Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 Read Online Free PDF

There was a long silence.
                 He
came in, set the camera down, and lit himself a cigarette.
                 “I’ll
go up and see them alone,” he said, “if you’d rather.”
                 “No,”
she said, not very loud. “I’ll go along. But I wish we could forget the whole
thing. It’s such a lovely little town.”
                 “Look
here!” he cried, catching a movement from the corner of his eyes. He hurried to
the balcony, stood there, his cigarette smoking and forgotten in his fingers.
“Come quick, Marie!”
                 “I’m
drying myself,” she said.
                 “Please,
hurry,” he said, fascinated, looking down into the street.
                 There
was movement behind him, and then the odor of soap and water-rinsed flesh, wet
towel, fresh cologne; Marie was at his elbow. “Stay right there,” she cautioned
him, “so I can look without exposing myself. I’m stark. What is it?”
                 “Look!”
he cried.
                 A
procession traveled along the street. One man led it, with a package on his
head. Behind him came women in black rebozos , chewing
away the peels of oranges and spitting them on the cobbles; little children at
their elbows, men ahead of them. Some ate sugar cane, gnawing away at the outer
bark until it split down and they pulled it off in great hunks to get at the
succulent pulp, and the juicy sinews on which to suck. In all, there were fifty
people.
                 “Joe,”
said Marie behind him, holding his arm.
                 It
was no ordinary package the first man in the procession carried on his head,
balanced delicately as a chicken-plume. It was covered with silver satin and
silver fringe and silver rosettes. And he held it gently with one brown hand,
the other hand swinging free.
                 This
was a funeral and the little package was a coffin.
                 Joseph
glanced at his wife.
                 She
was the color of fine, fresh milk. The pink color of the bath was gone. Her
heart had sucked it all down to some hidden vacuum in her. She held fast to the french doorway and watched the traveling people go,
watched them eat fruit, heard them talk gentle, laugh gently. She forgot she
was naked.
                 He
said, “Some little girl or boy gone to a happier place.”
                 “Where are they taking—her?”
                 She
did not think it unusual, her choice of the feminine pronoun. Already she had
identified herself with that tiny fragment parceled like an unripe variety of
fruit. Now, in this moment, she was being carried up the hill within
compressing darkness, a stone in a peach, silent and terrified, the touch of the father against the coffin material outside;
gentle and noiseless and firm inside.
                 “To
the graveyard, naturally; that’s where they’re taking her,” he said, the
cigarette making a filter of smoke across his casual face.
                 “Not the graveyard?”
                 “There’s
only one cemetery in these towns, you know that. They usually hurry it. That
little girl had probably been dead only a few hours.”
                 “A
few hours—”
                 She
turned away, quite ridiculous, quite naked, with only the towel supported by
her limp, untrying hands. She walked toward the bed.
“A few hours ago she was alive, and now—”
                 He
went on, “Now they’re hurrying her up the hill. The climate isn’t kind to the
dead. It’s hot, there’s no embalming. They have to finish it quickly.”
                 “But
to that graveyard, that horrible
place,” she said, with a voice from a dream.
                 “Oh,
the mummies,” he said. “Don’t let that bother you.”