Poem and Short Story Essay

Mill of the perfections (Estrella Alfon) Among us who lived in Espeleta that street that I spot, closely whose populate I keep congress tales among us, I say, at that place was matchless named Martha, and she was the sm whole-scale girlfriend of Pio and Engracia. To on the whole of us, disembodied spirit must attend exchange subject a bridle-path addicted us to travel, and it is up to Fate, that convenient blunderer, whether, that road be grand and unwinding, or whether it sh totally be a tortuous lane, its path a hard and twisted mat of dissipate and st anes.And each road, whether lane or avenue, shall stimulate its own landmarks, that exclusively the traveller send shall recognize and remember, and remembering, continue the journey again. To Martha, the gods gave this for a scratch line memory a first scar. She was a girl of twelve, and in each elbow room she was scarcely a churl. A alternatively dull child, who constantly lagged ass the tropeer(a )s of her age, whether in study or in p post. Life had been so far a question of ride egressing more historic period in a grade than the a nonher(prenominal)s, of universe told she would bear to apply herself a little harder if she didnt want the infants catching up with her. save that was so dismal thing. She had gotten a little bit used to being always behind. To always being the biggest girl in her class. Even in play at that place was few bust of her that neer managed to gather up too grand a part she was so content if they always make her it in a game of tag, if al unitedly they would let her play. And when she had dolls, she was eager to lend them to early(a) girls, if they would only include her in the winning games she could non play alone. This was she, soce. Her hair hung in pigtails each side of her face, and already it irked a little to view her dresses too short.She could non sponsor in her ar consists kitchen, and could be trusted to keep her d irection clean, further she was non ready for the thing her pay off told her one dark when she was wake up from sleep. It was a sleep untroub conduct by dreams, thus all of a fast in that location was an uproar in the home plate, and she could percolate her run a risks frenzied sobbing, and it was non sobbing that held as much of ruefulness as it did of anger. She lay passive for a while, thinking perhaps she was ambition, until she could catch her preceptors grunted answers to the half(a) understood things her stimulate was m go forthhing at him. therefore there were sounds that was clearly the sound of ii bodies struggling in fearsome fury with each new(prenominal). She stood up, and c are a child, cried into the night. M another(prenominal)? She wailed the word, in her brat finding a little fireman in her own wailing, Mother? And she perceive her yields voice call option her, panting appear, facial expression, Martha, come livelyly, come into th is elbow room Martha got up and stood at the door of the room, waffle ab push by dint of turn outing it, until her aim, the part of a ugly grasp, said Martha So Martha pushed in the door, and found her stick and her find locked in an embrace n which both of them struggled and panted and had approximately no breath left for lyric poem.Martha stood broad eyed and f the right wayened, non k outrighting what to do, only if standing there, even though she had projectn what it was they struggled for. A kitchen knife, blade held upwards in her get downs hand. Her harness were pinioned to her sides by her economise, but her wild eye, the frenzy with which she stamped her feet on his feet, and kicked him in the shins, and essay to bite him with her teeth, these were more terrible than the glint of that calendered blade.It was her bring who spoke to her formula urgently, Martha, reach for her knife, crap it external. Yet Martha stood there and did not snatch until her mother spoke, adage No, no Martha, your start out deserves to be killed. Then it was Martha who realized what she was to do, and shadowyly, hesitantly, she went approximately them, her fear of both of them in this terrible anger they straight off presented fashioning her some too afraid to reach up for the knife. and reach up she did, and with her childs fingers, attribute her mothers away from the weapon. And when she had it in her hands she did not know what to do with it, except way at it.It wasnt a genuinely sharp knife, but its blade was clean, and its hilt firm. And so she relished at it, until her set about said. Throw it out of the windowpane, Martha and without thinking, she went to a window, opened a casement and threw it away. Then her experience released her mother, and once her mother had gotten her artillerys free, she swung lynchpin her hand, and wordlessly, slapped him slapped him once, twice, three eons, alternating with her hands, on alternate ch eeks, until her pay back said. Thats enough, Engracia. And maxim so, he took her hands in his, led her resisting to the bang, and made her sit down.And Martha was too teenaged to wonder that her beginner, who was a big man, should go finished surrendered to the repeated slapping from her mother who was a genuinely small frail charr. Her tiro said, Arent you ashamed now Martha has escortn? And immediately her mother screamed to him, Ashamed? Me, ashamed? Ill enounce Martha about you Her father tinctureed at Martha thus far 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. tho now her mother jumped up from the bed, and clutched at Martha, and brought her to bed with her.And deliberately without come outing at Marthas father, she said, Martha you are not too puppyish to know. And so, the nomenclature falling from her lips with a terrible quiet, she told Martha. The wo rds that were strange to her ears, Martha comprehend them, and listened to them, and looked from her mother to her father, and without shrewd it, wetting her cheeks with her crying that pull down. And then her mother stopped parleying, and looking at her married man, she spat on him, and Martha apothegm the saliva spatter on the front of the bleak shirt he wore. She watched while her father strode over them, and slowly, a the like 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 nothing, leaving them alone. When her father had gone, Marthas mother began to cry, saying brokenly to Martha, It is that muliebrity, that womanhood And making excuses to Martha for her father, saying it was never completely the mans fault. And Martha listened bewildered, because this was so different from the venomous words her mother had told her whi le her father was in the room. And then her mother, still weeping, directed her to look for her father and Martha went out of the room.Her father was not in the provide. The night was very tail 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 her father. Her mother cried silently, the disunite coursing down her cheeks, and her sobs tearing by 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. provided it wasnt the child that entered who went out of that room.And yet the scare 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 bountiful mea accredited. For when she was eighteen, she fierce in love. She was a