Рецензенты: канд. филол. наук Н.Е.Кунина,

Рецензенты: канд. филол. наук Н.Е.Кунина,

Канд. пед. наук М.Г.Федотова.

 

 

© Издательство ЮУрГУ, 2004.

Методические рекомендации для студентов

 

Средибольшого числа аспектов практического курса основного иностранного языка особое место занимает аспект «Домашнее чтение».

Цель данного пособия – достижение глубокого понимания произведений, развитие и закрепление навыков чтения, говорения, аудирования, письменной и устной (особенно неподготовленной) речи.

Учебное пособие содержит задания к 13 рассказам английских и американских авторов, каждое из которых представляет собой систему заданий по прочитанному тексту. Также в пособие включены тексты 5 рассказов.

Работа с оригинальным текстом предполагает некоторые трудности, поэтому:

— при переводе слов и выражений рекомендуется обращать внимание на их контекстное значение, а также пользоваться как англо-русским, так и англо-английским словарями;

— при ответах на вопросы следует давать развернутое высказывание с опорой на текст;

— перевод предлагаемого отрывка следует выполнять письменно;

— стилистический анализ выделенного отрывка следует делать в письменном виде;

— к устному зачету рекомендуется подготовить все темы. При ответе учитывается умение пользоваться изученным лексическим материалом. Рекомендуется составить план монологического высказывания. На подготовку отводится 15 минут.

 

Методические рекомендации для преподавателей

 

Рабочая программа по домашнему чтению для студентов факультета Лингвистики предусматривает знакомство с целым рядом произведений художественной англоязычной прозы. Учебное пособие по домашнему чтению на иностранном языке разработано на основе оригинальных, неадаптированных произведений, представляющих познавательный интерес для студентов.

Выбор произведений обусловлен их художественными особенностями, проблематикой, а также лингво-культурным фактором.

Назначение пособия – обеспечить организацию самостоятельной (внеаудиторной) и аудиторной деятельности студентов, направленной на основательное изучение художественных произведений английских и американских авторов и их обсуждения по частям и в целом, анализ их идейно-образной системы, а также контроль понимания прочитанного.

Цель пособия – достижение глубокого понимания произведений и обеспечение организации этого понимания в речевой деятельности; развитие и закрепление навыков чтения, говорения, аудирования, письменной и устной речи, интерпретации аутентичного художественных произведений.

Учебное пособие состоит из заданий к 13 рассказам, каждое из которых представляет собой систему заданий по прочитанному тексту. В пособие включены тексты 5 рассказов. Практикуется проведение промежуточных контрольных работ для контроля обучения лексике.

Развитие умений и навыков всех видов речевой деятельности осуществляется в результате выполнения системы упражнений, состоящей из текстовых и послетекстовых заданий.

Текстовые и послетекстовые задания строятся на базе усвоенной лексики и грамматических структур.

К послетекстовым заданиям относятся задания на проверку понимания прочитанного, а также оценку степени сформированности умений чтения. На этой стадии определяется, насколько возможно использование полученной информации.

Основными принципами организации урока являются свободное общение между студентами, обсуждение поставленных проблем. Преподаватель, в свою очередь, должен направлять ход дискуссии, поощрять использование студентами текста, а также осуществлять контроль над степенью владения материалом. Следует поощрять студентов задавать собственные вопросы к прочитанному, таким образом достигая глубокого понимания тех этических и общечеловеческих проблем, которые поднимаются в данных произведениях. Рекомендуется написание изложений, сочинений, эссе.

Тексты пяти рассказов взяты из художественной литературы [1-5].

T. Dreiser

“Ernestine” (pp. 3 – 39)

 

V. Summarize the story.

 

VI. Imagine Ernestine could have left a letter, what would she have written in it about?

 

W. Faulkner

“An Error in Chemistry” (pp. 40 – 68)

 

V. Summarize the story.

 

VI. Reproduce the whole story from Joel Flint’s point of view.

 

S. Anderson

“The Teacher” (pp. 69 – 80)

“The Strength of God” (pp. 81 – 92)

 

VI. Summarize the story.

 

VI. Summarize the story.

 

VII. Write a letter that Honoria might have written to her father saying how miserable she was about not living with him.

 

E. Hemingway

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (pp. 126 – 178)

 

I. Find and present some additional information about the author and his style of writing.

 

VII. Summarize the story.

 

W. Saroyan

“The Cocktail Party” (pp. 179 – 211)

 

VII. Summarize the story.

 

J. Cheever

“The Sutton Place Story” (pp. 212 – 237)

 

VI. Summarize the story.

 

R. Lardner

“Who Dealt?” (pp. 238 – 253)

 

VII. Summarize the story.

 

Katherine Mansfield

“Bliss”

 

although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at — nothing — at nothing, simply.

What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss — absolute bliss! — as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?...

Oh, is there no way you can express it without being “drunk and disorderly”? How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?

“No, that about the fiddle is not quite what I mean,” she thought, running up the steps and feeling in her bag for the key — she’d forgotten it, as usual — and rattling the letter-box. “It’s not what I mean, because — Thank you, Mary” she went into the hall, ”Is nurse back?”

“Yes, M’m”.

“And has the fruit come?”

“Yes, M’m. Everything’s come”.

“Bring the fruit up to the dining-room, will you? I’ll arrange it before I go upstairs”.

It was dusky in the dining-room and quite chilly. But all the same Bertha threw off her coat; she could not bear the tight clasp of it another moment, and the cold air fell on her arms.

But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place — that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror — but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something... divine to happen... that she knew must happen... infallibly.

Mary brought in the fruit on a tray and with it a glass bowl, and a blue dish, very lovely, with a strange sheen on it as though it had been dipped in milk.

“Shall I turn on the light, M’m?”

“No; thank you. I can see quite well”.

There were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. Some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. These last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. Yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. She had thought in the shop: “I must have some purple ones to bring the carpet up to the table.” And it had seemed quite sense at the time.

