International Short Stories: Two Portraits

International Short Stories: Two Portraits
Kate Chopin
United States, 1895

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Chopin (1852-1904) was born in the United States, in Missouri, the daughter of an Irish Catholic father and a French Creole mother. Her father died in 1855, and she was raised by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. In 1870, she married Oscar Chopin and lived with him and their six children in Louisiana. Her husband died in 1882.
In the early 1890s, Chopin gained national recognition as an outstanding short-story writer. Her major work, the novel The Awakening, appeared in 1899. Although his novel won the respect of literary critics, its sympathetic treatment of a woman’s sensuality shocked readers and reviewers throughout the United States. Her next collection of short stories was rejected by her publisher. Deeply hurt by the negative response to her work, Chopin wrote very little more. Her work remained virtually ignored until the 1960s.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY
The story takes place in the nineteenth century in the United States.
The title of Part I of the story is "The Wanton." Three dictionary definition of wanton are
1. an immoral or unchaste person,
2. a person who is playful,
3. a person who is undisciplined or spoiled,
The term is usually reserved for a woman.
The title of Part II of the story is "The Nun". A nun is a woman who belongs to a religious order and who has taken vows of chastity (virginity), poverty, and obedience. Other references to the Catholic religion include the baptismal font (a receptacle for holy water used to cleanse a person of original sin); convent (a building housing a community of nuns); the Blessed Sacrament (rite in which bread and wine are received as the body and blood of Jesus); the bleeding and agonizing Christ (Jesus Christ dying on the cross); and the Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus Christ).

I
The Wanton
Alberta having looked not very long into life, had not looked very far. She put out her hands to touch things that pleased her and her lips to kiss them. Her eyes were deep brown wells that were drinking, drinking impressions and treasuring them in her soul. They were mysterious eyes and love looked out of them.
Alberta was very fond of her mamma who was really not her mamma; and the beatings which alternated with the most amiable and generous indulgence, were soon forgotten by the little one, always hoping that there would never be another, as she dried her eyes.
She liked the ladies who petted her and praised her beauty, and the artist who painted it naked, and the student who held her upon his knee and fondled kissed her while he taught her to read and spell.
There was cruel beating about that one day, when her mamma happened to be in the mood to think her too old for fondling. And the student had called her mamma some very vile names in his wrath, and had asked the woman what else she expected.
There was nothing very fixed or stable about her expectations — what-ever they — as she had forgotten them the following day, and Alberta, consoled with a fantastic bracelet for her plump little arm and a shower of bonbons, installed herself again upon the student’s knee. She liked nothing better, and in time was willing to take the beating if she might hold his attentions and her place in his affections and upon his knee.
Alberta cried very bitterly when he went away. The people about her seemed to be always coming and going. She had hardly the time to fix her affections upon the men and women who came into her life before they were gone again.
Her mama died one day — very suddenly; a self-inflicted death, she heard the people say. Alberta grieved sorely, for she forgot the beatings and remembered only the outbursts of a torrid affection. But she really did not belong anywhere then, nor to anybody. And when a lady and gentleman took her live with them, she went willingly as she would have gone anywhere, with any one. With them she met with more kindness and indulgence than she had ever known before in her life.
There were no more beatings; Alberta’s body was too beautiful to be beaten — it was made for love. She knew that herself; she had heard it since she had heard anything. But now she heard many things and learned many more. She did not lack for instruction in the wiles — the ways of stirring a man’s desire and holding it. Yet she did not need instruction — the secret was in her blood and looked out of her passionate, wanton eyes and showed in every motion of her seductive body.
At seventeen she was woman enough, so she had a lower. But as for that there did not seem to be much difference. Expect that she had gold now — plenty of it with to make herself appear more beautiful, and enough to fling with both hands into the laps of those who came whining and begging to her.
Alberta is a most beautiful woman, and she takes great care of her body for she knows that it brings her love to squander and gold to squander.
Some one has whispered in her ear:
"Be cautious, Alberta. Save, save your gold. The years are passing. The days are coming when youth slips away, when you will stretch out your hands for money and for love in vain. And what will be left for you but —"
Alberta shrunk in horror before the ptured depths of hideous degradation that would be left for her. But she consoles herself with the thought that such need never be — with death and oblivion always within her reach.
Alberta is capricious. She gives her love only when and where she chooses. One or two en have died because of her withholding it. There is a smooth-faced boy now who tease her with resistance; for Alberta does not know shame or reserve.
One day he seems to half-relent and another time he plays indifference, and she frets and she fumes and rages.
But he had best have a care; for since Alberta has added much wine to her wantonness she is apt to be vixenish; and she carries a knife.

