Anordinaryday


	*An Ordinary Day*

He wakes up. It's around ten in the morning, but the room is still dark. Lying on the bed, he thinks. In winter, when it's cloudy, you can't say if it's morning, noon, or afternoon. He moves on the bed and takes his cream, wooden cane from the floor which is covered by an old rug, leans on the cane, and with difficulty stands up. Then, he makes up the bed. The bed smells of urine. Shame pulls down a few muscles in his face. He tries to remember when he lost control of himself. Leaning on the cane and on the walls, he turns the light on, and goes to the kitchen. There, by the sink, he turns on the leaky faucet, pours water in a brass kettle whose handle is burned, puts the kettle on the old stove, and turns the stove on. Then, he goes to the toilet, opens the door, and urinates while standing. After flushing the toilet, he washes his hands, his face, and his false teeth. With one hand holding the cane, he closes the door behind him with the other. Pulling up his old, patched pajamas above his stomach, he looks out through the basement?s window: "No, it hasn?t snowed." So he can go out today to buy a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, or something.

Having eaten his breakfast - yesterday's bread and cheese and sweet tea - with difficulty, he wears his black trousers over his pajamas, whose legs are held in his socks. He also puts on his aged grey jacket, and his worn- out coat. In front of the dull mirror, he pulls out his comb from the back pocket of his trousers and combs his hair. "How heavy the snow is on your head, Old Man!" He can?t remember exactly when his hair turned white. Was it yesterday, or a month, or two months ago? Was it last year, the year before the last, or the year before that? He scratches his head. Now, he takes the empty bottle of milk, puts it into a plastic bag that he fetches from a bigger plastic bag inside the yellowish brown cupboard. "Oh, candy for the children!" He takes a fistful of candies from the little box inside the cupboard and puts them into his coat?s big pocket. Holding his cane all the time in one hand and the plastic bag in the other, he approaches the door, turns the handle, opens the door, and exits. Checking his pockets to ensure that he has taken the keys, he closes the door behind him.

Behind the door, he stands for a while, looking at the stairs. There are six. How does he know they are six? When did he start noticing such trivial details? After climbing the stairs, he lingers for some time, watching the backyard garden that has not much to offer, scanning the brick walls of the house from the top to the bottom, and looking at the big, red, iron door of the house. Doors and walls, walls and doors. They have similar characters, similar personalities. Both of them exist to define insides and outsides, and we build them to create boundaries that separate us from others. A wall is the door that never opens, and the door turns into a wall whenever we wish and close it. "I like doors more than walls." Then, walking slowly and carefully, he reaches the iron door, opens it, exits the house, and locks the door behind him.

"Thank God, I'm outside." He is in the street. There are chances to see some of the neighbors, whom he doesn?t really know. He even might be able to talk to somebody. Most of his friends died one after another in recent years. "Being old is tough; living longer than all your friends is worse." Without stopping, he goes right to the middle of the street. There, he stops, breathing forcibly, leaning more heavily on his cane. His old cane. It?s been at his service for a long time. "I\'ve never depended on anyone or anything more than I have relied on you little stick," he whispers, drumming with his fingers on the head of his cane. After a few moments, he starts again, and he is on the other side of the street in a minute or two. He sees someone approaching. Pretending that he enjoys walking, he starts more energetically and goes to the end of the block, and while passing the woman who lives in the house opposite to the house in which he lives, he loudly says, "hello, nice day ha?" The woman, carrying three bags of vegetables, doesn't stop. Neither does she say a word. She just looks at the cloudy sky, nods at him, and hurries to her house. The old man doesn't listen to hear whether his greeting, his hello, receives an answer or not. He's used to saying hello to people and not hearing hello in return. Besides, because he doesn't hear properly, he usually supposes that people greet him as well. His hearing has worsened as days have passed, and he has to depend more on his sight to guess what people say, by looking at their mouths and lips and bodies. This annoyed him for quite a long time, but he got used to it eventually and felt that, in fact, it was a relief not hearing everything that people say. Now, at the intersection, he slowly turns to his left, holding fast to his cane and to the plastic bag. Until the grocery store he limps, and stops only twice. "Being old is quite an adventure."