When she had finished with them and had made two pyramids of these bright round shapes, she stood away from the table to get the effect — and it really was most curious. For the dark table seemed to melt into the dusky light and the glass dish and the blue bowl to float in the air. This, of course in her present mood, was so incredibly beautiful.... She began to laugh.

“No, no. I’m getting hysterical.” And she seized her bag and coat and ran upstairs to the nursery.

Nurse sat at a low table giving Little B her supper after her bath. The baby had on a white flannel gown and a blue woollen jacket, and her dark, fine hair was brushed up into a funny little peak. She looked up when she saw her mother and began to jump.

“Now, my lovey, eat it up like a good girl,” said Nurse, setting her lips in a way that Bertha knew, and that meant she had come into the nursery at another wrong moment.

“Has she been good, Nanny?”

“She’s been a little sweet all the afternoon,” whispered Nanny. “We went to the park and I sat down on a chair and took her out of the pram and a big dog came along and put its head on my knee and she clutched its ear, tugged it. Oh, you should have seen her”.

Bertha wanted to ask if it wasn’t rather dangerous to let her clutch at a strange dog’s ear. But she did not dare to. She stood watching them, her hands by her side, like the poor little girl in front of the rich little girl with the doll.

The baby looked up at her again, stared, and then smiled so charmingly that Bertha couldn’t help crying:

“Oh, Nanny, do let me finish giving her her supper while you put the bath things away”.

“Well, M’m, she oughtn’t to be changed hands while she’s eating,” said Nanny, still whispering. “It unsettles her; it’s very likely to upset her”.

How absurd it was. Why have a baby if it has to be kept — not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle — but in another woman’s arms?

“Oh, I must!” said she.

Very offended, Nanny handed her over.

“Now, don’t excite her after her supper. You know you do, M’m. And I have such a time with her after!”

Thank heaven! Nanny went out of the room with the bath towels.

“Now I’ve got you to myself, my little precious,” said Bertha, as the baby leaned against her.

She ate delightfully, holding up her lips for the spoon and then waving her hands. Sometimes she wouldn’t let the spoon go; and sometimes, just as Bertha had filled it, she waved it away to the four winds.

When the soup was finished Bertha turned round to the fire.

“You’re nice — you’re very nice!” said she, kissing her warm baby. “I’m fond of you. I like you”.

And, indeed, she loved Little B so much — her neck as she bent forward, her exquisite toes as they shone transparent in the firelight — that all her feeling of bliss came back again, and again she didn’t know how to express it — what to do with it.

“You’re wanted on the telephone,” said Nanny, coming back in triumph and seizing her Little B.

Down she flew. It was Harry.

“Oh, is that you, Ber? Look here. I’ll be late. I’ll take a taxi and come along as quickly as I can, but get dinner put back ten minutes — will you? All right?”

“Yes, perfectly. Oh, Harry!”

“Yes?”

What had she to say? She’d nothing to say. She only wanted to get in touch with him for a moment. She couldn’t absurdly cry: “Hasn’t it been a divine day!”

“What is it?” rapped out the little voice.

“Nothing. Entendu, ” said Bertha, and hung up the receiver, thinking how more than idiotic civilization was.

They had people coming to dinner. The Norman Knights — a very sound couple — he was about to start a theatre, and she was awfully keen on interior decoration, a young man, Eddie Warren, who had just published a little book of poems and whom everybody was asking to dine, and a “find” of Bertha’s called Pearl Fulton. What Miss Fulton did, Bertha didn’t know. They had met at the club and Bertha had fallen in love with her, as she always did fall in love with beautiful women who had something strange about them.

The provoking thing was that, though they had been about together and met a number of times and really talked, Bertha couldn’t yet make her out. Up to a certain point Miss Fulton was rarely, wonderfully frank, but the certain point was there, and beyond that she would not go.

Was there anything beyond it? Harry said “No.” Voted her dullish, and “cold like all blonde women, with a touch, perhaps, of anaemia of the brain”. But Bertha wouldn’t agree with him; not yet, at any rate.

“No, the way she has of sitting with her head a little on one side, and smiling, has something behind it, Harry, and I must find out what that something is”.

“Most likely it’s a good stomach,” answered Harry. He made a point of catching Bertha’s heels with replies of that kind... “liver frozen, my dear girl”, or “pure flatulence”, or “kidney disease”,... and so on. For some strange reason Bertha liked this, and almost admired it in him very much.

She went into the drawing-room and lighted the fire; then picking up the cushions, one by one, that Mary had disposed so carefully, she threw them hack on to the chairs and the couches. That made all the difference; the room came alive at once. As she was about to throw the last one she surprised herself by suddenly hugging it to her, passionately, passionately. But it did not put out the fire in her bosom. Oh, on the contrary!

The windows of the drawing-room opened on to a balcony overlooking the garden. At the far end, against the wall, there was a tall, slender pear tree in fullest, richest bloom; it stood perfect, as though becalmed against the jade-green sky. Bertha couldn’t help feeling, even from this distance, that it had not a single bud or a faded petal. Dow below, in the garden beds, the red and yellow tulips, heavy with flowers, seemed to lean upon the dusk. A grey cat, dragging its belly, crept across the lawn, and a black one, its shadow, trailed after. The sight of them, so intent and so quick, gave Bertha a curious shiver.

“What creepy things cats are!” she stammered, and she turned away from the window and began walking up and down....

How strong the jonquils smelled in the warm room. Too strong? Oh, no. And yet, as though overcome, she flung down on a couch and pressed her hands to her eyes.

“I’m too happy — too happy!” she murmured.

And she seemed to see on her eyelids the lovely pear tree with its, wide open blossoms as a symbol of her own life.

Really — really — she had everything. She was young. Harry and she were as much in love as ever, and they got on together splendidly and were really good pals. She had an adorable baby. They didn’t have to worry about money. They had this absolutely satisfactory house and garden. And friends — modern, thrilling friends, writers and painters and poets or people keen on social questions — just the kind of friends they wanted. And then there were books, and there was music, and she had found a wonderful little dressmaker, and they were going abroad in the summer, and their new cook made the most superb omelettes....