II
The Nun
Alberta having looked not very long into life, had not looked very far. She put out her hands to touch things that pleased her, and her lips to kiss them. Her eyes were deep brown wells that were drinking, drinking, drinking impressions and treasuring them in her soul. They were mysterious eyes and love looked out of them.
It was a very holy woman who first took. Alberta by the hand. The thought of God alone dwelt in her mind, and his name and none other was on her lips.
When she showed Alberta the creeping insects, the blades of grass, the flowers and tress; the rain-drops falling from the clouds; the sky and the stars and the men and women moving on the earth, she taught her that it was God who had created all; that God was great, was good, was the Supreme Love.
And when Alberta would have put out her hands and her lips to touch the great and all-loving God, it was then the holy woman taught her that it is not with the hands and lips and eyes that we reach God, but with the soul; that the soul must be made perfect and the flesh subdued. And what is the soul but the inward thought ? And this the child was taught to keep spotless-pure, and fit as far a human soul can be, to hold intercourse with the all-wise and all-seeing God.
Her existence became a prayer. Evil things approached her not. The inherited sin of the blood must have been washed away at the baptismal font; font all the things of this world that she encountered — the pleasures, the trials and seven temptations, but turned her gaze within, through her soul up to the fountain of all love and every beatitude.
When Alberta had reached the age when with other women the languor of love creeps into the yeins an dreams begin, at such a period an overpowering impulse toward the purely spiritual possessed itself of her. She could no longer abide the sights, the sounds, the accidental happenings of life surrounding her, that tended but to disturb her contemplation of the heavenly existence.
It was then she went into the convent — the white convent on the hill that overlooks the river; the big convent whose long, dim corridors echo with the soft tread of a multitude of holy women; whose atmosphere of chastity, poverty and obedience penetrates to the soul through benumbed senses.
But all the holy women in the white convent, there is none so saintly as Alberta. Any one will tell you that who knows them. Even her pious guide and counsellor does not equal her in sanctity. Because Alberta is endowed with the powerful gift of a great love that lifts her above common mortals, close to the invisible throne. her ears seem to hear sounds that reach no other ears; and what her eyes see, only God and herself know. When the others are plunged in meditation, Alberta is steeped in an oblivious ecstasy. She kneels before the Blessed Sacrament with stiffened, tireless limbs; with absorbing eyes that drink in the holy mystery till it is a mystery no longer; but a real flood of celestial love deluging her soul. She does not hear the sound of bells nor the solf stir of disbanding numbers. She must be touched upon the shoulder; roused, awakened.
Alberta does not know that she is beautiful. If you were to tell so she would not blush and utter gentle protest and reproof as might the others. She would only smile, as though beauty were a thing that concerned her not. But she is beautiful, with the glow of a holy passion in her dark eyes. her face is thin and white, but illumined from within by a light which seems not of this world.
She does not walk upright; she could not, overpowered by the Divine Presence and the realization of her own nothingness. her hands, slender and blue-veined, and her delicate fingers seen to have been fashioned by God to be clasped and uplifted in prayer.
It is said — not broadcast, it is only whispered — that Alberta sees visions. Oh, the beautiful visions! The first of them came to her when she was rapped in suffering, in quivering contemplation of the bleeding and agonizing Christ. Oh, the dear God! Who loved her beyond the power of man to describe, to conceive. The God-man, the Man-God, suffering, bleeding, dying for her, Alberta, a worm upon the earth; dying that she might be saved from sin and transplanted among the heavenly delights. Oh, if she might die for him in return! But she could only abandon herself to his mercy and his love. "Into thy hands, Oh Lord! Into thy hands!"
She pressed her lips upon the bleeding wounds and the Divine Blood transfigured her. the Virgin Mary enfolded her in her mantle. She could not describe in words the ecstasy; that taste of the Divine love which only the souls of the transplanted could endure in its awful and complete intensity. She, Alberta had received this sign of Divine favor; this foretaste of heavenly bliss. For an hour she had swooned in rapture; she had lived in Christ. Oh, the beautiful visions!
The visions come often to Alberta now, refreshing and strengthening her soul; it is being talked about a little in whispers.
And it is said that certain afflicted persons have been helped by her prayers. And others having abounding faith, have been cured of bodily ailments by the touch of her beautiful hands.

International Short Stories: The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen

International Short Stories: The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen
Bruno Lessing
United States, 1903

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruno Lessing (1870 - 1940) was born in the United States, in New York. His real name was Rudolph Block but the won fame as a short-story writer for magazines under the by-line of Bruno Lessing. He worked first as a news reporter and later became the editor of the comic supplement of the Hearst newspapers. His books include the story collections With the Best Intention (1914) and Children of Men, from which this story is taken. Lessing received high critical praise for his depictions of Jewish life in New York.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY
The story takes place in New York City at the turn into the twentieth century. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, many Fewish immigrants fled their countries primarily to escape religious persecution. Most came to America with little money and had to struggle to survive. They left the ghettos of Russia (neighborhoods to which Fews were restricted) to live in the ghettos of New York (poor sections of the city occupied by minority groups). In this story, Lessing writes about a family who came to the States with enough money to open a store on Hester Street, then the center of Jewish ghetto life on New York’s Lower East Side.
Referemes to the Fewish religion include ringlets (men’s uncut sideburns: a sign of allegiance to God); A praying cap (a small head covering that, by symbolically separating man from God, shows reverence and respect); Grace after meals (a Hebrew prayer said to thank God for the food); Jehovah (God); the saying "Honor your father and your mother" (one of the Ten Commandments, the fundamental laws of Fudaism); the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible); and the Shadchen (matchmaker, a person who arranges marriages).

