Poem and Short Story Essay

grind of the matinee idols (Estrella Alfon) Among us who lived in Espeleta that street that I love, ab suffer tabu whose people I keep telling tales among us, I say, in that respect was sensation named Martha, and she was the daughter of Pio and Engracia. To both of us, life mustiness feelm same a road precondition us to travel, and it is up to Fate, that convenient blunderer, whether, that road be giving and unwinding, or whether it sh alone be a tortuous lane, its path a hard and depraved mat of dust and stones.And individually road, whether lane or avenue, shall sire its get landmarks, that entirely the traveller soul shall recognize and remember, and remembering, continue the journey again. To Martha, the gods gave this for a first memory a first scar. She was a female child of twelve, and in e real musical mode she was besides a child. A rather muffle child, who invariably lagged behind the separate(a)s of her age, whether in study or in play. manner had been so far a question of staying more years in a grade than the others, of being t disused she would have to apply herself a smaller harder if she didnt want the infants catching up with her.solely that was so glum thing. She had gotten a petite bit used to being always behind. To always being the biggest girl in her section. Even in play there was some part of her that nalways managed to take to a fault great a part she was so content if they always make her it in a game of tag, if totally they would let her play. And when she had dolls, she was eager to lend them to other girls, if they would only include her in the fascinating games she could non play alone. This was she, wherefore. Her hair hung in pigtails each side of her face, and already it irked a little to have her dresses too short.She could non help in her causes kitchen, and could be indisput fit to keep her room clean, but she was non ready for the thing her make told her one darkness when she was a wakened from sleep. It was a sleep untroubled by dreams, then all of a sudden there was an uproar in the mob, and she could hear her gives frenzied sobbing, and it was non sobbing that held as much of sorrow as it did of offense. She lay clam up for a while, idea perhaps she was dreaming, until she could hear her arrives grunted answers to the half understood things her breed was mouthing at him. then(prenominal) there were sounds that was clearly the sound of two bodies seek in terrible fury with each other. She stood up, and like a child, cried into the night. start? She wailed the word, in her panic decision a little relief in her own wailing, Mother? And she comprehend her bugger offs voice skirt her, panting out, saying, Martha, come quickly, come into this room Martha got up and stood at the door of the room, hesitating about up to(p)ing it, until her fuck off, the part of a terrible grasp, verbalize Martha So Martha pushed in the door, and found her mother a nd her leave back locked in an adopt n which both of them struggled and panted and had near no breath left for spoken language.Martha stood great eyed and f disciplineened, non realiseing what to do, just standing(a) there, up to flat though she had seen what it was they struggled for. A kitchen knife, blade held upwards in her mothers hand. Her coat of arms were pinioned to her sides by her conserve, but her wild eye, the frenzy with which she stamped her feet on his feet, and kicked him in the shins, and tested to bite him with her teeth, these were more terrible than the glint of that shining blade.It was her grow who spoke to her saying urgently, Martha, reach for her knife, take it by. merely Martha stood there and did non comprehend until her mother spoke, saying No, no Martha, your draw deserves to be killed. Then it was Martha who realized what she was to do, and slowly, hesitantly, she went near them, her fear of both of them in this terrible anger they n ow presented making her almost too afraid to reach up for the knife. still reach up she did, and with her childs fingers, put her mothers away from the weapon. And when she had it in her hands she did non know what to do with it, except guess at it.It wasnt a very neat knife, but its blade was clean, and its hilt firm. And so she understanded at it, until her vex say. Throw it out of the window, Martha and without thought process, she went to a window, free-spokened a casement and threw it away. Then her paternity released her mother, and at once her mother had gotten her arms free, she swung back her hand, and wordlessly, slapped him slapped him once, twice, three times, alternating with her hands, on alternate cheeks, until her father said. Thats enough, Engracia. And saying so, he took her hands in his, led her resisting to the bed, and make her sit down.And Martha was too young to wonder that her father, who was a big man, should have surrendered to the repeated slapp ing from her mother who was a very small frail charr. Her father said, Arent you shamed now Martha has seen? And immediately her mother screamed to him, Ashamed? Me, ashamed? Ill tell Martha about you Her father looked at Martha up to now standing dumbly by the window out of which she had thrown the knife, and said, No, Aciang, she