“I’m absurd. Absurd!” She sat up; but she felt quite dizzy, quite drunk. It must have been the spring.

Yes, it was the spring. Now she was so tired she could not drag herself upstairs to dress.

 

A white dress, a string of jade beads, green shoes and stockings. It wasn’t intentional. She had thought of this scheme hours before she stood at the drawing-room window.

Her petals rustled softly into the hall, and she kissed Mrs Norman Knight, who was taking off the most amusing orange coat with a procession of black monkeys round the hem and up the fronts.

“...Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy — so utterly without a sense of humour! My dear, it’s only by a fluke that I am here at all — Norman being the protective fluke. For my darling monkeys so upset the train that it rose to a man and simply ate me with its eyes. Didn’t laugh — wasn’t amused — that I should have loved. No, just stared — and bored me through and through”.

“But the cream of it was,” said Norman, pressing a large tortoiseshell-rimmed monocle into his eye, “you don’t mind me telling this, Face, do you?” (In their home and among their friends they called each other Face and Mug.) “The cream ofit was when she, being full fed, turned to the woman beside her and said: “Haven’t you ever seen a monkey before?”

“Oh, yes!” Mrs Norman Knight joined in the laughter. “Wasn’t that too absolutely creamy?”

And a funnier thing still was that now her coat was off she did look like a very intelligent monkey — who had even made that yellow silk dress out of scraped banana skins. And her amber ear-rings; they were like little dangling nuts.

“This is a sad, sad fall!” said Mug, pausing in front of Little B’s perambulator. “When the perambulator comes into the hall — “ and he waved the rest of the quotation away.

The bell rang. It was lean, pale Eddie Warren (as usual) in a state of acute distress.

“It is the right house, isn’t it?” he pleaded.

“Oh, I think so — I hopeso,” said Bertha brightly.

“I have had such a dreadful experience with a taxi-man; he was most sinister. I couldn’t get him to stop. The more I knocked and called the faster he went. And in the moonlight this bizarre figure with the flattened head crouching over the little wheel...”

He shuddered, taking off an immense white silk scarf. Bertha noticed that his socks were white, too — most charming.

“But how dreadful!” she cried.

“Yes, it really was,” said Eddie, following her into the drawing-room. “I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi”.

He knew the Norman Knights. In fact, he was going to write a play for N. K. when the theatre scheme came off.

“Well, Warren, how’s the play?” said Norman Knight, dropping his monocle and giving his eye a moment in which to rise to the surface before it was screwed down again.

And Mrs Norman Knight: “Oh, Mr Warren, what happy socks?”

“I am so glad you like them,” said he, staring at his feet. “They seem to have got so much whiter since the moon rose.” And he turned his lean sorrowful young face to Bertha. “There is a moon, you know”.

She wanted to cry: “I am sure there is — often — often!”

He really was a most attractive person. But so was Face, crouched before the fire in her banana skins, and so was Mug, smoking a cigarette and saying as he flicked the ash: “Why doth the bridegroom tarry?”

“There he is, now”.

Bang went the front door open and shut. Harry shouted: “Hullo, you people. Down in five minutes.” And they heard him swarm up the stairs. Bertha couldn’t help smiling; she knew how he loved doing things at high pressure. What, after all, did an extra five minutes matter? But he would pretend to himself that they mattered beyond measure. And then he would make a great point of coming into the drawing-room, extravagantly cool and collected.

Harry had such a zest for life. Oh, how she appreciated it in him. And his passion for fighting — for sacking in everything that came up against him another test of his power and of his courage — that, too, she understood. Even when it made him just occasionally, to other people, who didn’t know him well, a little ridiculous perhaps.... For there were moments when he rushed into battle where no battle was.... She talked and laughed and positively forgot until he had come in (just as she had imagined) that Pearl Fulton had not turned up.

“I wonder if Miss Fulton has forgotten?”

“I expect so,” said Harry. ”Is she on the phone?”

“Ah! There’s a taxi, now.” And Bertha smiled with that little air of proprietorship that she always assumed while her women finds were new and mysterious. “She lives in taxis”.

“She’ll run to fat if she does,” said Harry coolly, ringing the bell for dinner. “Frightful danger for blonde women”.

“Harry — don’t,” warned Bertha, laughing up at him.

Came another tiny moment, while they waited, laughing and talking, just a trifle too much at their ease, a trifle too unaware. And then Miss Fulton, all in silver, with a silver fillet binding her pale blonde hair, came in smiling, her head a little on one side.

“Am I late”

“No, not at all,” said Bertha. “Come along.” And she took her arm and they moved into the dining-room.

What was there in the touch of that cool arm that could fan — fan — start blazing — blazing — the fire of bliss that Bertha did not know what to do with?

Miss Fulton did not look at her; but then she seldom did look at people directly. Her heavy eyelids lay upon her eyes and the strange half smile came and went upon her lips as though she lived by listening rather than seeing. But Bertha knew, suddenly, as if the longest, most intimate look had passed between them — as if they had said to each other: “You, too?” — that Pearl Fulton, stirring the beautiful red soup on the grey plate, was feeling just what she was feeling.

And the others? Face and Mug, Eddie and Harry, their spoons rising and falling — dabbing their lips with their napkins, crumbling bread, fiddling with the forks and glasses and talking.

“I met her at the Alpha show — the weirdest little person. She’d not only cut off her hair, but she seemed to have taken a dreadfully good snip off her legs and arms and her neck and her poor little nose as well”.

“Isn’t she very liee with Michael Oat?”

“The man who wrote Love in False Teeth?”

“He wants to write a play for me. One act. One man. Decides to commit suicide. Gives all the reasons why he should and why he shouldn’t. And just as he has made up his mind either to do it or not to do it — curtain. Not half a bad idea”.