At the grocery store, he says hello to the grocer, sits down on a chair close to the counter, settles his plastic bag on the floor, gives his cane from one hand to the other, and then, he places the bottom of the cane on the ground between his feet, puts his left hand above his right hand which is holding the cane?s round head, and fixes his chin above his hands. Trying to open a conversation, he begins complaining about old age in his ordinary loud voice. The grocer, who seems a bit upset about the old man's loud voice, ignores him, pretending to be busy with the bean cans on the shelf. The old man - lifting his head - says: "Give me a milk, and write it in my account. You know, they ... hmm ... hmm ... haven't sent my payroll check yet. They ... hmm ... think we, retired people, ... hmm ... should die right a...." The grocer interrupts him, "I know, I know," mumbling and nodding afterwards, as he goes to take the milk from the refrigerator. The old man, interpreting the grocer's nodding as a sign of listening, goes on yet in a louder voice: "When you become old, people think that you are ... hmm ... you are ... stupid, and can't ... can't ... understand them. People forget that you were a ... hmm ... person ... hmm ... someone just like them with a job, with reputation, with ...hmm ... family and all this. They say ... hmm ... they don't say but they think that the only thing ... hmm ... an old person can do is to die. They ignore you ... hmm ... and no one ... hmm ... I mean no one wants to listen to you. You know why, because ...hmm..." The grocer, who is coming back with a bottle of milk in his hand, interrupts him again, saying aloud, "calm down. Turn down your voice, please. My ears are here, see," and he shows his ears using his free hand. "Take your milk, go home, and let me do my business." The old man squeezes his cane with the right hand, squeezes his right hand with the left, and settles his chin above them again. People are busy these days. They have their own troubles to deal with. Who has got time to listen to an old man? He rises up, gets the milk, gives the empty bottle back, thanks the grocer, and goes towards the bakery.

The bakery is crowded. Men and women. The old man smiles. As he enters the store, he greets everybody, though he doesn?t know anyone except the young man whom he took to the hospital one rainy night years ago when he still had the car. The young man was a boy then, and he had fallen off the roof while repairing it with his older brother. The boy's father had died earlier, leaving his six children and his widow alone. The boy's mother was terrified. She had come to him. That was a fact. The old man was proud of being a reliable, trustworthy, and comforting person. They all came to him when they were in trouble. After all, he was a school teacher. Who could you trust more than a teacher? Who could understand you better than a teacher? "You got a troublem, I reckon, eh?" he used to ask people with an encouraging big smile whenever they seemed to have a problem or need some help. What happened to all those people who came to his house? Did they die? Did they forget him? What? What happened to them? The old man didn't know.

"Hello," the young man says, raising his hand to shake the old man's while nodding and smiling. Some people in the bakery say hello back to him as well. This makes the old man really happy, but he can?t initiate a conversation with anyone there, even with the young man who still limps a little from the accident. Taking his time, he slowly and carefully picks up three loaves of bread. Then, closing his eyes, he sniffs the nice scent of the freshly baked bread: "I love it." After making sure that the baker has written his debt in his account, he leaves the bakery and sits on the cement seat beside the variety store.

He watches the people who are passing by on the sidewalk, who are dressed in warm, winter clothes, who are shopping and walking in and out the stores. He looks at women more carefully. "How much I?ve missed them, only God knows," he sighs, thinking of the women of his life: his first wife, who divorced him, and his second wife, who died on him. What is a woman? A woman is a mystery. Her soft, velvety skin, her long hair, her eyes and ears, her fleshly lips, her delicate neck, her shoulders and hands and fingernails, her chest and breasts - he moistens his lips with his tongue - her round belly, her hips and thighs and legs. If God has ever made a masterpiece, it, undoubtedly, is the woman's body. And her passion, her sensibility, is a heavenly remedy that heals your worst wounds - a powerful talisman that undoes the worst curse spelled by the strongest witch in the whole world. And her tears that thirst for your shoulder, with her occasional weaknesses that long for your strength, remind you that your manhood is meaningless without a woman. "Oh, God, I've missed women so much." He sighs again and stands up to go home.

