The Egg of the Glak and Other Stories by Jacobs Harvey

Author:Jacobs, Harvey [Jacobs, Harvey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Fiction, Fiction.Sci-Fi, Collection.Single Author, Fiction.Fantasy
ISBN: 9780436220401
Google: yx-KNgAACAAJ
Publisher: Secker and Warburg
Published: 2016-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

THE LION’S SHARE

My name is Martin Stein.

I look like a secondhand lion. My face and jaw have a heaviness. My eyes have a prowlish quality. Not an urgent, hungry look, but the look of slow appetite providing for itself. My hair is messy, a fuzzy garden. I walk with a slouch. My body is big. Definitely, I look like a lion, but the kind of lion that is burdened with memories of hard times, penetrating defeats and boring victories. There is practically no spring to me. Do I sound old? I am hardly twenty, still growing. Inwardly, I have a very active life.

I am exuberant, hopeful, full of beginnings and new pride. If anything, I have dangerous tendencies toward ecstasy. The sensations of the new season affect me like a rub with a turkish towel. Hope is my constant companion.

It is nature’s accident that my inside does not jibe with my outside. Except when I talk. My voice is deep, clear and mellow. I have a rich, round voice. It penetrates. It stirs up typhoons in the acoustical seas. When I talk I have actually seen houseflies leave cushy perches to buzz in ever-widening circles. Can you imagine what I do to human eardrums, which are tissue thin? Most of my passion expresses itself in my voice. All youth is wrapped in my vocal cords. This I attribute to the fact that my mother believed in the whole man and my father did not fight her. I still have tonsils.

I use my kingly voice whenever possible. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it is my best muscle. I chat with conviction on politics, philosophy, literature, sports, music, art, the drama, love and food. My voice comes echoing from the cave of my mouth like Old Testament music. A dentist once told me my teeth, tongue and palate are a natural mall suited to great orchestras. Believe me, I would invite the philharmonic if I could fit them all in.

To hear and see me simultaneously is confusing. I am badly dubbed. But because of my intrinsic contradictions, everyone on campus knows me. I am a celebrity of no accomplishment. And I am not seasonable. Martin Stein is pointed out whether they are playing football or croquet, during Winter Week or the Strawberry Festival.

Despite my small notoriety, I am shy in new relationships. At fresh meetings, I burn, I die. When you first make my acquaintance, I look at you through squinty lids, giving the impression that your light is so detestable to my brain that I must filter it. Not true. Actually, the chances are I would love you if I could. But I am naturally afraid that you will strip the shell off my soul and find it shivering in dirty underwear.

Why am I this way? Who knows? Maybe it is because my family had money during the Depression. As a child I was removed from the neighborhood’s squalor, misery and hunger. From this economic separation I have never fully recovered.

This chronic shyness I feel is, for Martin Stein, the sluggish lion, a thorn in his paw.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.