“What’s he going to call it “Stomach Trouble”?”

“I think I’ve come across the same idea in a little French review, quite unknown in England”.

No, they didn’t share it. They were dears — dears — and she loved having them there, at her table, and giving them delicious food and wine. In fact, she longed to tell them how delightful they were, and what a decorative group they made, how they seemed to set one another off and how they reminded her of a play by Chekhov.

Harry was enjoying his dinner. It was part of his — well, not his nature, exactly, and certainly not his pose — his — something or other — to talk about food and to glory in his “shameless passion for the white flesh of the lobster” and “the green of pistachio ices — green and cold like the eyelids of Egyptian dancers”.

When he looked up at her and said: “Bertha, this is a very admirable soufflee!” she almost could have wept with childlike pleasure.

Oh, why did she feel so tender towards the whole world tonight? Everything was good — was right. All that happened seemed to fill again her brimming cup of bliss.

And still, in the back of her mind, there was the pear tree. It would be silver now, in the light of poor dear Eddie’s moon, silver as Miss Fulton, who sat there turning a tangerine in her slender fingers that were so pale a light seemed to come from them.

What she simply couldn’t make out — what was miraculous — was how she should have guessed Miss Fulton’s mood so exactly and so instantly. For she never doubted for a moment that she was right, and yet what had she to go on? Less than nothing.

“I believe this does happen very, very rarely between women. Never between men,” thought Bertha. “But while I am making the coffee in the drawing-room perhaps she will ‘give a sign’”.

What she meant by that she did not know, and what would happen after that she could not imagine.

While she thought like this she saw herself talking and laughing. She had to talk because of her desire to laugh.

“I must laugh or die”.

But when she noticed Face’s funny little hahit of tucking something down the front of her bodice — as if she kept a tiny, secret hoard of nuts there, too — Bertha had to dig her nails into her hands — so as not to laugh too much.

 

It was over at last. And: “Come and see my new coffee machine,” said Bertha.

“We only have a new coffee machine once a fortnight,” said Harry. Face took her arm this time; Miss Fulton bent her head and followed after.

The fire had died down in the drawing-room to a red, flickering “nest of baby phoenixes”, said Face.

“Don’t turn up the light for a moment. It is so lovely.” And down she crouched by the fire again. She was always cold... “without her little red flannel jacket, of course,” thought Bertha.

At that moment Miss Fulton “gave the sign”.

“Have you a garden?” said the cool, sleepy voice.

This was so exquisite on her part that all Bertha could do was to obey. She crossed the room, pulled the curtains apart, and opened those long windows.

“There!” she breathed.

And the two women stood side by side looking at the slender, flowering tree. Although it was so still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to quiver in the bright air, to grow taller as they gazed — almost to touch the rim of the round, silver moon.

How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands?

For ever — for a moment? And did Miss Fulton murmur: “Yes. Just that. ”Or did Bertha dream it?

Then the light was snapped on and Face made the coffee and Harry said: “My dear Mrs Knight, don’t ask me about my baby. I never see her. I shan’t feel the slightest interest in her until she has a lover,” and Mug took his eye out of the conservatory for a moment and then put it under glass again and Eddie Warren drank his coffee and set down the cup with a face of anguish as though he had drunk and seen the spider.

“What I want to do is to give the young men a show. I believe London is simply teeming with first-chop, unwritten plays. What I want to say to ‘emis: “Here’s the theatre. Fire ahead”.

“You know, my dear, I am going to decorate a room for the Jacob Nathans. Oh, I am so tempted to do a fried-fish scheme, with the backs of the chairs shaped like frying pans and lovely chip potatoes embroidered all over the curtains”.

“The trouble with our young writing men is that they are still too romantic. You can’t put out to sea without being seasick and wanting a basin. Well, why won’t they have the courage of those basins?”

“A dreadful poem about a girl who was violated by a beggar without a nose in a little wood...”

Miss Fulton sank into the lowest, deepest chair and Harry handed round the cigarettes.

From the way he stood in front of her shaking the silver box and saying abruptly: “Egyptian? Turkish? Virginian? They’re all mixed up,” Bertha realized that she not only bored him; he really disliked her. And she decided from the way Miss Fulton said: “No, thank you, I won’t smoke,” that she felt it, too, and was hurt.

“Oh, Harry, don’t dislike her. You are quite wrong about her. She’s wonderful, wonderful. And, besides, how, can you feel so differently about someone who means so much to me. I shall try to tell you when we are in bed tonight what has been happening. What she and I have shared”.

 

At those last words something strange and almost terrifying darted into Bertha’s mind. And this something blind and smiling whispered to her: “Soon these people will go. The house will be quiet — quiet. The lights will be out. And you and he will be alone together in the dark room — the warm bed...”

She jumped from her chair and ran over to the piano.

“What a pity someone does not play!” she cried. “What a pity somebody does not play”.

For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired her husband.

Oh, she’d loved him — she’d been in love with him, of course, in every other way, but just not in that way. And, equally, of course, she’d understood that he was different. They’d discussed it so often. It had worried her dreadfully at first to find that she was so cold, but after a time it had not seemed to matter. They were so frank with each other — such good pals. That was the best of being modern.

But now — ardently! ardently! The word ached in her ardent body! Was this what that feeling of bliss had been leading up to? But then —

“My dear,” said Mrs Norman Knight, “you know our shame. We are victims of time and train. We live in Hampstead. It’s been so nice”.

“I’ll come with you into the hall,” said Bertha. “I loved having you. But you must not miss the last train. That’s so awful, isn’t it?”

“Have a whisky, Knight, before you go?” called Harry.

“No thanks, old chap”.

Bertha squeezed his hand for that as she shook it.

“Good night, good-bye,” she cried from the top step, feeling that this self of hers was taking leave of them for ever.

When she got back into the drawing-room the others were on the move.

“… Then you can come part of the way in my taxi”.

“I shall be so thankful not to have to face another drive alone after my dreadful experience”.