On the way back home, holding his cane and limping and carrying his bread and milk, he looks down at the pavement. He doesn?t know why, but he looks around himself to find his shadow. "There's no shadow on a cloudy day, or is there? What is a man without his shadow?" He stops for a while to rest, and then starts limping towards the intersection, looking down, following the jerky movement of the cane in the air. "My dear cane you and I don?t have a shadow! But you have me, and I have you. Old friends eh?" When he turns to his right at the intersection, he sees six or seven small children playing in the middle of the street: "In a moonlit night in a moonlit night the moon comes to my dream to my dream, to my dream takes me from one street one street, to another, to another from the garden of grapes to the garden of plum, garden of plum, garden of plum ..." The children sing and dance. Their song and their play in the street bring a smile to the old man?s face. He goes to the middle of the street. The children, suddenly, notice him. They stop playing, and start approaching the old man, watchfully. They gather around him. He pulls out a few candies from his pocket and gives them to the children. It's become a ritual for the old man to distribute candies among the children since his first stroke. This excellent idea occurred to him when he was at the hospital. A few days before going home, there he met a seven-year-old kid. He had broken his ankle, and he lay quietly on one of the neighboring beds. He was really quiet almost all the time except at night, when he was asleep. He talked while sleeping, and the old man figured that the boy wanted a lot of things - among them a candy. So when the old man's daughter came to visit him, he asked her to bring a box of candies. Since then, he always has some candies in his pockets.

Among the children, the old man stands and smiles. "You found a new toy, didn?t you?" One of the children, in a green skirt, a six- or seven-year-old girl whose nose is running, grasps his cane and runs aside. Another child, the tallest one, is a thin boy who's wearing a pair of running shoes with untied laces and a blue pair of trousers that don?t fit him properly and hardly cover his legs. He takes the plastic bag from the old man's hand and places it securely on the sidewalk. The other children take each others' hands, and make a circle around the old man, who is now laughing. The children start moving in the circle they have made around him. On the sidewalk, the girl with the running nose pretends she's the old man, with the cane in her hand, imitating the old man's way of walking, limping just like him. Then, she places the cane on the sidewalk, and with the thin boy joins the circle. They begin to sing their song: "The moon takes me from one valley to another one from one desert to another one the moon takes me to the place where, at night, yea at night deep inside the grasslands behind the bushes, a fairy, scared and trembling, comes she puts her feet in the water of the spring, and she combs her shabby hair." In the middle of the circle, the old man stands, and happily watches them, trying to sing with them. "What a beautiful song you sing!" "You're one of us, you?re one of us now," a little girl, playfully, shouts at the old man while pulling his hand to the right and left. "I'm one of you, my dear, darling, daughter." Oh, my childhood, how fast did you pass? Where did you go? What happened to those days and nights of laughing and crying and wandering around? To those dirty streets and sweet games and red-cheeked girls and boys? To those old houses and the people who crowded them? To the stories Grandma used to tell, and to her sweet face and snowy hair? What happened to that first love, to that first kiss?

Suddenly, all of the children run to the sidewalk. The old man, alone in the middle of the street, turns around and sees a car. The car has stopped right in front of him, a meter away perhaps. The driver, pulling out his head from the car?s window, says: "Are you crazy or what? What the hell are you doing in the middle of the street? Do you want to have yourself killed? I could?ve hit you with the car, or I could've killed one of these stupid son of bitches? Look, there?s no body around now, but if I had hit one of them, they would?ve found a dozen of parents each." The old man says back to the driver, "I'm ... hmm ... I'm sorry, sir. You know, I couldn?t ... couldn't resist playing with these dear children. I'm sorry ... hmm ... and ... and ... I apologize for any ... any ... inconvenience that ... hmm ..." The driver doesn't let the old man finish his sentence, and he tells the old man to move aside so that he can go on his way. The old man does so and the car disappears soon. The thin boy brings the plastic bag and the cane and gives them to the old man. The old man thanks the children, asking them to be careful while playing in the street. Then, from the bag, he takes one loaf of bread and offers it to them. The thin boy refuses to accept it, but when a little girl who seems to be the youngest one raises her hand to take the bread, the boy takes it, and runs away. The other children chase after him noisily: "Come on, come on. Stop, you coward! Thief!" Their noise diminishes as they recede. The old man watches them for a few minutes, and then, leaning on his cane, goes towards his house, stopping a few times and looking back to see the children. "The little boy was a good boy. And the little girl, too, was a devil. She must have watched me walking for a long time. She limped just as I do." The old man smiles.

Doors and walls, walls and doors. He climbs down the six steps and stands behind the basement's door. He, then, opens the door and goes inside. "Old Man, Old Man! You left the light on again. When do you want to remember to turn the light off when you go out?" He puts the milk in the fridge, whose light, ironically, is off, and places the bread on the small, brown table in the kitchen. He undresses, and rushes to the toilet and urinates, while standing. Then, he goes to the living room. "Living room! Hah. I'm really fortunate that my house is just a kitchen and a bedroom that's my bedroom, my dining room, and also my living room. Otherwise, if I lived in a big house, I would be in deep trouble walking around the house, from the living room to the dining room, from the dining room to the bedroom and from there to the kitchen and to the toilet." The room is cold. He should turn the heater on. He goes, with his cane in his hand, and brings the heater from the kitchen. He should be careful with its wire. He plugs the heater in, and sits beside it. What should he do now? He stands up, goes to the kitchen, takes the two loaves of bread from the table and puts them in the cupboard. There is a newspaper on the table. He bought it the week before. He takes it and goes back to the room and sits beside the heater. He skims the headlines: "Nothing interesting." He has already filled out its cross word. Once, he was really good at it, and he used to fill the cross words and send them to the newspaper's or the magazine?s offices. He even, once, won a prize: a book filled with cross words!

