Grim Tales (6 page)

They rode into the tunnel of love; and after a while, the boat came out again without them. Some declared they had been consumed in the heat of desire by spontaneous combustion, but this romantic theory was much ridiculed. Some others maintained that the young couple had been pulled from the boat by vagrants living inside the tunnel. Although a silk scarf was found, no one could recall whether or not the woman had been wearing one when she entered the tunnel of love. The explanation offered by the operator, who held a boathook almost fiercely – that the man and woman had been devoured by the mechanical monsters lurking in the tunnel's alcoves – was never seriously considered.

He believed that the end of the world would come at dawn and left his wife and children in order to “save myself, alone, as we – each of us – must when we stand before our maker.” He drove to the hills overlooking the sea where God was to arrive. When the dawn came and God did not, he returned to his family. They refused to let him into the house. He forced his way inside and slew them with the knife he had planned to use to make of himself a sacrifice. At day break, sick at heart, he pierced his side with it.

She was about to step into the bathtub when the wall opened and a hand – large and grotesquely misshapen – reached out and pulled her inside. Her husband hurried to her; but the crack had, in an instant, closed “like a wound that has healed.”

Slender ladders were let down out of the fog, their lowest rungs visible above the field. The rungs were lit by an uncanny light difficult to describe but reminding many of those who saw it of the sea, at dusk, when the waves lie down as if to rest and the suddenly flattened sea grows luminous until the setting of the sun. There was, too, that song which made most of them uneasy but which a few found irresistibly sweet. They were the ones who climbed the ladders into the fog; after which the ladders were, one by one, drawn up into the sky, never to reappear in their lifetime. Believe me no one could have stopped them from climbing!

It rained all day inside the house. The door was unlocked; outside the sun was shining. But they preferred to remain indoors. So they put up their umbrellas and, after a time, drowned.

Now, Death had only to address an envelope and send it to its victim in order to claim him. The envelope would fall through the mail slot into the living room where a man was listening to the radio or building a model or looking at a photograph album. He opened the envelope, soon sickened and died. In some other room, Death waited to read of it in the newspaper.

By the time he reached the ground after having jumped from the tenth floor, he had regretted his decision, which was based – he now saw clearly – on a rash and altogether unwarranted presumption. His wife – he knew with certainty – had meant nothing by the kiss she had given her co-worker the night before, when he had stepped away from the table to use the phone. He ought not to have jumped to conclusions – he told himself – and in future would not be so quick to do so.

The falling man did not stop until he had left the ground behind him.

He had been dreaming of flying and, waking, found himself on a rooftop high above the city with a woman who had been dreaming of flying when she woke to find herself on a rooftop with a man who had been dreaming. Their eyes sought each other, desiring; but they were afraid of flying into one another's arms for fear they might fall asleep and be lost to one other.

Haven't I given you reasons enough to do nothing, to remain as we are? he shouted. But she was curious and stepped from the ledge almost gladly.