIO

Traducción de José Luis Florit

Se admite universalmente que un soltero poseedor de buena fortuna debe tomar esposa.

         Aun siendo los sentimientos y opiniones de tal hombre poco conocidos a su llegada a una vecindad cualquiera, está tan arraigada aquella creencia en las familias que lo rodean, que lo consideran propiedad indiscutible de una u otra de sus hijas.

Jane Austen

Orgullo y prejuicio

México, Editorial Cumbre, 1956