THE FIRST LINE OF THE STORY
The first line of the story reads, "There is no set rule for the turning of the worm; most worms, however, turn unexpectedly." This line is based on the proverbs, "Even a worm will turn" and "Tread on a worm and it will turn", which mean that even the humblest persons will resent extreme ill treatment and/or that there are limits to patience.

There is no set rule for the turning of the worm; most worms, however, turn unexpectedly. It was so with Shadrach Cohen.
He had two sons. One was named Abel and the other Gottlieb. They had left Russia five years before their father, had opened a store on Hester Street with the money he had given them. For reasons that only business men would understand they conducted the store in their father’s name and, when the business began to prosper and they saw an opportunity of investing further capital in it to good advantage, they wrote to their dear father to come to this country.
"We have a nice home for you here," they wrote. "We will live happily together."
Shadrach came. With him he brought Marta, the serving-woman who had nursed his wife until she died, and whom, for his wife’s sake, he had taken into the household. When the ship landed he was met by two dapper looking young men, each of whom wore a flaring necktie with a diamond in it. It took him some time to realize that these were his two sons. Abel and Gottlieb promptly threw their arms around his neck and welcomed him to the new land. Behind his head they looked at each other in dismay. In the course of five years they had forgotten that their father wore a gaberdine — the loose, baglike garment of the Russian Ghetto — and had a long, straggling grey beard and ringlets that came down over his ears-that, in short, he was a perfect type of the immigrant whose appearance they had so frequently ridiculed. Abel and Gottlieb were proud of the fact that they had become Americanized. And they frowned at Marta.
"Come, father," they said. "Let us go to a barber, who will trim your beard and make you look more an American. Then we will take you home with us."
Shadrach looked from one to the other in surprise.
"My beard?", they explained to him, "no one wears a beard like yours expect the newly landed Russian Jews."
Shadrach’s lips shut tightly for a moment. Them he said:
"Then I will keep my beard as it is. I am a newly landed Russian Jew." His sons clinched their fists behind their backs and smiled at him amiably. After all, he held the purse-strings. It was best to humour him.
"What shall we do with Marta?" they asked. "We have a servant. We will not need two."
"Marta," said the old man, "stays with us. Let the other servant go. Come, take me home: I am getting hungry."
They took him home, where they had prepared a feast for him. When he bade Marta sit beside him at table Abel and Gottlied promptly turned and looked out of the window. They felt that they could not conceal their feelings. The feast was a dismal affair. Shadrach was racking his brains to find some explanation that would account for the change that had come over his sons. They had never been demonstrative in their affection for him, and he had not looked for an effusive greeting. But he realized immediately that there was a wall between him and his sons; some change had occurred; he was distressed and puzzled. When the meal was over Shadrach donned his praying cap and began to recite the grace after meals. Abel and Gottlied looked at each other in consternation. Would they have to go through this at every meal. Better-far better-to risk their father’s displeasure and acquaint him with the truth at once. When it came to the response Shadrach looked inquiringly at his sons. It was Abel who explained the matter:
"We-er-have grown out of-her-that is er-done away with-er-sort of fallen into the habit, don't you know, of leaving out the prayer at meals. it's not quite American!"
Shadrach looked from one to the other. Then, bowing his head, he went on with his prayer.
"My sons," he said, when the table had been cleared. "it is wrong to omit the prayer after meals. It is part of your religion. I do not know anything about this America or its customs. But religion is the worship of Jehovah, who has chosen us as His children on earth, and the same Jehovah rules supreme over America even as He does over the country that you came from."
Gottlieb promptly changed the subject by explaining to him how badly they needed more money in their business. Shadrach listened patiently for a while, then said:
"I am tired after my long journey. I do not understand this business that you are talking about. but you may have whatever money you need. After all, I have no one but you two." He looked at them fondly. then his glance fell upon the serving-woman, and he added, quickly:
"And Marta."
"Thank God," said Gottlieb, when their father had retired, "he does not intend to be stingy."
"Oh, he is all right," answered Abel. "After he gets used to things he will become Americanized like us."
To their chagrin, however, they began to realize, after a few months, that their father was clinging to the habits and customs of his old life with a tenacity that filled them with despair. The more they urged him to abandon his ways the more eager he seemed to cling to them. he seemed to take no interest in their business affairs, but he responded, almost cheerfully, to all their requests for money. He began to fell that this, after all, was the only bond between him and his sons. And when had pocketed the money, they would shake their heads and sigh.
