sympathy my body began to tremble. His arms tightened about the body of
the little dog so that it screamed with pain. I stepped forward and tore
the arms away and the dog fell to the ground and lay whining. No doubt
it had been injured. Perhaps ribs had been crushed. The old man stared
at the dog lying at his feet as in the hallway of the apartment building
the worker from the bicycle factory had stared at his dead wife. "We are
brothers," he said again. "We have different names but we are brothers.
Our father you understand went off to sea."

* * * * *

I am sitting in my house in the country and it rains. Before my eyes the
hills fall suddenly away and there are the flat plains and beyond the
plains the city. An hour ago the old man of the house in the forest went
past my door and the little dog was not with him. It may be that as we
talked in the fog he crushed the life out of his companion. It may be
that the dog like the workman's wife and her unborn child is now dead.
The leaves of the trees that line the road before my window are falling
like rain--the yellow, red, and golden leaves fall straight down,
heavily. The rain beats them brutally down. They are denied a last
golden flash across the sky. In October leaves should be carried away,
out over the plains, in a wind. They should go dancing away.




FANUTZA[3]

By KONRAD BERCOVICI