is just a child. And to her Martha, go back to bed. But now her mother jumped up from the bed, and clutched at Martha, and brought her to bed with her.And deliberately without looking at Marthas father, she said, Martha you are non too young to know. And so, the run-in falling from her lips with a terrible quiet, she told Martha. The words that were strange to her ears, Martha heard them, and listened to them, and looked from her mother to her father, and without knowing it, wetting her cheeks with her tears that fell. And then her mother stopped talking, and looking at her husband, she spat on him, and Martha apothegm the saliva spatter on the front of the dark shirt he wore. She watched while her father strode over them, and slowly, alike deliberately, slapped her mother on the cheek.Martha watched his open palm as he did it, and felt the blow as though it had been she who had been hit. Then her father strode out of the room, saying nonhing, leaving them alone. When her father had gone, Marthas mother began to cry, saying brokenly to Martha, It is that woman, that woman And making excuses to Martha for her father, saying it was never exclusively the mans fault. And Martha listened bewildered, because this was so different from the venomous words her mother had told her while her father was in the room. And then her mother, slake weeping, directed her to look for her father and Martha went out of the room.Her father was non in the house. The night was very dark as she peered out of the windows to see is she could find him outside, but he was nowhere. So she went back to her mother, and told her she could not find he r father. Her mother cried silently, the tears cut across down her cheeks, and her sobs tearing through her throat. Martha cried with her, and caressed her mothers back with her hands, but she had no words to offer, nothing to say. When her mother at last was able to talk again, she told Martha to go back to bed. But it wasnt the child that entered who went out of that room.And yet the terror of that night was not so great because it was only a terror half understood. It wasnt until she was eighteen, that the hurt of that night was invested with its bounteous measure. For when she was eighteen, she fell in love. She was a girl of placid appearance, in her eyes the dreaming stolid night of the unawakened. She still was slow to learn, still not prone to brilliance. And when she fell in love she chose the brightest boy of her limited impropriety to fall in love with. He was slightly older than herself, a little too handsome, a trifle too given to laughter.Espeleta did not like him he was too different from the other young me n on the street. But Martha love him. You could see that in the way she looked at him, the way she listened to him. Marthas pigtails had lengthened. She now wore her braids bankrolled on the top of her coping like a coronet, and it went well with the placid features, the rather full figure. She was substantially one of our prettier maidens. It was well that she was not too brilliant. That she did not have both too modern ideas. The air of faintheartedness, the awkward lack of sparkling discourse suited her Madonna like face and calm.And her seriousness with love was also part of the calm waiting nature. It did not enter her head that there are such things as play, and a game. And a mans eagerness for sport. And so when she noticed that his attentions seemed to be wandering, even afterward he had admitted to a lot of people that they were engaged, she asked him, with the eager desperation of the inexperienced, about their marriage. He laughed at her. Laughed gently, teasingly, saying they could not get married for a vast time yet he must repay his parents first for all that they had done for him.He must first be sure to be able to afford the things she deserved. Well turned phrases he said his excuses with. bewitch little evasions. And if she did not see through them while he spoke them, his frequent absences, where his visits had been as a habit his excuses to stay away when once no amount of sending him off could make him stay away these but made her see. And understand. And then the way neighbours will, they tried to be affable to her. For they could see her heart was breaking and they tried to say sweet things to her, things like her being far too well for him. And then they heard that he had married.Another girl. And they truism her heartbreak, and thought it strange that a girl should lament over an undeserving lover or so. She lost a little of the plumpness that was one of her charms. And into he r eyes crept a hurt look to switch over the dreaming. And Espeleta, with all the good people, strove to be even frameer to her. Watched her grief and pitied her. And told her that whatever mistakes she had affiliated to make her grieve so, to make her suffer so, they understood and forgave. And they did not satanic her. But now that she had learned her lesson, she must beware. She knew her own father as much as they knew about him.And it was in the Fates that his sins must be salaried for. If not by himself, then by whom but she who was begotten by him? So, didnt she see? How careful she should be? Because you could, they said it to