"Ah, father, if you would only not insist upon being so old-fashioned!" Abel would say.
"And let us fix you up a bit," Gottlieb would chime in.
"And become more progressive — like the other men of your age in this country."
"And wear your beard shorter and trimmed differently."
"And learn to speak English."
Shadrach never lost his temper; never upbraided them. he would look from one to the other and keep his lips tightly pressed together. And when they has gone he would look at Marta and would say:
"Tell me what you think, Marta. tell me what you think."
"it is not proper for me to interfere between father and sons," Marta would say. And Shadrach could never induce her to tell him what she thought. But he could perceive a
gleam in her eyes and observed a certain nervous vigor in the way she cleaned the pots and pans for hours after these talks, that fell soothingly upon his perturbed spirit.
As we remarked before, there is no rule for the turning of the worm. Some worms, however, turn with a crash. IT was so with Shadrach Cohen.
Gottlieb informed his father that he contemplated getting married.
"She is very beautiful ," he said, holding out his hand, "God bless you! It's the very best thing you could do. Marta, bring me my hat and coat. Come, Gottlieb. Take me to see her. I cannot wait a moment. I want to see my future daughter-in-law at once. how happy your mother would be if she were alive today!"
Gottlieb turned red and hung back.
"I think, father," he said, "you had better not go just yet. Let us wait a few days until the Shadchen has made all the arrangements. She is an American girl. She — she won't — er — understand your ways-don't you know? And it may spoil everything."
Crash! Marta had dropped an iron pot that she was cleaning. Shadrach was red in the face with suppressed rage.
"So!" he said. "It has come to this. You are ashamed of your father!" then he turned to the old servant:
"marta," he said, "tomorrow we become Americanized — you and I."
There was an intonation in his voice that alarmed his son.
"You are not angry —" he began, but with a fierce gesture his father cut him short.
"Not another word. To bed! Go to bed at once."
Gottlieb was dumbfounded. With open mouth he started at his father. He had not heard that tone since he was a little boy.
"But, father —" he began.
"Not a word. Do you hear me? Not a word will I listen to. In five minutes if you are not in bed you go out of this house. remember, this is my house."
Then he turned to Abel. Abel was calmly smoking a cigar.
"Throw that cigar away," his father commanded, sternly.
Abel gasped and looked at his father in dismay.
"Marta, take that cigar out of his mouth and throw it into the fire. If he objects he goes out of the house."
With a smile of intense delight Marta plucked the cigar from Abel's unresisting lips, and incidentally trod heavily upon his toes. Shadrach gazed long and earnestly at his sons.
"Tomorrow, my sons," he said, slowly, "you will begin to lead a new life."
In the morning Abel and Gottlieb, full of dread forebodings, left the house as hastily as they could. They wanted to get to the store to talk matters over. they had hardly entered the place, however, when the figure of their father loomed up in the doorway. He had never been in the place before. He looked around him with great satisfaction at the many evidences of prosperity which the place presented. When he beheld the name "Shadrach Cohen, Proprietor" over the door he chucked. Ere his sons had recovered from the shock of his appearance a place-faced clerk, smoking a cigarette, approached Shadrach, and in a sharp tone asked:
"Well, sir, what do you want?" Sharach looked at him with considerable curiosity. Was he Americanized, too? The young man frowned impatiently.
"Come, come! I can't stand here all day. Do you want anything?"
Sharach smiled and turned to his sons.
"Send him away at once. I don't want that kind of young man in my place." Then turning to the young man, upon whom the light of revelation had quickly dawned, he said, sternly:
"Young man, whenever you address a person who is older than you, do it respectfully. Honour your father and your mother. Now go away as fast as you can. I don't like you."
"But, father," interposed Gottlieb, "we must have someone to do his work."
"Dear me," said Shadrach, "is that so? then, for the present, you will do it. And that young man over there — what does he do?"
"He is also a salesman."
"Let him go. Abel will take his place."
"But, father, who is to manage the store? Who will see that the work is properly done?"
"I will," said the father. "Now, let us have no more talking. Get to work."
Crestfallen, miserable, and crushed in spirit, Abel and Gottlieb began their humble work while their father entered upon the task of familiarizing himself with the details of the business. And even before the day's work was done he came to his sons with a frown of intense disgust.
"Bah!" he exclaimed. "It is just as I expected. You have both been making as complete a mess of this business as you could without ruining it. What you both lack is sense. If becoming Americanized means becoming stupid, I must congratulate you upon the thoroughness pf your work. Tomorrow I shall hire a manager to run this store. he will arrange your hours of work. he will also pay you what you are worth. Not a cent more. How late have you been keeping this store open?"
"Until six o'clock," said Abel.
"H'm! Well, beginning to-day, you both will stay here until eight o'clock. Then one of you can go. The other will stay until ten. You can take turns. I will have Marta send you some supper."

