Random Winds Read Online Free PDF Page B

in a panic because I’m already twenty-four—a third of my life gone by—and I’ll never do or see everything I want to do and see. I didn’t know there was so much; how could you know, living in a place like Cyprus? Yet, it’s true that there are people living here in the city who could be happier living in Cyprus.
    I’ve heard Edna St. Vincent Millay read poetry in the Village. I’ve gone to the opera—standing room, of course, but it’s worth it. My God, how splendid it is! The lights and the sudden darkness; the curtain rising and the music pouring …
    I’ve been reading about a man in Canada, a Dr. Banting, who has discovered help for diabetes through injections of insulin. He’s had astounding success. Imagine being a discoverer, a benefactor like that! How must he feel with the whole world’s eyes turned on him? To be like that! Oh, not for admiration, but to
know!
To know that you know! Martin, Martin, is there an ugly streak of vanity in you? I hope not.
    But I wish I didn’t have this itch. I feel that if I don’t dosomething big, discover something or develop some stupendous skill, I will have failed. They say, of course, that most beginners are romantic about themselves, that it’s only naivete and youth. I wonder.
    The folks want me home again for the vacation. Pa says I can ride around on house calls with him and that now it will all mean a lot more to me. Two months will be too much, though. I figure on a month before I come back here and gird myself for senior year. They’re reorganizing the main library and I can get a job lugging books. I need the money. Can do a lot of reading, too.
    Home on vacation. A curious thing happened today. I went with Pa on a call to one of those fussy Cyprus houses with the turrets and the iron deer that I used to think so grand. The man of the house had a bad case of grippe. I waited in the library while Pa went upstairs.
    It was a dreadful room with too much heavy oak furniture and, over the sofa, an awful picture of a barefoot running nymph with windblown scarves carefully arranged to cover genitals and breasts. I was staring at it when someone spoke.
    “Horrible, isn’t it?”
    I jumped. Then I saw who it was: a small girl barely five feet tall. She was about twenty years old with a sweet face, a fine head of dark curly hair and a curvature of the spine.
    “Sorry I scared you,” she said. “I’m Jessie Meig.”
    I told her I was the doctor’s son and she wanted to know whether I was a doctor, too. I said I was going to be, this time next year.
    I don’t know why I’m writing all this down, except that it’s been such a strange day.
    “I thought you were calling on my sister,” she said. “If you want to see her, she’s in her studio across the hall.”
    I told her I didn’t know her sister.
    Then she said, “Well, when you do know her you’ll probably fall in love with her.”
    “Why on earth should I?”
    “Because men always do. But nothing ever comes of it. At least, not yet. Father will keep them away until he finds someone he approves of.”
    I was so dumbfounded by all this that I didn’t know how to answer.
    And she said, “Anyway, Fern’s not really interested in men right now. She wants to be a great painter. Besides, she’s timid to start with. If I looked like her, I wouldn’t be timid, I can tell you that.”
    “I would hardly call you timid,” I said.
    She laughed. “You’re right, I’m not. For a person like me it would be fatal. I’m not afraid and I don’t worry. Now take you—you’re not afraid, but you are a worrier. I see it in your face.”
    Perhaps she felt she had to be startling, to entertain? I don’t really know. But I was beginning to be amused.
    “I guess I am,” I said. “It runs in the family. My father worries about the progress of mankind and my mother worries about the roof over our heads.”
    “I suppose you’re poor,” she said.
    By this time nothing surprised me, so I said: Yes, we