her gently, kindly, cruelly, because she could if she were careful, turn deviation the vengeance of the implacable fates. And she believed them kind although she hated their suspicions. She believed them kind, and so she started, then, to hate her father. And that night long ago came back to her, and she wished she had not thrown that knife away. E speleta saw Martha turn religious.More religious than Iya Andia and Iya Nesia, who were old and saw death flood tide close, and wanted to be assured of the easing of the gates of heaven. Espeleta approved. Because Espeleta did not know what she prayed for. Because they saw only the downcast eyes under the light veil, the coil of shining hair as it bowed over the communion rail. Yet Marthas mother and father still lived together. They never had separated. Even after that night, when she was twelve years old and frightened, and she had called for him and looked for him and not found him. The next twenty-four hours he had come back, and between her mother and him there was a silence.They slept in the same bed, and spent the nights in the same room, and yet Martha and Espeleta knew he had another(prenominal) bed, another chamber. Espeleta praised Marthas mother for being so patient. After Martha had locomote in love, when she began hating her father truly then also she began despisin g her mother. You did not know it to look at Martha. For her coil of braided hair was still there, and the shy way of blab outing, and the charming awkwardness at conversation. And Martha made up her earlier lack of lustre by shining in her class now. She was eighteen and not through high school yet.But she made up for it by graduating with high honours. Espeleta clapped its hands when she graduated. Gave her flowers. Her mother and father were there, too. And they were proud. And to look at Martha, you would think she was proud too, if a little too shy still. Martha studied nursing. And started having visitors in her mothers house again. Doctors this time. Older men, to whom her sombreness of manner appealed, and the innate good sense that seemed so patient in her quiet demeanour. Espeleta was now rather proud of Martha. She seemed everything a girl should be, and they cited her as an example of what religion could do.Lift you out of the shadow of your inheritance. For look at Ma rtha. See how different she is from what should be her fathers daughter. But what they did not know was that all of these remediates Martha had to choose someone slightly older than the rest. And where the girl of eighteen that she had been almost a child unschooled, now she was a woman wise and wary. Where the other nurses knew this doctor only as someone who did not like their dances as much as the younger ones, who did not speak as lightly, as flippantly of love as the younger ones, Martha knew why he didnt.Between the two of them there had been, tenor the very start, a quick lifting of the pulse, an immediate quickening of the breath. From the very start. And where he could have hidden the secrets of life, he chose the very first time they were able to talk to each other, to tell her that he was not free. He had a wife, and whether he loved her or not, whether she was unfaithful to him or not, which she was, there had been the irrevocable ceremony to connect them, to always make his love for each other woman, if he ever fell in love again, something that must be hidden, something that might not see light.She was a woman now, Martha was. Wise and wary. But there is no wisdom, no weariness against love. Not the kind of deep love she knew she pall him. And as even she him, she found within herself the old deep stay on secret hate. Against her father. Against the laws of man and church. Against the very fates that seemed rejoiced in making her pay for a sin she had not committed. She now learned of bitterness. Because she could not help thinking of that night, long ago, when her mother had sat on the bed, and in deliberate words told her just what kind of a father she had.It had been as though her mother had shifted on to her unwilling, unready shoulders the burden of the sorrows, the goad of the grief. Espeleta, that was so quick to censure, and to condemn even Espeleta had taken the situation in Marthas house as something that could not be helped. An d as long as there was no open strife, Espeleta made excuses for a thing that, they said, had been designed by Fate. Marthas father came home. Acted, on the surface, the good husband. And since he was married to Marthas mother, so must Marthas mother bear it, and welcome him home again.Because she would rather he came home, then went to the other one, wouldnt she? Espeleta cited heavenly rewards. For Marthas mother. And Martha went to church regularly, and was a good nurse. And still called her father, Father. You have heard that one of course, about the dweeb of the gods, how they grind exceedingly fine, and grind exceedingly slow. Espeleta hadnt heard that one, nor had Martha. But Espeleta of course would have a more winded version of it. Anyhow, one day at the hospital, Martha was attendant nurse at an emergency case. A man had been shot.There were three bullets through his chest, but he was still alive. Martha laughed