To the amazement of Abel and Gottlieb the business of Shadrach Conhen began to grow. Slowly it dawned upon them that in the mercantile realm they were as children compared with their father. his was the true money-maker spirit; there was something wonderful in the swiftness with which he grasped the most intricate phases of trade; and where experience failed him some instinct seemed to guide him aright. And gradually, as the business of Sharach Cohen increased, and even the sons saw vistas of prosperity beyond their wildest dreams, they began to look upon their father with increasing respect. What that had refused to the integrity of his character, to the nobility of his heart, they promptly yielded to the shrewdness of his brain. The sons of Shadrach Cohen became proud of their father. he, too, was slowly undergoing a change. A new life was unfolding itself before his eyes, he became broader-minded, more tolerant, and, above all, more flexible in his tenets. Contact with the outer world had quickly impressed him with the vast differences between his present surroundings and his old life in Russia. The charm of American life, of liberty, of democracy, appealed to him strongly. As the field of his business operations widened he came more and more in contact with American business men, from whom he learned many things — principally the faculty of adaptibility. And as his sons began to perceive that all these business men whom, in former days, they had looked upon with feelings akin to reverence, seemed to show to their father an amount of deference and respect which they had never evinced toward the sons, their admiration for their father increased.
And yet it was he same Shadrach Cohen.
From that explosive moment when he had rebelled against his sons he demanded from them implicit obedience and profound respect. Upon that point he was stern and unyielding. Moreover, he insisted upon a strict observance of every tenet of their religion. This, at first, was the bitterest pill of all. But they soon became accustomed to it. When life is light and free from care, religion is quick to fly; but when the sky grows dark and life becomes earnest, and we feel its burden growing heavy upon our shoulders, then we welcome the consolation that religion brings, and we cling to it. And Shadrach Cohen had taught his sons that life was earnest. They were earning their bread by the sweat of their brow. No prisoner, with chain and ball, was subjected to closer supervision by his keeper than were Gottlieb and Abel.
"You have been living upon my charity," their father said to them: "I will teach you how to earn your own living."
And he taught them. And with the lesson they learned many things; learned the value of discipline, learned the beauty of filial reverence, learned the serve joy of the earnest life.
One day Gottlieb said to his father:
"May I bring Miriam to supper to-night? I am anxious that you should see her."
Shadrach turned his face away so that Gottlieb might not see the joy that beamed in his eyes.
"Yes, my son," he answered. "I, too, am anxious to see if she is worthy of you."
Miriam came, and in a stiff, embarrassed manner Gottlieb presented her to his father. the girl looked I surprise at the venerable figure that stood before her — a picture of a patriarch from the Pentateuch, with a long, straggling beard, and ringlets of hair falling over the ears, and clad in the long gaberdine of the Russian Ghettos. And she saw a pair of grey eyes bent keenly upon her — eyes of shrewdness, but soft and tender as a woman's — the eyes of a strong man with a smile upon her lips, she said:
"Will you not give me your blessing?"

When the evening meal had ended, Shadrach donned his prying cap, and with bowed head intoned the grace after meals:
"We will bless Him from whose wealth we have eaten" And in fervent tones rose from Gottlieb's lips the response:
"Blessed be He!"

International Short Stories: A Trifle from Real Life

International Short Stories: A Trifle from Real Life
Anto Chekhov
Russia, 1888

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anton Chekhov(1860-1904) was born in Taganrog, Russia. He was the grandson of an emancipated serf and the son of an unsuccessful grocer. While a medical student at Moscow University, he wrote his short stories(some of which he signed "The Doctor without Patients"), to help support his impoverished family. Chekhov later worked as a doctor in a small town while continuing to write. By the 1880s his stories about the various strata of Russian society had become so popular that he was able to support himself on his writing. He became not only one of Russia’s greatest writers of short fiction but also one of the world’s great playwrights.
Among his masterpieces are The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). His plays and short stories have had enormous influence on writers everywhere.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY
The story is set in late nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, the capital of Imperial Russia from 1712 to 1918.

