Ray Bradbury by The Machineries of Joy

Author:The Machineries of Joy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:17:53+00:00

But both were running now. Two car doors slammed like pistol shots ending a matinee.

The cars drove off. The station platform stood empty-it being December and cold, snow soon fell like a curtaim V THE LJFEWORK OF JUAN DIAZ lomena flung the plank door shut with such violence the ndle blew out; she and her crying children were left in Lrkness-The only things to be seen were through the win- )w—the adobe houses, the cobbled streets, where now the avedigger stalked up the hill, his spade on his shoulder, oonlight honing the blue metal as he turned into the high Yld graveyard and was gone. “Mamacita, whaVs wrong?” Filepe, her oldest son, just Lne, pulled at her. For the strange dark man had said nothLg, just stood at the door with the spade and nodded his ,ad and waited until she banged the door in his face. Wamacita?”

“That gravedigger.” Filomena’s hands shook as she relit the andle.

“The rent is long overdue on your father’s grave, ‘Our father will be dug up and placed down in the catacomb, ,ith a wire to hold him standing against the wall, with the the?” mummies.”

“No, Mamacital” “Yes.” She caught the children to her. “Unlew we find the ioney. Yes.”

“I-I will kill that gravediggerill cried Filepe. “It is his job.

Another would take his place if he died, nd another and another after him.”

They thought about the man and the terrible high place here he lived and moved and the catacomb he stood guard Ver and the strange earth into which people went io come enth dried like desert flowers and tanned like leather for hoes and hollow as drums which could be tapped and eaten, an earth which made great cigar-brown rustling dry aummies that might languish forever leaning like fence poles long the catacomb halls. And, thinking of all this familiar )ut unfamiliar stuff, Filomena and her children were cold in ummer. and silent though their hearts, made a vast stir in their bodies. They huddled together for a moment longer and then: “Filepe,” said the mother, “come.” She opened the door and they stood in the moonlight listening to hear any far sound of a blue metal spade biting the earth, heaping the sand and old flowers. But there was a silence of stars. “You others,” said Filomena, “to bed.”

The door shut. The candle flickered. The cobbles of the town poured in a river of gleaming moonsilver stone down the hills, past green parks and little shops and the place where the coffin maker tapped and made the clock sounds of death-watch beetles all day and all night, forever in the life of these people. Up along the slide and rush of moonlight on the stones, her skirt whispering of her need, Filomena hurried with Filepe breathless at her side. They turned in at the Official Palace.

The man behind the small, littered desk in the dimly lit office glanced up in some surprise. “Filomena, my cousin!”

“Ricardo.” She took his hand and dropped it “You must help me.

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