He is hungry. The kitchen, the kettle with the burned handle, water, the old stove, and finally the sweet tea. Some cheese, a little butter, and a few slices of bread, and the sweet tea. While eating, he remembers the time when his second wife was alive, and his sons and his daughters were at home. "We had a big circle around the table, too," he says while chewing the bread. How distant those memories are! He can't remember the chronology of his life, and it seems to him that the incidents that make his past have melted in his mind, mixing with one another: his teaching and his numerous students who praised him, his first wife who married another man from her village and went back to live there and took their son with her; her second wife who loved him almost to the end of her life. "Almost! She was mad at me in the end, I'm sure of it. You should've bought a house for us, and God knows she was right. But I couldn't. With the money they gave me, I could only pay for our stomachs and for the children's school and the rent, and for the medicine for her diabetes, and ..." And his children blamed him too.

After his lunch, the old man takes the newspaper again and leafs through it. Gradually, he falls asleep.

He opens his eyes. "When was the last time I dreamed? It must be quite a long time ago. Why don't I dream any more? Maybe I do, but I don't remember. Old Man, Old Man, it's almost time you said good-bye to the living world, I guess." The silence weighs on his heart. He turns the antique radio on and turns the volume up, so that he can hear it. "Music. A house without music is like a grave," his second wife used to say. He listens to the music for a while. The heater doesn't work properly and gives off smoke from somewhere. "It must be its wire." He turns off the heater and takes it outside the basement. Then, he comes back and walks around the living room, looking out through the window. "It'll rain soon, I reckon." He sits on the floor again, placing his cane on his lap. He used to get bored more readily a few years ago, but, now, he is almost used to it. "I don?t have any other choice, do I?" The room becomes cold again. He brings a blanket from the closet and turns the light off. Lying down on the floor, he pulls the blanket over his body, staring at the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. "Why don?t my children come to see me more often? They used to come and visit me almost weekly a few years ago. But now only once every six months! Oh God, how much I love them and how much I miss them! If they knew how much I need them now, they would come to see me every day." These kinds of thoughts used to bother him badly, but not any more. "My poor children! They must be busy with their own lives," he says to himself a few times, every day. The cane and the newspaper beside him, he falls asleep again ...

He opens his eyes. The light is on. "Oh, Old Man! See. Again! I can?t believe it. You forgot to turn the light off. Alas, alas, alas. I'm nothing any more but a stupid old man."

"We turned the light on. You are not stupid," the little girl who was playing with the children in the street, the one who took the old man's cane and whose nose was running, says to the old man. She is coming from the kitchen to the room. With her the thin boy and all the other children who were playing in the street come out from the kitchen and sit all around the old man. The old man is speechless. He's astonished. He rubs his eyes, but they're still there. "How did you come in? What are you doing in my house? Your parents would be worried sick about you. Didn't they tell you not to go to strangers houses, not to talk to them? Aren't you afraid that I might hurt you?"

"You ain?t a stranger, baba," the girl who, in the morning, told th e old man that he was one of them says, holding his hand in her two tiny hands. "Look baba, you have beautiful hands." "My hands aren't beautiful, my little darling. They are empty, old, wrinkled, and ugly. They can't work any more. They're useless. What's the good of a pair of hands when they can't find, hold, and caress other hands?" "You can hold and caress my hands," the thin boy says. "And mine," the girl with the running nose cries. "And mine," other children repeat. The old man's eyes are full of tears, and he tries not to let them fall, because if they did, he wouldn't be able to stop his crying. He hasn't cried for a long, long time. "I wish the rain would fall. Maybe, if it rained, these dense clouds would leave our beautiful sky," he says aloud. "There ain't no clouds in the sky! It rained like crazy when you were asleep. The sky was very sad baba. It cried and cried and cried. You could've bathed under her tears. Every drop of it was this big, baba." The little girl, releasing the old man's hand, cups her hands. "See, this big." "Actually, that's why we're here," the thin boy says. "Why don't you tell me why you're here," the old man asks them. "We'll tell you later. First, dinner!" The thin boy says, and other children cheerfully support him: "Yesss!" "Hurrah!" "Yeah ... yeah ... yeah!"

