Ursula K. LeGuin - Unlocking The Air

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2024-11-23 0 0 27.05KB 13 页 5.9玖币

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UnlockingThe Air

fictionBy URSULA K. LE GUIN

THIS IS A FAIRY TALE. People stand in the lightly falling snow. Something is shining, trembling,

making a silvery sound. Eyes are shining. Voices sing. People laugh and weep, clasp one another’s

hands, embrace.

Something shines and trembles. They live happily ever after. The snow falls on the roofs and blows

across the parks, the squares,the river.

This is history. Once upon a time, a good king lived in his palace in a kingdom far away. But an evil

enchantment fell upon that land. The wheat withered in the ear, the leaves dropped from the trees of the

forest and nothing thrived.

This is a stone. It’s a paving stone of a square that slants downhill in front of an old, reddish, almost

windowless fortress called theRoukhPalace . The square was paved nearly 300 years ago, so a lot of

feet have walked on this stone, bare feet and shod, children’s little pads, horses’ iron shoes, soldiers’

boots; and wheels have gone over and over it, cart wheels, carriage wheels, car tires, tank treads.Dogs’

paws every now and then. There has beendogshit on it, there has been blood,both soon washed away by

water sloshed from buckets or run from hoses or dropped from the clouds. You can’t get blood from a

stone, they say, nor can you give it to a stone; it takes no stain. Some of the pavement, down near that

street that leads out ofRoukhSquare through the old Jewish quarter to the river, got dug up, once or

twice, and piled into a barricade, and some of the stones even found themselves flying through the air, but

not for long. They were soon put back in their place, or replaced by others. It made no difference to

them. The man hit by the flying stone dropped down like a stone beside the stone that had killed him. The

man shot through the brain fell down and his blood ran out on this stone, or another one maybe; it makes

no difference to them. The soldiers washed his blood away with water sloshed from buckets, the buckets

their horses drank from. The rain fell after a while. The snow fell. Bells rang the hours, the Christmases,

the New Years. A tank stopped with its treads on this stone. You’d think that that would leave a mark, a

huge heavy thing like a tank, but the stone shows nothing. Only all the feet bare and shod over the

centuries have worn a quality into it, nota smoothness , exactly, but a kind of softness, like leather or like

skin. Unstained, unmarked, indifferent, it does have that quality of having been worn for a long time by

life. So it is a stone of power, and who sets foot on it may be transformed.

This is a story. She let herself in with her key and called, "Mama? It’s me,Fana !"

And her mother, in the kitchen of the apartment, called, "I’m in here," and they met and hugged in the

doorway of the kitchen.

"Come on, come on!"

"Come where?"

"It’s Thursday, Mama!"

"Oh," saidBrunaFabbre , retreating toward the stove, making vague protective gestures at the

saucepans, the dishcloths, the spoons.

"You said."

"But it’s nearly four already--"

"We can be back by six-thirty."

"I have all the papers to read for the advancement tests."

"You have to come, Mama. You do. You’ll see!"

A heart of stone might resist the shining eyes, the coaxing,the bossiness. "Come on` she said, and the

mother came.But grumbling. "This is for you," she said on the stairs. On the bus, she said it again. "This is

for you. Not me. "What makes you think that?"

Brunadid not reply for a while, looking out the bus window at the gray city lurching by, the dead

November sky behind the roofs.

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