406
PARTISAN REVIEW
A bird
Nadia Danon. Not long before she died a bird
on a branch woke her.
At four in the morning, before it was light,
narimi
l1arimi
said the bird.
What will I be when I'm dead? A sound or a scent
or neither. I've started a mat.
I may still finish it. Dr. Pinto
is optimistic: the situation is stable. The left one
is a little less good. The right one is fine. The X-rays are clear. See
for you rsel
f:
no secondaries here.
At four in the morning, before it is light, Nadia Danon
begins to remember. Ewes' milk cheese. A glass of wine.
A bunch of grapes. A scent of slow evening on the Cretan hills,
the taste of cold water, the whispering of pines, the shadow
of the mountains spreading over the plain,
narimi
narimi
the bird sang there. I'll sit here and sew.
I'll be finished by morning.
Butterflies to a tortoise
At sixteen and a half, in a country town, she was married to a well-
off relative.
A widower aged thirty.
It
was the custom
to marry daughters within the family. Her father
was a gold- and silversmith . One of the brothers was sent to Sofia,
to study to be a pharmacist and bring back a diploma. Nadia herself
learned from her mother how to cook and embroider,
make sweetmeats and write neatly. The widowed bridegroom, a draper,
came to visit on Sabbaths and holidays.
If
asked, he sang wonderfully
in a rich, resonant tenor voice. He was a tall, elegant, well-mannered man,
who always knew what to say