“You can get a taxi at the rank just at the end of the street. You won’t have to walk more than a few yards”.

“That’s a comfort. I’ll go and put on my coat”.

Miss Fulton moved towards the hall and Bertha was following when Harry almost pushed past.

“Let me help you”.

Bertha knew that he was repenting his rudeness — she let him go. What a boy he was in some ways — so impulsive — so — simple.

And Eddie and she were left by the fire.

“I wonder if you have seen Bilks’ new poem called Table d’Hote, ” said Eddie softly. “It’s so wonderful. In the last anthology. Have you got a copy? I’d so like to show it to you. It begins with an incredibly beautiful line: “Why must it always be tomato soup?”

“Yes,” said Bertha. And she moved noiselessly to a table opposite the drawing-room door and Eddie glided noiselessly after her. She picked up the little book and gave it to him; they had not made a sound.

While he looked it up she turned her head towards the hall. And she saw... Harry with Miss Fulton’s coat in his arms and Miss Fulton with her back turned to him and her head bent. He tossed the coat away, put his hands on her shoulders, and turned her violently to him. His lips said; “I adore you,” and Miss Fulton laid her moonbeam fingers on his cheeks and smiled her sleepy smile. Harry’s nostrils quivered; his lips curled back in a hideous grin while he whispered: “Tomorrow,” and with her eyelids Miss Fulton said: “Yes.”

“Here it is,” said Eddie.” “Why must it always be tomato soup?” It’s so deeply true, don’t you feel? Tomato soup is so dreadfully eternal”.

“If you prefer,” said Harry’s voice, very loud, from the hall, “I can phone you a cab to come to the door”.

“Oh, no. It’s not necessary,” said Miss Fulton, and she came up to Bertha and gave her the slender fingers to hold.

“Good-bye. Thank you so much”.

“Good-bye,” said Bertha.

Miss Fulton held her hand a moment longer.

“Your lovely pear tree!” she murmured.

And then she was gone, with Eddie following, like the black cat following the grey cat.

“I’ll shut up shop,” said Harry, extravagantly cool and collected.

“Your lovely pear tree — pear tree — pear tree!”

Bertha simply ran over to the long windows.

“Oh, what is going to happen now?” she cried.

But the pear tree was lovely as ever and as full of flowers and as still.

 

The tasks for the story

 

I. Find and present some additional information about the author and her style of writing.

 

VI. Summarize the story.

VII. Picture the same day, the same circumstances, and the same people at the dinner party through Harry’s eyes. Make up his inner monologue.

 

John Cheever

“Frere Jacques”

 

Five minutes before she drove into the yard behind the camp, he could hear the car coming down the dirt road. Its sound was hard to distinguish from the sound of the wind that had come up that day at dark, brushing through the tops of the pines. Then the headlights swept the room like the drunken light of a hurricane lamp, and, he heard the motor idle and stall. She whistled to him. Then she called to him through the screen door:

“Open the door, please, Alex. I’m loaded down with bundles and Heloise is cutting up”.

Her voice sounded tired. He opened the door and she came into the room. In the crook of one arm she was carrying a large bundle of fresh laundry, holding it against her breast as if it were a child. In the other arm she had a lot of small packages.

“Back so soon?” he said. He was Russian and he spoke with a slight accent. “It didn’t take you long. Did you get everything?”

“Kiss me,” she said.

He kissed her.

“Did you get everything?” he asked again.

“Yes,” she said. “The Times, nails, the padlock,the laundry. The post office was closed, but I dropped our forwarding address in the mailbox.Oh, Alex, this business of moving gets me down. Look at my hands.” She held up her left hand to show him. It was trembling.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. It makes me tired, too”.

“It’s not that I’ve done anything,” she said. “It’s just the business of making the break. And this bloody weather. The way that wind blows up”.

“Yes, I know,” he said.

She handed him the Times and laid down all of the parcels but the laundry bundle. She still held that affectionately in the crook of her arm. She was tired and he noticed it. Her face was pale and slightly drawn, and her voice was tired. Her yellow hair was trussed up simply at the crown of her head, and it made her look younger than her twenty-two years and accentuated the tiredness and restlessness of her features. He lit a lamp and sat down to read the paper. He was interested in the Spanish trouble and he was anxious to find who was holding Madrid.

“Mrs. Wiley said she was sorry to see us go,” she said. “She hasn’t swindled anyone on a laundry bill the way she swindled us for years. And I said good-bye to the butcher and the garage man for you. It’s surprising how many people you can get to know in two weeks. And I bought an ice cream for Heloise”.

“You’re telling me,” he said, without looking up from the paper. “It’s all over her face. Chocolate?”

“Yes,” she said, “chocolate. If you have a handkerchief I’ll wipe it off”.

He reached into his pocket and took out a large, clean handkerchief. He always had clean handkerchiefs. She took the handkerchief and daubed at the face of the laundry bundle with it as if she were wiping the ice cream from a child’s mouth. The joke of the laundry bundle was an old one. Every bundle of salt, sugar, corn meal, flour, or laundry that she had carried, during the two years they had lived together, she had called Heloise, and they had talked lightly and facetiously over it as if it were their child. She was very young and this strained talk was some of the tenderest that had gone between them. But he was ten years older than she and he often tired of it. He was tired of it on that evening, and it was a strain for him to keep it up.

“Any better?” she asked, holding up the bundle for him to see.

“Much better,” he said. “Did honey like the ice cream?”

“Tell Daddy how good the ice cream was,” she said, jogging the bundle tenderly on her arm.

“Has the little girl lost her tongue?” he said.

He was bored and irritated by it, but he kept it up for her sake.

“Oh, well,” she said, “she’s as tired as we, and we can’t expect her to talk all the time. I do wish we could bring her up in the country, Alex. She’d be a brighter baby”.

“Money,” he said.

“Yes, darling,” she said, “I know. Back to Bank Street for you, Heloise”.