Nikolai Ilitch Belayeff was a young gentleman of St... Petersburg, aged thirty-two, rosy, well fed, and a patron of the race-tracks. Once, toward evening, he went to pay a call Olga Ivanovna with whom, to use his own expression, he was dragging through along and tedious love-affair. And the truth was that the first thrilling, inspiring pages of this romance had long since been read, and that the story was now dragging wearily on, presenting nothing that was either interesting or novel.
Not finding Olga at home, my hero threw himself upon a couch and prepared to await her her return.
"Good evening, Nikolai Ilitch!" he heard a child’s voice say. "Mamma will soon be home. She has gone to the dressmaker’s with Sonia."
On the divan in the same room lay Aliosha, olga’s son, a small boy of eight, immaculately and picturesquely dressed in a little velvet suit and long black stockings. He had been lying on a satin pillow, mimicking the antics of an acrobat ha had seen at the circus. First he stretched up one pretty leg, then another; then, when they were tired, he brought his arms into play, and at last jumped up galvanically, throwing himself on all fours in an effort to stand on his head. He went through all these motions with the most serious face in the world, puffing like a martyr, as if he himself regretted that God had given him such a restless little body.
"Ah, good evening, my boy!" said Belayeff. "Is that you? I did not know you were here. is mamma well?"
Aliosha seized the toe of his right hand, assumed the most unnatural position in the world, rolled over, jumped up, and peeped out at Belayeff from under the heavy fringes of the lampshade.
"Not very," he said shrugging his shoulders. "mamma is never rally well. She is a woman, you see, and women always have something the matter with them."
From lack of anything better to do, Bleayeff began scrutinizing Aliosha’s face. During all his acquaintance with Olga he had never bestowed any consideration upon the boy or noticed his existence at all. he had seen the child about, but what he was doing there Belayeff, somehow, had never cared to think.
Now, in the dusk of evening, Aliosha’s pale face and fixed, dark eye unexpectedly reminded Belayeff of Olga as she had appeared in the first pages of their romance. he wanted to pet the boy.
"Come here, little monkey," he said, "and let me look at you!"
The boy jumped down from the sofa and ran the boy’s thin shoulder. "And how are you" Is everything all right with you?"
"No, not very. It used to be much better."
"In what way?"
"That’s easy to answer. Sonia and i used to learn only music and reading before, but now we have French verses, too. You have cut your beard!"
"Yes."
"So I noticed. It is shorter than it was. please let me touch it — does that hurt?"
"No, not a bit."
"Why does it hurt if you pull one hair at a time, and not a bit if you pull lost? Ha! Ha! I’ll tell you something. You ought to wear whiskers! You could shave here on the sides, here, and here you could let the hair grow — "
The boy nestled close to Belayeff and began to play with his watch-chain.
"Mamma is going to give me a watch when I go to school, and I am going to ask her to give me a chain just like yours — Oh, what a lovely locket! Papa has a locket just like; only yours has little stripes on it, and papa’s has letters. he has a portrait of mamma in his locket. Pap wears another watch-chain now made of ribbon."
"How do you know? Do you ever see your papa?"
"I — n — no — I — "
Aliosha blushed deeply at being caught telling a fib and began to scratch the locket furiously with his nail. Belayeff looked searchingly into his face and repeated:
"Do you ever see your papa?"
"N — no!"
"Come, tell me honestly! I can see by your face that you are not telling the truth. It’s no use quibbling now that the cat is out of the bag. Tell me, do you see him? Now then, as between friends!"
Aliosha reflected.
"You won’t tell mama?" he said.
"What an idea!"
"Honor bright?"
"Honor bright!"
"Promise!"
"Oh, you insufferable child! What do you take me for?"
Aliosha glanced around, opened his eyes wide, and said:
"For heaven’s sake don’t tell mamma! Don’t tell a soul, because it’s a secret. I don’t know what would happen to Sonia and Pelagia and me if mamma should find out. Now, listen. Sonia and i see papa every Thursday and every Friday. When Pelagia takes us out walking before dinner we go to Anfel’s confectionery and there we find papa already waiting for us. he is always sitting in the little private room with the marble table and the ashtray that’s made like a goose without a back."
"What do you do in there?"
"We don’t do anything. First we say how do you do, and then papa orders coffee and pasties. i like mine with cabbage or eggs. We eat so much that we have a hard time eating out dinner afterward so that mamma won’t guess anything."
"What do you talk about?"