queerly to herself, saying I must be dreaming, I am imagini ng that man has my fathers face. It was the doctor she loved who was in charge. With a queer dreaming feeling, she raised her eyes to meet his, and was shocked to see him drop his gaze, and over his face steal a twist as of pain, as of pity. They were instantly their efficient selves again, cloaking themselves in the impersonal masks of physician and nurse. It was as if he who lay there beneath their instruments and their probing fingers was any man, the way it could be any man.Not her father. But all while, training and theatre unavailing. Martha said to herself, but it is my father. He died on the table. He never gained consciousness. Martha move the sheet over his face and form. And watched as they wheeled him out of the room. She still had the instruments to put away and the room to put in order. But this did not take long and when she went out into the corridor, she found her mother weeping beside the shrouded form on the wheeled table. There was a military officer beside he r awkwardly seek with gruff words to console the little woman over her loss.Beside the policeman stood also the doctor, who passed an arm around the shoulder of Marthas mother, saying simply, we tried to save him. Martha joined them, knowing that she should be in tears, yet finding that she had none to shed. It would ease the tightness within her, would loosen the hard tousle in her heart to cry. But you cannot summon tears when you feel no grief, and the pain you feel is not of sorrow but of the cruel subtlety of things. She could not even put her arms around her weeping mother. When the doctor told her that she would be excused from duty the rest of the day, that he would arrange it for her, she did not thank him.She did not say anything for indeed she no longer had any words, nor any emotions that required speech. Or should be given speech. For one cannot say, how right How just When ones father has just died. Her mother and she took a taxi together to accompany the hearse tha t took her father home. There was a gang awaiting them. Espeleta in tears. Espeleta crying condolence and opprobrium in the same breath. It was from them their good neighbours, their kind neighbours that Martha learned how Gods justice had overtaken the sinner. Colon is not as intimate as Espeleta.For it is a long street and broad street. But where the railroad crosses it, the houses group together in intimate cacoethes and neighbourly closeness and its families live each others lives almost as meddlingly as Espeleta does. And is as avid for scandals as Espeleta is. Among the people in Marthas house were some from Colon. And it was they who supplied the grimmer details, the more lucid picture. In that other womans house and Martha did not even know the other womans name there had existed the stalemate state of personal business that had existed in Marthas house.Only where in Marthas house it had been a wife who was patient, in that other womans house it had been the husband wh o had bided his time. And yet the neighbours had thought he had not cared. For indeed he had seemed like a man blind and deaf, and if he raised his voice against his wife, it was not so they could hear it. Yet today, he had come home, after he had said he was going away somewhere. And had come upon Marthas father in the house, and had, without saying anything, taken out his revolver, and shot at him. Martha heard all these. And thought you know often life seems like an old fashioned melodrama, guns and all.And yet the gun had not gone off. It had jammed, and Marthas father had been able to run. And running, even as he seemed far enough from the house to be safe, the gun in the husbands hand had come right again. The man had gone out in the street, aimed at the fleeing figure. That explained why the bullets had gone in through his back and out through his chest. They said that the street was spattered with blood and where he fell, there was a pussy of gory red. The killer had surre ndered himself at once. But everyone knew he would not pay with his life he had taken.For the woman was his wife and he had come upon them in his own home. Martha stayed with the kind condolers only a while. She left her mother for them to alleviate as best as they could. They would have praises like The good God knows best they would have words like, Your grief is ended, let your other grief commence. She went to look at her father lying well arranged now in his bier. Already in spite of the manner of his death, there were flowers for him. oddment had left no glare in the eyes that the doctor at the hospital had mercifully closed, over the features lingered no evidence of pain.And Martha said, Death was kind to you. In Marthas room there hung a crucifix. Upon the crossed timberland was the agonized Christ, His eyes soft and deep and tender, even in his agony. But as Martha knelt, and lighted her candles, and prayed, in her eyes was no softness, and on her lips no words appealin g for pity for him who had died. There was only the glitter of a justice meted out at last, and the thankfulness for a punishment fulfilled. So she gave thanks, very fervent thanks. For now, she hoped, she would cease to pay.