He went back to his paper and she stood at the open door, looking out onto the lake. The oppressive clouds were filling in with dark, like sailcloth, and the lake was beginning to chop under a northeast wind. The clouds and the wind and the dark were all bearing up from the narrows, and in the gray light the lake seemed to have something as hostile and defenseless about it as the seaboard.

“There’s nothing more to do?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Her persistence in talking while he tried to read irritated him. “We can leave the keys here. We ought to get to bed soon. I want to start early in the morning. I’d like to get back to the city before dark”.

“That outboard sounds like a hornet,” she said.

The single sound above the chopping of the waves was the droning of an outboard, way up beyond Basin Bay.

“What did you say about hornets?”

“That outboard,” she said; “it sounds like a hornet”.

“Oh,” he said.

“Want to go swimming?” she said. She stood with her back to him, looking out over the lake. She was still holding the laundry bundle.

“It’s too cold,” he said.

“No, Alex, it’s not too cold. And it’s our last chance to go swimming until next summer. And when you come out the air seems warmer”.

“You know what the doctor said”.

“To hell with the doctor”.

“Well, go swimming if you want. You’ll have to go alone”.

“I don’t want to go swimming alone,” she said quietly.

“Why don’t you sit down and enjoy yourself;” he said. “It’s your last chance”.

“I am enjoying myself,” she said. “Heloise and I are having the time of our lives, aren’t we, Heloise? Just a couple of bugs in a rug. See the gull?”

“Where?” he said, putting down his paper again.

“Right over there”.

“Oh, yes”.

A gray gull, a shade lighter than the overcast sky, rode above the water, hunting.

“I didn’t know gulls liked fresh water,” she said.

“They come down the St. Lawrence,” he said, “and then down Champlain”.

“I’ll bet they get homesick for the ocean,” she said.

For a long time neither of them spoke. He thought she had left the room, but when he looked up she was still standing there. The room had grown dark, but her white espadrille and her dress seemed to hold the light.He could still see them distinctly.

“Can we have a fire, Alex?” she said.

“It’s not cold enough”.

“Oh, I don’t want it for that. It’s just that it would be a nice evening to have a fire. This is the kind of weather to have fires. It makes me feel lonely — the noise of that wind”.

“Anyhow, there isn’t any wood,” he said. “We burned it all last night”.

“Well, let’s do something,” she said. “Let’s play double Canfield”.

“I’m too tired,” he said.

“You get tired easier than I”.

“I’m older than you”.

“Love me, Alex?”

“Sure, but I’m tired”.

“I don’t know why I’m so restless,” she said. “I hate moving and I hate autumn. When I was nine years old, Grandfather took me up to Boston to buy some school clothes and we stayed at an old hotel and it smelled just like this camp. I had to get out of bed to go to the bathroom and I was terrified. I can still remember it”.

He wished she would stop talking.

“Well, Heloise,” she said, patting the bundle, “maybe some day we’ll have money and we can have a house in the country. We’ll live in the same place year in and yearout and do all of those things that Mother remembers. Oh, living on Bank Street, honey, wouldn’t give you the faintest idea of what a life can be — a life without Mrs. Weiner and Mrs. White and Mrs. Deutsch and Daddy’s drinking companions ringing the doorbell all the time. Sometimes you think you’ve just dreamed it or imagined it, sweet, but it actually exists. The trucks don’t take your sleep away. It’s quiet at night. Daddy can hunt and Mummy can have a horse. ‘Bye-low, baby bunting,’ “ she sang, cradling the bundle, “Daddy’s gone a-hunting, to get himself a rabbit skin, to wrap his baby bunting in”.

She hesitated and bent over the bundle. She was very good at mimicry, and the angle of her arms and shoulders and the tone of her voice were absorbed and affectionate.

“Isn’t that sweet?” she whispered. “She’s fallen asleep. The poor little tyke is tired. She’s such a good egg, Alex. Here we’ve dragged her off to the country and now we’re dragging her back to the city, and not one word of complaint. Some babies would squall; but not Heloise. She looks a lot like you when she’s asleep. Something about the eyes. Don’t you think?”

“Yes," he said. He tried to show in the tone of one word how tired he was of her talk.

“We’ll have to have her photographed,” she went on. She spoke in a low voice, as if she were afraid she would wake the bundle. “We must keep a record of her golden months. I’ll get in Honnegen-Hunne. Both of our mothers were Boston women”.

“Please,” he said, “I’m trying to read”.

“All right,” she said.

He was sorry to have spoken shortly and he looked over to where she was standing. He thought he heard her cough.

“That wind is cold, darling,” he said. “You’d better put a sweater on”.

She didn’t answer him. Then he saw that she was not coughing, but that she was crying. She was sobbing like a runner who is tired and short of breath.

“Now what’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” she said quietly.“ I want a child”.

“But why bring that up now? You know we can’t afford one”.

“Yes, I know. But I want one, I want one, I want one!” she cried hotly, turning to him. Her face was shining with tears. “I’m sick of this, Alex; I’m sick to my heart of this”.

“But why do you get yourself excited about it? You know there’s nothing we can do now”.

“Or ever”.

“But why do you get yourself excited by it?”

“There are some things we could do”.

“What?”

“You might marry me”.

“What difference would that make?”

“A great difference for me,” she said. “A human difference”.

“Don’t get sentimental”.

“Mother is sentimental, Heloise,” she said, “Comfort your sentimental mother. Reassure her. She feels as if she were falling”.

“Please,” he said tiredly, “don’t begin that”.

He put his hand on her shoulder, but she twisted quickly out of his reach.

“Father doesn’t understand us at all,” she said. She had stopped sobbing then and she was speaking to the bundle with great confidence.

“Father doesn’t understand us at all,” she repeated, “not at all. ‘ Mais ca ne fait rien, cherie. Pas du tout, pas du tout. Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques,’ ” she crooned.

“Stop it,” he pleaded, “please.”