The children help the old man stand, and altogether go to the kitchen, holding each others' hands. The kitchen is cleaned up and smells good. The table is decorated beautifully with a ceramic vase that holds a bunch of jasmine flowers - long-stemmed, white and blue. There are also two plates of food and a bottle of wine and a glass filled with red wine. A little boy, whose right hand is in the pocket of his short trousers, points at the chair with his left hand, inviting him to sit down. "But there's only one chair. Where are you gonna sit my dear children? Where are your plates and food?" the old man asks while sitting on the chair.

"Don't worry about us. We've already had our dinners. We're gonna stand right here, and we're gonna watch you eat your dinner," the girl with the running nose - whose nose is clean right now - says, patting the old man's back. The dinner is marvelous! Rice and a variety of vegetables on one plate, and on the other pieces of fresh bread and cheese. "How colorful!" The old man's look lingers on each color and slips to another color gently. "Who cooked all this food?" "We did! Who else?" "Who found these gorgeous flower at this time of year? "We found them, who else?" "And who brought this bottle of wine?" the old man demands to know in a serious voice, but since the children choose to be silent, he adds, "I love red wine, you know." During the dinner, the children are silent, watching the old man, who - while eating the delicious meal - is watching the children in return. "I ate a lot, but because it's so delicious, I don't feel full." The old man licks his fingertips.

After the dinner, the old man thanks the children a few times, and the children say "you?re welcome" to him. "So, are you gonna tell me what's this all about or not? "Listen baba, you're invited to a party, that's all," the girl with the clean nose says. "What kind of a party? Who's giving the party? Is it a party for the elders? I haven't been to a party since ... since ... I can?t even remember when. But what about you, my dear children? Aren't you coming?" "It's a party, a special one, only for you, and we're taking you there. Tonight, you're the king and we're your courtiers," the thin boy says. Now, stand up, and get ready for the best party of your life!" "Come on, it's time to go," the little girl who held the old man?s hand insists. "OK, OK, just let me take my cane and wear my clothes. I'll come with you. Who can resist your strict commands? and your innocent looks." The old man smiles at the children. "You don't need your cane. We?ll hold your hand, and you can lean on us. You don't even need your clothes because it's warm out there," the thin boy says. "You said it had rained, and after the rain for an old man like me it's a bit cold. I should take my coat at least, you know, just in case." The old man takes his coat, and the little boy, with his hand in his pocket, and the little girl, with the clean nose, help him put it on. The thin boy opens the door and puts on his running shoes. He doesn't tie the laces. The other children, also, wear their shoes and wait for the old man and the two other children to come and to put on their shoes. "It's not really cold," the old man, standing by the door, says and looks at the sky: "Oh, my God. It's unbelievable. What happened to all those dense and heavy clouds? I've never seen the sky so clear. And look at the moon! She?s so big, so beautiful!" "She has invited you to her party," the little girl says, squeezing the old man's hand with her hands, and goes on: "She saw us today when we were playing in the street and singing her song. You remember, don't you? We were singing: "In a moonlit night in a moonlit night ... it's the moonlit night tonight. You know, she liked you very much." says the little girl, who?s holding the old man's hand. The old man notices that she has wavy, curly hair just like those small angels in the icons. "Sure I remember," the old man bends and kisses her forehead. "Garden of grapes, and apples, and bananas, and water melon, and ..." "No, from the garden of grapes to the garden of plum," the little girl corrects the old man, who's smiling. They step out. The ground is wet, and the air, fresh. All the doors are wide open. "So, how are we going to the moon, my sweet children? We aren't astronauts, and we don't have a space ship," the old man says in a playful voice. "We ain't need no space ship. She said she herself would come and take you to the party," the boy whose hand is still in his pocket says. "Didn't she?" "Yes, she did. Swear to God, she did. I'd turn into stone if I lied," a very small boy who hasn't talked much says. "Sure she did," the old man says, still smiling. "You'll believe us soon," the oldest child, the boy with the running shoes, says in a promising sort of way. They walk through the doors, and go to the middle of the street, where some water has made a small pool on the pavement. There, they stop and gather around the little pool, and drop their heads down, hand in hand. The old man is in the circle too, holding the hands of the little girl with wavy hair, and the small boy who held his hand in his pocket. They're all silent, as if praying. The old man, who still has a sketch of a smile on his face, looks down too. On the surface of the still water, he sees the reflection of the moon - the big, beautiful moon on Earth! "What should we do now?" the old man whispers. "Shhhh," all the children hush the old man, and after a while, start singing their song. They dance as they sing, moving their bodies, lifting their hands in a wavelike motion. The old man imitates what they're doing, waving his hands and arms and awkwardly moving his body to the left and right. The music of the song is the same as "In a moonlit night," but the words are so familiar to the old man, as if he had known this song since his own childhood. And the dance is fascinating: a wave that travels in the circle of their hands, up and down as they lift and drop their hands one after another, left and right as they simultaneously turn in their place to the left or right. "It can't be real, I'm dancing!" When the song finishes, the children free their hands and widen their circle around the small pool, and the old man remains in the middle of this now bigger circle. The smile on his lips has withered. "What should I do now?" the old man cries....



