BIRYUK scampered off and my sister flung the
stick at him. Then she turned about and she saw
me.
“Eddie, come here,” she commanded. I
approached with apprehension. Slowly, almost
carefully, she reached over and twisted my ear.
“I don’t want to see that dog again in the
house,” she said coldly. “That dog destroyed my
slippers again.
MY sister was the meanest creature I knew. She
was eight when I was born, the day my mother
died. Although we continued to live in the same
house, she had gone, it seemed, to another country
from where she looked at me with increasing
annoyance and contempt.
Nothing I did ever pleased her. She destroyed
willfully anything I liked. At first, I took it as a
process of adaptation, a step of adjustment; I
snatched and crushed every seed of anger she
planted in me, but later on I realized that it had
become a habit with her. But when she dumped
my butterflies into a waste can and burned them
in the backyard, I realized that she was spiting
me.
On my way back to the house, I passed the
woodshed. I saw Berto in the shade of a tree,
splitting wood. When he saw me, he stopped and
called me.
He said to me: “I’ve got something for you.”
He dropped his ax and walked into the
woodshed. I followed him. Berto went to a corner
of the shed.
“Look,” he said.
I approached. Pinned to the ground by a piece
of wood, was a big centipede. Its malignantly red
body twitched back and forth.
“It’s large,” I said.
“I found him under the stack I chopped.”
Berto smiled happily; he looked at me with his
muddy eyes.
“You know,” he said. “That son of a devil
nearly frightened me to death”
I stiffened. “Did it, really?” I said trying to
control my rising voice. Berto was still grinning
and I felt hot all over.
“I didn’t expect to find any centipede here,”
he said. “It nearly bit me.
I nearly touched it with my hand. What do you
think you would feel?”
I did not answer. I squatted to look at the
reptile. Its antennae quivered searching the tense
afternoon air.
“I could carry it dead,” I said half-aloud.
“Yes,” Berto said. “I did not kill him because I
knew you would like it.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“That’s bigger than the one you found last
year, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very much bigger.”
Then I made sure it was dead by brushing its
antennae. The centipede did not move. I wrapped
it in a handkerchief.
My sister was enthroned in a large chair in the
porch of the house. Her back was turned away
from the door; she sat facing the window . She
was not aware of my presence. I unwrapped the
centipede. I threw it on her lap.
My sister shrieked and the strip of white sheet
flew off like an unhanded hawk. The centipede
had fallen to the floor.
“You did it,” she gasped. “You tried to kill me.
You’ve health… life… you tried…” Her voice
dragged off into a pain-stricken moan.
I felt pity and guilt.
“But it’s dead!” I cried kneeling before her.
“It’s dead! Look! Look!” I snatched up the
centipede and crushed its head between my
fingers. “It’s dead!”
My sister did not move. I held the centipede
before her like a hunter displaying the tail of a
deer, save that the centipede felt thorny in my
hand.