“ ‘ Dormez-vouz? Dormez-vouz? Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines. ’ ”

He was frightened, then, for if they had been frankly separating in a cold depot, on a rainy pier, in the doorway of a restaurant, if she had been screaming and crying and drumming her heels on the floor, her words couldn’t have held more finality and estrangement than the simple, persistent words of that song.

 

The tasks for the story

 

VI. Summarize the story.

 

 

Stan Barstow

“The Search for Tommy Flynn”

 

On a December evening just three weeks before Christmas, after an uneasily mild day that had died in a darkening flush of violet twilight, Christie Wilcox came down into Cressley to look for his long-lost pal, Tommy Flynn.

His mates at the factory said Christie was only elevenpence-ha’penny in the shilling, and had been ever since the war; but like the management, they tolerated him, because he was able-bodied and harmless, and for most of the time as near normal as hardly mattered. For most of the time — except on the occasions when this blinding urge came over him, this unswervable obsession to find Tommy Flynn, the pal he had not seen since the night their ship was blown from under them. And then he would leave the little house on Cressley Common where he lived with his widowed mother and go down into the town to search. Sometimes he would stop someone on the street and ask, “Have you seen Tommy Flynn?” and the questioned would perhaps mutter something, or just pass by without a word, only a look, leaving Christie standing on the pavement edge, looking after them with helpless stupefied loneliness and dejection on his face and in the droop of his head and shoulders. But mostly he bothered no one, but simply scanned the features of people on the streets and opened the door of every pub he passed, searching the faces in the smoky taprooms and bars. Tommy Flynn had been a great one for pubs.

But he never found him. He never found him because They wouldn’t help him. They all knew where Tommy Flynn was but They wouldn’t tell Christie. They just looked at him with blank faces, or nodded and grinned and winked at one another, because They knew where Tommy Flynn was all the time, and They wouldn’t tell.

Some of Them had tried to tell him that Tommy Flynn was dead; but Christie knew otherwise. He knew that Tommy was alive and waiting for him to find him. Tommy needed him. The last words he had ever said to him were, “For Christ’s sake get me out of this, Christie!” And Christie had not been able to help. Why, he could not remember. But now he could help. Now he could help Tommy, if only he could find him.

He had walked the mile and a half from his home, letting the lighted buses career past him down the long winding road; and on the edge of town he began to look inside the pubs he passed, sometimes startling the people there by the sudden intensity of his face, all cheek-bones and jaw and dark burning eyes, as it appeared briefly in the doorway, then vanished again. And when, after more than two hours, he came to the centre of town, he was, as usual, no further in his search. He stood on a street corner and watched the faces of the people passing by. He even stood lost in contemplation of the suited dummies in the lighted window of a tailor’s shop, as though he hoped that one of them might suddenly move and reveal itself as his lost pal. And all the while the yearning, the terrible yearning despair in him grew into an agony, and he muttered hopelessly, over and over again, “Tommy, oh, Tommy, I can’t find you, Tommy”.

He wandered along a line of people queueing outside a cinema for the last show, looking at every face, his own face burning so oddly that it provoked giggles from one of a pair of girls standing there; and a policeman standing a little way along looked his way, as though expecting that Christie might at any moment whip off his cap and break into an illegal song and dance.

They laughed. They laughed because he could not find Tommy Flynn. Everybody against him: no one to help. Oh! if only he could find just one who would help him. He stopped and gazed at, without seeing, the “stills” in the case on the wall by the cinema entrance, then turned away.

Some time later the dim glow of light from a doorway along an alley took his attention. It occurred to him that this was a pub he had never been in before. A new place to search. He went down the alley, pushed open the door, and stepped along a short corridor, past the door marked “Ladies”, and into the single low-ceilinged L-shaped room of the pub. It was quiet, with only a very few people drinking there. Two men stood drinking from pint glasses and talking quietly. The landlord had stepped out for a moment and there was no one behind the bar. One of the two men knew Christie and greeted him.

“Now then, Christie lad”.

And almost at once he saw that Christie was not himself.

“Have you seen Tommy Flynn?” Christie asked him.

“Can’t say as I have, lad,” the man said, and his right eyelid fluttered in a wink at his companion, who now turned and looked at Christie also.

“Tommy Flynn?” the second man said. “Name sounds familiar”.

“You don’t know him,” the first man said. “He’s a pal of Christie’s. Isn’t he, Christie?”

“A pal,” Christie said.

“Well, he hasn’t been in here tonight. Has he, Walt?”

“That’s right. We haven’t seen him”.

“How long is it since you’ve seen him Christie?”

“A long time,” Christie mumbled. “A long time ago”.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” the man said: “you go on home, and we’ll keep an eye open for Tommy Flynn. And if we see him we’ll tell him you were looking for him. How’s that?”

“What about a drink afore you go?” the man called Walt said good-naturedly.

“He doesn’t drink, Walt,” the first man said.

“Don’t you smoke, either?” Walt asked.

Christie shook his head. He was beginning to feel confused and he looked from one to the other of them.

“But I’ll bet you’re a devil with the women”.

The first man laid a hand on his companion’s arm. “Easy, Walt”.

“Oh, I’m on’y kiddin ‘,”Walt said. “He doesn’t mind, do you, lad? Take a bit o’ kid, can’t you, eh?”

But the film of incomprehension had come down over Christie’s eyes and he just stood and looked at each of them in turn.

“I’ve got to go now,” he said in a moment.

“Aye, that’s right, Christie lad. Off you go home; an’ if we see Tommy Flynn we’ll tell him. Won’t we, Walt?”

“Course we will,” Walt said.

Christie had turned away from them before he remembered about the money, and he wondered if he should tell them so that they could tell Tommy Flynn. Tommy had always been so short of money. He put his hand into his pocket and took out some of the notes. Then, at once, he changed his mind and went out without saying anything.

