Atlantis: Three Tales Read Online Free PDF

the first few, he saw a green-covered magazine and slipped it out, certain it was one with Clarice’s poems. He read the title:
Mnemosyne
. Flipping through a few pages, however, he realized a good deal of it was in Latin. Turning back to the cover, he caught the date—1918: no, it was one of Corey’s journals from the time of her language pursuits. Again he opened it, to page through—132, 133,134—where a passage Corey had marked caught him. The article explained the lines were from a Chorus closing the second act of Seneca’s
Medea
.
    Venient annis, saecula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
Nec sit terris ultima Thule
.
    In careful pencil, at a gray slant, Corey had inscribed her marginal translation (five days ago? in distant 1918? sometime in between?):
    An age will come, in distant times,
When Ocean will release the chains ’round things
And the whole broad earth—as well
as Tethys’s new world’s end, Thule,
Not as the limit of lands—will be revealed.
    The article explained how Christopher Columbus’s son and biographer, Fernando, had marked just this passage in his own copy of Seneca, jotting down in the margin:
    Haec propheteia expleta est per patrem meum
Christopher Colon almirantem ano 1492
.
    Corey’s marginal gloss:
    This prophecy was fulfilled by my father
Christopher Colon _________ in the year 1492.
    Beside that, she had written: “
almirantem?
Ask Papa. C.C.’s place of birth? Elmira? But it’s not capitalized.”
    When Corey and Elsie had first visited New York, almost ten yearsago now, with Mama as chaperone, they’d taken the boat up from Norfolk. But Sam had been mad to take the train—nearly as eager over that as he’d been about the skyscrapers. All that water . . . ? He closed
Mnemosyne
, put it down on the newspapers—then, in afterthought, pulled up two or three papers and put them back on top.
    Outside, the shrill cry was blotted up by silence.
    He’d often thought he’d have liked to follow Papa and Corey in their linguistic explorations. But (said Papa) he was too mercurial for such diligence. Sam stood, reached up and pulled the wooden handle on the flush chain. As the water roared from the wooden tank above, he bent, pulled his pants up, buttoned them, and buckled his belt.
    After washing his hands once more, he opened the bathroom door—to be startled by the mirror in the hall right between the glass-chimneyed gas lamps, where his surprised double surprised him, pausing, bewildered in the frame, Sam the Stranger, unknowingly about to walk in on him.
    In the living room, where the table had been moved in from the kitchen, he gave out Jules’ soap; and Hap, who was the
first
dentist in the family (and had got his nickname—Hap—because he was so happy), said: “Well, I’ll get my teeth
real
clean with this!”
    â€œNow you don’t use that on your teeth,” Elsie said, “more than but once a week!”
    â€œFor the rest of the time, you just use tooth powder, like everybody else,” Dr. Corey said. “Why you have to tell a dentist what to brush his teeth with, I’ll never know!” Since her graduation from Dental College at Columbia, she’d shared an office with Hap.
    They all laughed. “Tell us about Thanksgiving,” which had been only last week. “How was it this year?”
    So he did—about the turkey and the dancing to the records, which Papa had allowed because it wasn’t Sunday, even though they made two trips to chapel, once in the morning and once at sunset. Right after his election, Papa had decided not to get a Victrola but a more expensive Edison Player. The medallion beside the flocked turntable said: “Diamond Disc Official Laboratory Model.” The song Sam and Lewy andJohn all liked and had played over and over to the point of