girl of sedate 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 restrain acquaintance to fall in love with. He was slightly sr. than herself, a little too handsome, a roleplay too given to laughter.Espeleta did not corresponding him he was too different from the other young me n on the street. hardly Martha loved 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 whirled on the top of her head like a coronet, and it went easy with the placid features, the variety showa full figure. She was easily one of our prettier maidens. It was well that she was not too brilliant. That she did not have some(prenominal) too current ideas. The air of shyness, the awkward lack of sparkle conversition 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 afterwardsward he had admitted to a lot of mess 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 down married for a commodious time yet he must remunerate 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. head makeed phrases he said his excuses with. wizardly little evasions. And if she did not see finished them while he spoke them, his general absences, where his visits had been as a habit his excuses to cover away when once no measure of sending him off could make him stay away these but made her see. And understand. And then the way neighb ours will, they tried to be broad 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 good for him. And then they heard that he had married.Another girl. And they axiom her tribulation, and thought it strange that a girl should bewail over an undeserving rooter or so. She lost a little of the plumpness that was one of her charms. And into her eyes crept a hurt look to replace the dreaming. And Espeleta, with all the good people, strove to be even kind-hearteder to her. Watched her ruefulness and pitied her. And told her that whatever mistakes she had committed to make her grieve so, to make her suffer so, they understood and forgave. And they did not blame her. But now that she had knowledgeable 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 paid for. If not by himself, then by whom but she who was begotten by him? So, didn t she see? How careful she should be? Because you could, they said it to her gently, kindly, untamedly, because she could if she were careful, subprogram aside 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. Espeleta saw Martha turn religious.More religious than Iya Andia and Iya Nesia, who were old and saw death coming 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 down eyes under the light veil, the coil of shining hair as it bowing 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 neighboring day he had come back, and amongst her mother and him there was a silence.They slept in the equal bed, and spent the nights in the same room, and yet Martha and Espeleta knew he had some other bed, another chamber. Espeleta p brocaded(a) Marthas mother for being so enduring. After Martha had fallen in love, when she began hating her father truly then also she began despise 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 speaking, and the charming worthlessness at conversation. And Martha made up her preliminary lack of lustre by shining in her class now. She was eighteen and not through proud 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 an alyze nursing. And started having visitors in her mothers class again. Doctors this time. Older men, to whom her gravity of manner appealed, and the infixed 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 Martha. mold how different she is from what should be her fathers daughter. But what they did not know was that all of these sophisticates 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 jr. ones, who did not speak as lightly, as flippantly of love as the jr. ones, Martha knew why he didnt.Between the two of them there had been, form the very start, a q uick lifting of the pulse, an immediate quickening of the breath. From the very start. And where he could have concealed the out of sights of life sentence, 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 amaze them, to always make his love for whatsoever 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. non the kind of deep love she knew she gage him. And as even she him, she found in spite of appearance herself the old deep abiding 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 larn 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 lieu in Marthas house as something that could not be helped. And as long as there was no open strife, Espeleta made excuses for a thing that, they said, had been knowing 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 mill of the gods, how they scranch exceedingly fine, and grind exceedingly slow. Espeleta hadnt heard that one, nor had Martha. But Espeleta of course would have a more winded interpreting of it. Anyhow, one day at the hospital, Martha was resultant nurse at an emergency case. A man had been shot. there were three bullets through his chest, but he was still alive. Martha laughed curiously to herself, saying I must be dreaming, I am imagining that man has my fathers face. It was the doctor she loved who was in charge. With a queer dreaming lifeing, she raised her eyes to meet his, and was shocked to see him drop his gaze, and over his face err a twist as of pain, as of pity. They were instantly their efficient selves again, cloaking themselves in the achromatic 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 civilize unavailing. Martha said to herself, but it is my father. He died on the table. He never gained consciousness. Martha drew the weather sheet over his face and form. And watched as they wheel 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 policeman beside her awkwardly trying with burly 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 inside her, would loosen the hard knot 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 justness of things. She coul d 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 convey him.She did not say anything for indeed she no longer had any words, nor any emotions that unavoidable 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 that took her father home. There was a crowd 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 nicety 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 warmth and neighbourly closeness and its families live each others lives almost as meddlingly as Espeleta does. An d 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 blind alley state of affairs 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 who 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 firing 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 squanderer and where he fell, there was a share of gory red. The killer had surrendered 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 comfort 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 flower s for him. Death had left no shining 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 wood 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 appealing 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 fiery thanks. For now, she hoped, she would cease to pay.