With papa? Oh, about everything. He kisses us hugs us and tells us the funniest jokes. Do you know what? He said that when we grow bigger he is going to take us to live with him. Sonia doesn’t want to go, but I wouldn’t mind. Of course it would be lonely without mamma, but i could write letters to her. Isn’t it funny, we might go and see her then on Sunday, mightn’t we? Papa says too, he is going to buy me a pony. He is such a nice man! I don’t know why mamma doesn’t ask him to live with her and why she won’t let us see him. he loves mamma very much. He always asks how she is and what she has been doing. When she was ill he took hold of his head just like this — and ran about the room. He always asks us whether we are obedient and respectful to her. Tell me, is it true that we are unfortunate?"
"H’m — why do you ask?"
"Because papa says we are. He says we are unfortunate children, and that he is unfortunate, and that mamma is unfortunate. he tells us to pray to God her and for ourselves."
Aliosha fixed his eyes on the figure of a stuffed bird, and became lost on thought.
"Well, I declare — " muttered Belayeff. "So, that’s what you do, you hold meetings at a confectionery’s? And your mamma doesn’t know it?"
"N — no. How could she? Pelagia wouldn’t tell her for the world. Day before yesterday papa gave us pears. They were as sugar. I ate two!"
"H’m. But — listen to me, does papa ever say anything about me?"
"About you? What shall I say?" Aliosha looked searching into Belayeff’s face and shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing special," he answered.
"Well, what does he say, for instance?"
""You won’t be angry if I tell you?"
"What an idea! Does he abuse me?"
"No, he doesn’t abuse you, you know, he is angry with you. He says that it is your fault that mamma is unhappy, and that you have ruined mamma. he is such a funny man! I tell him that you are kind and that you never scold mamma, but he only shakes his read."
"So he says i have ruined her?"
"Yes — don’t be angry, Nikolai Ilitch!"
Bellayeff rose and began pacing up and down the room.
"How strange this is — and how ridiculous!’ he muttered shrugging his shoulders and smiling sarcastically. "it is all his fault and yet he says i have ruined her! What an innocent baby tis is! And so he told you I had ruined your mother?"
"Yes, but — you promised not to be angry!"
"I’m not angry and — and it is none of your business anyway. Yes, this is — this is really ridiculous! here I have been caught like a mouse in a trap, and now it seems it is all my fault!’
The door-bell rang. The boy tore himself from Belayeff’s arms and ran out of the room. A moment later a lady entered with a little girl. It was Aliosha’s mother, Olga Ivanovna. Aliosha skipped into the room behind her, singing loudly and clapping his hands. Belayeff nodded and continued to walk up and down.
"Of course!" he muttered. "Whom should he blame but me? He has right on his side! He is the injured husband."
"What is that you are saying?" asked Olga Ivanovna.
"What am I saying? Just listen to what your young hopeful here has been preaching. It appears that I am a wicked scoundrel and that I have ruined you and your children. You are all unhappy, and i alone am frightfully happy. Frightfully, frightfully happy!"
"I don’t understand you, Nikolai. What is the matter?"
"Just listen to what this young gentleman here has to say!" cried Belayeff pointing to Aliosha.
"Nikolai Ilitch!" he whispered loudly. "Hush!"
Olga Ivanovna looked at Aliosha in surprise, and then at Belayeff, and then back again at Aliosha.
"Ask him!" Belayeff continued. "That idiot of yours, Pelagia, takes them to a confectioner’s and arranges meetings there between them and their papa. But that isn’t the point. The point is that I am an abandoned scoundrel who has wrecked the lives of both of you!"
"Nikolai Ilitch!" groaned Aliosha. "You gave me your word of honor!"
"Leave me alone!" Belayeff motioned to him impatiently. "This is more important than words of honor. This hypocrisy, these lies are intolerable!"
"I don’t understand!" cried Olga Ivanovna, the tears glistening in her eyes. "Listen, Aliosha," she asked, turning to her son. "Do you really see your father?"
But Aliosha did not hear her, his eyes were fixed with horror on Belayeff.
"It cannot be possible!" his mother exclaimed, "I must go and ask Pelagia."
Olga Ivanovna left the room.
"But Nikolai Ilitch, you gave me your word of honor!" cried Aliosha trembling all over.
Belayeff made an impatient and went on pacing the floor. he was absorbed in thoughts of the wrong that had been done him, and, as before, was unconscious, of the boy’s presence; a serious, grown-up person like him could not be bothered with little boys. But Aliosha crept into a corner and told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He trembled and hiccoughed and cried. This was the first time in his life that he had come roughly face to face with deceit; he had never imagined till now that there were things in this world besides pasties and watches and sweet pears, things for which no name could be found in the vocabulary of childhood.

