Shiva and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

“and strange-looking letters. You know these languages?”
    “Cyrillic,” I said, “for the Russian language. This gives it authenticity. Keep on going though, you’ll find something that you can read if you just give it time.” I maintained a sense pride in my work. Even then, I only wanted a reading.
    She turned some pages. “Running dog,” she read, “imperialist swine will fall within the mark and the penitentiary of the century will not, cannot, wholly enclose them.”
    “Dominican Republic. 1988,” I said rather pompously.
    “Praise the keepers, for the keepers will set us free: know the truth, and the truth will cut our shackles.”
    “Yes.” I said. “Isn’t that good?”
    “You wrote that?”
    “Every word of it.”
    “And you’re proud of this?”
    “I’m not ashamed, Francine, if that’s what you’re asking me to say. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
    She hurled the binder on the floor. “I can’t tell you how angry this makes me,” she said. “This then, this is the face of the enemy, the liars who have turned this country into the nightmare of the century. You serve the forces of this lie, and yet you’re a clerk , just a functionary!” She reached, took another binder from the shelf, threw this down unopened. “This is terrifying,” she said. “It’s absolutely terrifying. I can’t believe that you’ve told me all this.”
    “You’re causing disorder.”
    “I’m what?”
    “You’re causing disorder, Francine, and I won’t have it. So please, I’m asking you to stop.”
    “ I’m causing disorder,” she said fiercely. “Oh my—”
    “This is my library. I’m proud of it. I worked hard to put it together. My writings are here. I don’t want them disturbed, and I don’t want to argue over them anymore.”
    She opened the binder, clawed out a sheet. “This says something about steel quotas,” she said, rolled it into a ball, threw it at me. She ripped out another sheet, scanning it hurriedly.
    “I mean it. I said stop it, Francine,” I said. I felt myself beginning to flush. I knew arrhythmia would shortly follow. I am quite serious about my collected works. Some aspect of permanence and history is important to me. This is testimony. Call it evidence if you like. Call it the evidence of the century. “Please don’t do this.”
    “I’m going to dismantle your library piece by piece, you disgusting little clerk. Then I’ll call everyone I know and expose you. See if I’m afraid of the CIA.”
    “It’s not the CIA.”
    “I’m not afraid of anything!” Francine said. “You people hide in the dark, you make your little threats. But when you’re exposed, you’re nothing—”
    Who would have thought there to be so much passion in her? Three dates, three casual fucks, some dinners, a walk on the piers, one concert, an unfortunate confession, and then all of this. She had reacted as if I were an assassin.
    “It must be being surrounded by all of the dying,” I said to her, trying to be reasonable. “Yes, that would explain it, that would explain the rage. But I’m just a victim, too, Francine. I do what they tell me.”
    “That’s the great line of our age: ‘Don’t bother me, I just work here.’ ”
    She seized two binders this time and kicked one across the room. The heavy impact of her little shoe caused the reinforcement to break. Pages spewed from a height, settled unevenly on the floor like nesting birds. I endeavored up to this point—as must be clear—to be reasonable. I am a reasonable man.
    But I am afraid that at this moment I lost control of myself.
    A description of the events of the next hour or so is not necessary. That description would be too painful, albeit truly humbling, but I can say that I was brought to realize the inner, substantial truth of that which I had written in a group of documents to be found in a warehouse in Amman during the invasion of 1991: “One truly does not know the measure of the man until one has