***** The Real Ending (#1) ...The old man opens his eyes, still repeating: "What should I do now?" Wrapped in the blanket, he is in his house, and the room is dark. There are no children. "What should I do now? Where are they? Where did they go? Why didn't the moon take me to her party, the best party of my life? The little girl said she liked me. So, where is she now? Was it all a dream? a stupid dream?" He wipes his eyes with his hands, and pulling the blanket up to his neck, he whispers: "At one night, the moon will appear at last from the top of a mountain, above a valley in this field, the moon will laugh At one night, the moon will come."



***** The Bitter Ending (#2) ... "You should only wait a little," the thin boy says, going backwards, though still facing the old man. All the other children do the same, going backwards, receding from the old man. Suddenly, darkness arrives. Black clouds cover the moon and the sky. "The sky was so clear a minute ago. What?s happening? Where are these clouds coming from? Where is the moon? My moon?" the old man says aloud, watching the dance of the clouds in the sky. "Don't close your eyes on me. Don't go away without me," he shouts at the moon, but his cry is lost in the wind. The old man's snowy hair becomes shabby from the wild wind. The wind brings the cold, as well as the fog that seems to be rising from the pavement. "See, I told you my dear children that I should take my warm clothes, didn't I?" The old man looks down, and then, around. "Where are you? Come on, it's not a good time for playing. Come on out. You and I might catch a cold. Come out, and we'll go to my house, and I'll tell you a very old story my grandma told me when I was a child just like you." The old man looks around, but he can't see well. He is still in the middle of the street, helpless. He should've taken his cane. He can?t believe the children left him. Shadows! They're coming through the mist towards him. "I thought you left me. How stupid I was you might say, and I am, because I thought you dear children..." the old man notices that the approaching shadows are not the children. Through the mist, the old man sees some people approaching him from all sides, in a big circle that's getting smaller and smaller. He can't say a word. He turns around and around. They're not children; they're adults, strangers. They come closer and closer, and they stop in a small circle around the old man. A few men and two women. One of the men is wearing a pair of running shoes whose laces are loose. Abruptly, they sit altogether on their four limbs, posing like hungry animals, like wolves, a pack of wolves. The old man falls down, and down, and down, squeezing his chest with his hand as the wolves stand up as if they were people. Their fangs shine even in the dark, and their hungry eyes too. The old man sees this shine in the still water of the little pool on the cold pavement just before his head hits the ground.



***** The Happy Ending (#3) ..."You should just step into the pool," says the little girl with curly hair, who held the old man's hand. "What would happen if I did?" "The moon comes and takes you to the party," the little girl answers. "But I don't want to leave you. I don't want to go to the party alone. Couldn't you come with me?" "No. We can't come right now, but we will join you soon, and besides you won't be alone. The moon's expecting you. She wouldn't leave you alone. She likes you. She's promised us to take good care of you till we come," the boy with the running shoes encourages the old man. The old man looks at the children one by one. His heart aches. "I don't say good-bye to you then, and I will wait for you there." He lifts his foot and steps into the pool, watching the children who are waving their hands. The watery surface of the little pool wrinkles and ripples. The reflection of the moon dances under his feet. Then, it enlarges in all directions, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The earth - or is it the moon? - under the old man?s feet seems to have opened her mouth, swallowing him. He falls - or does he ascend? The old man is being drowned in - or is he emerging from? - a whirlpool of light. A labyrinthine passage embellished by whirling and swirling colors and light. Light and light ...