The two men had already fumed back to their glasses and only one person in the bar saw the money in Christie’s hand: a middle-aged tart with greying hair dyed a copper red, a thin, heavily powdered face and pendant ear-rings, sitting at a corner table with a tall West Indian, his lean handsome features the colour of milk chocolate, wearing a powder-blue felt hat with the brim turned up all round. As Christie went out she got up, saying something about powdering her nose, and left the bar.

Outside in the alley Christie walked away from the pub, then stopped after a few paces, to stand indecisively on the cobbles. Always he came to this same point, the dead end, when there was no sign of Tommy Flynn, and nowhere else to look. He bowed his head and furrowed his brow in thought as his mind wrestled heavily with the problem.

Light sliced across the alley as the door of the pub opened, then banged shut again. The woman paused on the step, looking both ways, before stepping down and clicking across the cobbles to Christie.

He took no notice of her till she spoke at his side.

“Did you say you were looking for somebody?”

And then Christie’s head jerked up and his eyes, level with the woman’s, blazed.

“Tommy Flynn,” he said. “I’m looking for Tommy Flynn. Have you seen Tommy Flynn?” he asked with breathless eagerness in his voice.

“What’s he look like?” the woman asked, playing for time.

But Christie only mumbled something she did not catch and then, the light gone from his eyes, “I’m looking for Tommy Flynn”.

A man entered the alley from the far end and walked along towards the pub. The woman took one step back into shadow. When the door of the pub had closed behind him the woman said:

“I know a Tommy Flynn.” And Christie came alive again as though a current of power had been passed through him.

“You do? You know Tommy Flynn? Where is he? Where’s Tommy Flynn?” His hand gripped her arm.

“I think I know where to find him,” the woman said. “Only... you’d have to make it worth my trouble like. I mean, I’ve left my friend an’ everythin’...” She stopped, realising that Christie was not taking in what she said. “Money, dear,” she said, with a kind of coarse delicacy.

“Money?I’ve got money. Lots of money.” He thrust his hand into his pocket and dragged out a fistful of notes. “Look — lots of money”.

Startled, the woman covered Christie’s hand with her own and looked quickly right and left along the alley.

“Just keep it in your pocket, dear, for the time being”.

She put her arm through his and turned him towards the mouth of the alley.

“C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s go find Tommy Flynn”.

Once across the lighted thoroughfare beyond the alley the woman led Christie into the gloom of back streets, hurrying him under the sheer dark walls of mills; and he followed with mute eagerness, sometimes doing more than follow as in his excited haste he pulled away so that he was leading, the woman occasionally having to break into a trot to keep pace with him.

“Not so fast, dear,” she said several times as Christie outpaced her. She was breathless. “Take it easy. We’ve plenty of time”.

And all the while she was thinking how to get the money away from Christie. He was simple, there was no doubt about that. But often simple people were stubborn and stupid and untrusting. She would have taken him into a pub on the pretext of waiting for this Tommy Flynn and got him to drink; only she did not want to be remembered afterwards as having been seen with him. So she led him on, her mind working, until they came to a bridge over the dark river. She pulled at his arm then and turned him on to a path leading down to the river bank.

“This way, dear”.

To the right the river ran between the mills and warehouses of the town; and to the left the footpath led under the bridge and beyond, where the river slid over dam stakes and flowed on through open fields. In the darkness under the bridge the woman stopped and made a pretence of looking at a watch. “It’s early yet,” she said. “Tommy Flynn won’t be home yet. Let’s wait here a while”.

She kept hold of Christie’s arm as she stood with her back to the stonework of the bridge.

“What d’you want Tommy Flynn for?”

“He’s my pal,” Christie said, stirring restlessly beside her.

“And haven’t you seen him lately?”

“No;.. I can’t find him. Nobody’ll ever tell me where he is... We were on a ship together... an’...” His voice tailed off. Then he said with a groan, “I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to”.

“We’ll find him,” the woman said, “in a little while.” And she looked at Christie in the darkness under the bridge.

For a moment then she stood away from him and fumbled with her clothes. “Why don’t you an’ me have a nice time while we’re waiting?” She took him and drew him to her, pressing his hand down between her warm thighs. “You like a nice time, don’t you?” she said into his ear.

“What about Tommy?” Christie said. “Where is he?”

“I know where Tommy is,” the woman said, her free hand exploring Christie’s pocket, where the money was.

“Why aren’t we going to him, then?”

“Because he’s not at home yet.” The woman kept patience in her voice. “I’ll tell you when it’s time to go”.

The thought had already come to her that he might be dangerous, and she recalled newspaper reports, which she read avidly, of women like herself being found strangled or knifed in lonely places. But there was always an element of risk in a life such as hers, and Christie seemed to her harmless enough. There was, too, the feel of all that money in her fingers, and greed was stronger than any timidity that might have troubled her. So she played for time in the only way she knew how.

“Why don’t you do something?” she said, moving her body against his. “You know what to do, don’t you? You like it, don’t you?”

The feel of her thighs moving soft and warm against his fingers roused momentary excitement in Christie, causing him to giggle suddenly.

“I know what you want,” he said. “You want me to —“ and he whispered the obscenity in her ear.

“That’s right,” the woman said. “You like it, don’t you? You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

“Me an’ Tommy,” Christie said. “We used to go with women. All over the world. All sorts of women”.

“That’s right. You and Tommy”.

“Tommy,” Christie said, and, his excitement with the woman broken, tore his hand free. “Tommy,” he said again, and looked away along the path.

He stepped away from her and her hand, pulling free of his pocket, retained its hold on the notes. She hastily adjusted her clothes as he moved away along the path.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “It’s early yet. It’s no good going yet”.

“I’m going now,” Christie said, walking away. “I’m going to find Tommy”.

Stepping out of the shadow of the bridge into moonlight, he stopped and threw up his arms, uttering a cry. Beside him now, the woman said, “What’s wrong?”

“Tommy,” Christie said, trembling violently. “Look, look, look”.

And following the wild fling of his arm the woman saw something dark bobbing in the greasy water by the dam stakes.

“Tommy!” Christie shouted, and the woman said, “Quiet, qu