International Short Stories: The necklace

International Short Stories: The necklace
Guy de Maupassant
France, 1884

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guy de Maupassant(1850-1893) was born into an upper bourgeois (middle-class) family in Normandy, France. After serving in the army, without enough money to continue his law studies, he became a civil servant, working in various ministries in Paris. At the same time, be studied writing with the author Gustave Flaubert. The extraordinary success of his art. between 1880 and 1890, Maupassant published nearly three hundred stories. he also wrote essays, plays, poetry, and novels, including Pierre et Jean(1888). His work has influenced countless numbers of writers around the world, including Anton Chekhov and Kate Chopin.

THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY
The Necklace is set in late nineteenth-century Paris. From early times, French society was organized on a class basis; it was extremely difficult for people to change or move from the class into which they were born. After the French Revolution(1789-1799), France became a republic, but class distinctions remained an integral part of French society.
During the time in which the story is set, it was expected that a husband would receive a dowry(money or property) for the family of his future bride. A man often chose a wife on the basis of how large her fortune was.

She was one of those pretty and charming girls who sometimes, as if by mistake of destiny, born in family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to little clerk at the ministry of Public Instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well; but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station, since with women there is neither caste nor rank: and beauty, grace, and charm act suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant, who did her humble housework aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent antechambers hung with oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of the long salons fitted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o’clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.
When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth three days old, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with and enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don’t know anything better than that," she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the whispered gallantries which you listen to with a sphinxlike smile, while you are eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no dressed, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after.
She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go and see any more, because she suffered so much when she came back.
But one evening, her husband returned home with a triumphant air, and holding a large envelope in his hand.
"There," said he. "Here is something for you."
She tore the paper sharply, and drew out a printed card which bore these words:
"The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges Ranponneau request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January eighteenth."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with disdain, murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with that?"
"But, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I jad awful trouble to get it. Everyone wants to go; it is very select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there."
She looked at him with an irritated glance, and said, impatiently:
"And what do you want me to put on my back?"
He had not thought of that; he stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the theater in. it looks very well, to me."
He stopped, distracted, seeing his wife was crying. Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth. He stuttered:
"What’s the matter? What’s the matter?"
Nut, by violent effort, she had conquered her grief, and she replied, with a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. only I have no dress and therefore I can’t go to this ball. Give you card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I."
He was in despair. He resumed:
"Come, let us see, Mathilde. how much would it cost, a suitable dress, which you could use on other occasions, something very simple?"
She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.
Finally, she replied, hesitatingly:
"I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs."
He had grown a little plate, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks down there, of a Sunday.
But he said:
"All right. i will give you four hundred francs. And try have a pretty dress."
the day of the ball drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. her dress was ready, however. her husband said to her one evening:
"What is the matter? Come, you’ve been so queer these last three days."
And answered:
"it annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on. i shall look like distress. I should almost rather not go at all."
he resumed:
"You might wear natural flowers. It’s very stylish at this time of the year. For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses."
She was not convinced.
"No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich."
But her husband cried:
"How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. you’re quite thick enough with her to do that."
She uttered a cry of joy:
"it’s true. i never through of it."
The next day she went to her friend and told of her distress.
Mme. Forestier went to a wardrobe with a glass door, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel"
"Choose, choose, my dear."
She saw first of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross, gold and precious stones of admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:
"Haven’t you any more?"
"Why, yes. Look. I don’t know you like."
All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself.
Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anguish:
"Can you lend me that, only that?"
"Why, yes, certainly."
She sprang upon the neck of her friend, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure.
The day of the ball arrived. Mme.Loisel made a great success. She was prettier than them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked at her , asked her name, endeavored to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.
She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage victory which is so sweet to a woman’s heart.
She went away about four o’clock in the morning. her husband had been sleeping since midnight, in a little deserted afternoon, with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a good time. he threw over her shoulders the wraps which he had brought, modest wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance og the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.
Loisel held her back.
"Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will go and call a cab."
But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended the stairs. When they were in the street they did not find a carriage; and they began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance.
They went down toward the Seine, in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient noctambulant coupes which, exactly as if they were ashamed to show their misery during the day, are never seen round Paris until after nightfall.
It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and once more, sadly, they climbed up homeward. All was ended, for her. And as to him, he reflected that he must be at the Ministry at ten o’clock.
She removed the wraps which covered her shoulders before the glass, so as once more to see herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her neck!
Her husband, already half undressed, demanded:
"What is the matter with you?"
She turned madly toward him:
"I have — I have — I’ve lost Mme. Frestier’s necklace."
He stood up, distracted.
"What! — how? — impossible!"
And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her pockets, everwhere. They did not find it.
He asked:
"You’re sure you had it on when you left the ball?"
"No. And you, didn’t you notice it?"
"No."
They looked, thunderstruck, at one another. At last Loisel put on his clothes.
"I shall go back on foot", said he, "over the whole route which we have taken to see if I can find it."
And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without fire, without a thought.
Her husband came back about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.
He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper offices, to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies — everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least suspicion of hope.
She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear before this terrible calamity.
Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face; he had discovered nothing.
"You must write to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round."
She wrote at his dictation.
At the end of a week they had lost all hope.
And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
"We must consider how to replace that ornament."
The next day they took the box which had contained it, and they went to the jeweler whose name was found within. He consulted his books.
"It was not I, madam, who sold that necklace; I must simply have furnished the case."
Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, consulting their memories, sick both of them with chagrin and anguish.
They found, in a shop at the Plais Royal, a string of diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the one they looked for. it was worth forty thousand francs. they could have it for thirty-six.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they found the other one before the end of February.
Loisel possessed eighteenth thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis there. he gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. he compromised all the rest of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could meet it; and, frightened by the pains yet to come, by the black misery which was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privation and of all the moral tortures which he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, putting down upon the merchant’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.
When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her, with a chilly manner:
"You should have returned it sooner; I might have needed it."
She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared. if she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought; what would she have said? Would she not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief?
Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover, all of a sudden, with heroism. that dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.
She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning, and carried u the water, stopping for breath at every landing. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, her, her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, defending her miserable money sou by sou.
Each month they had to meet some notes, renew others, obtain more time.
Her husband worked in the evening making a fair copy of some tradesman’s accounts, and late at night he ogten copied manuscript for five sous a page.
And this life lasted for ten years.
At the end of ten years, they had paid everything, with the rates of usury, and the accumulations of the compound interest.
Mme. Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households — strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!
But, one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself from the labor of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. it was Mme. Forestier, still beautiful, still charming.
Mme. Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she was going to tell her all about it. Why not?
She went up.
"Good-day, Jeanne."
The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her at all, and stammered.
"But — madam! — I do not know — you must be mistaken."
"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"
"Yes, I have had days hard enough, since I have seen you, days wretched enough — and that because of you!"
"Of me! How so?"
"Do you remember that diamond necklace which you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?"
"Yes, Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"What do you mean? You brought it back."
"I brought you back another just like it. And for have been ten years paying. You can understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad."
Mme. Forestier had stopped.
"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"
"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very like."
And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was at most five hundred francs!"