layout: post title: Yetserday love was such an easy game to play. date: '2017-06-24T08:20:00.000-07:00' author: Adam M. Dobrin tags: modified_time: '2017-10-14T05:30:34.671-07:00' thumbnail: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7iXBhdf7-tQ/WbkaYBl1pOI/AAAAAAAAG0g/Zu8cPu5p7B0Ufinn_Qvxv1N4_iaay_gRACLcBGAs/s72-c/Screenshot%2B2017-09-13%2Bat%2B7.28.25%2BAM.png blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8758503587102933296.post-2790153980416034492 blogger_orig_url: http://www.fromthemachine.org/2017/06/yetserday-love-was-such-easy-game-to.html



O  H     I      B   E  L   I    E   V   E
I'M GONNA LOVE YOU
WHEN THE STARS FALL FROM THE SKY
I N  Y E S T E R D A Y   A N D   T O D A Y 
WHEN THE HEAVENS LET IT RAIN
I'M GONNA LOVE YOU
W O R K  T O G E TH E R
FOR IT'S YOU AND I

I've long held the belief that there was no better day or time to start "this thing" to start making the world a better place, and seeing the truth... well, than yesterday.  It took me until this very moment, on September 13, 2017 to connect that oft repeated explanation of why "do it right now" was always my answer and will be until, well, until tomorrow.  With no doubt, I believe with all my heart and SOL and my mind--that we are late to the party of truth and love, and that being late is not bad--so long as it doesn't for some odd reason make us wait yet another day.  Today is the right day to see the truth, to start talking and working together, this very moment is "the right time."  The right time for "freedom" to begin, in lieu of yesterday, well; it's today.

The stars have fallen from the sky in more ways than one, they are you and I in more than one way, and together the Heavens and Earth have "stopped the rain" and those tears, those tears are something we need, and need to see, to be free.   To even know me a little bit, to ever get to know me, to see who and why the Doors too fall from the sky, it's just got to rain first.  Hear the light, "it melts into wonder" see the word, it means "won dark to right" and it's talking about the Universe, it's talking about you and I.

run into rain and play
let the the tears fall from the sky and from my eye
jesus wrote a blank check, it's a rain check
i've cashed it, and forged it
redde mihi in the sky

It was always this song, this "Touch Me" that I linked to this movement of universal voting, of truly touching my heart and seeing that the "You and I" is really about everyone, it's really everyone and you--every day we walk this maze to Heaven.  To see that "teary rain fall" means freedom to me, and that doesn't lose light when you see Ra's in bright display on Ellis Island.   It is "you and I" that rekindles a love for freedom and ensures that this story does in fact come to life.  Turning around this southeasterly fall to oblivion and seeing the stone pointing to the northeast carrying the circle of the son in his hand; that's reality, that's the key to the you and I verse.







Some "light" reading for Yetserday...


I spent a very short time doing forensics in high school, but these were the two pieces that me and my mother chose together for me to read.  This first poem is her favorite, and I am pretty sure The Gift of the Magi was something I read in AP English.  I talk a lot about microcosms hidden away in my life, and these two pieces still touch me today, they still give me great hope.  
Speaking of touching, yesterday was the one year anniversary of the very first "You and I" email linking the eponymous Doors song to the "election is not to die bold" message that is now on it's third iteration.  It also happened to be Janet's birthday, so happy birthday to you.  I am hoping that one day we will call it the youNiversary, and maybe some people will celebrate it.  If I were to choose a day, a single day, that to define the change wrought by the touch of the master's hand, it would be June 23, 2016.

Well, you'll never believe it; but looking at "The Gift" it's just not the story I read in the year 1997; though I'm sure the story I read was called that.  Almost positive.  The story I actually read is included here also, it's called "The Necklace."  For what it's worth, my "take away" from that story, linking it to the Magi and to the Touch... is something about the world "paying in" for a long, long time for a goal, or a thing that they weren't sure was real, or they were sure wasn't.  In the end though, it turns out that it truly is "the real thing."  This, friends, is the real thing.


  

This message begins by undeniable proving the existence of time travel both by predicting the 3/11/11 earthquake and the 9/11 attack in Exodus, Ecclesiastes, and Revelation and showing the world previously hidden and very obvious ancient references to modern technology--centering around computer science.  With a tiny shred of thought and some serious research it the becomes clear that our entire computing industry (and the focus on science and technology in our time line as well as the arts) is part of an ancient and divine plan to build Heaven




Someone, I can't seem to figure out whohas taken this message and tied it directly to now verifiable proof that our evolution of democracy was "helped in the beginning" and then artificially held back, using this same hidden technology.  That through the years of our most advanced technological advances--from cars and phones to computers and the internet, we failed to make the obvious leap to attempting to use these technologies to advance the infrastructure of our "governments of the people," specifically for voting and the creation of legislation.  Implied strongly, is the possibility that without some kind of disruption, it might have taken many years, decades, centuries, or forever for us to have moved past this idea of "representative democracy" being the very best system possible.  


The Touch of the Master's Hand

'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
      Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
      But held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
    "Who'll start the bidding for me?"
"A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?
      Two dollars, and who'll make it three?"


"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;

      Going for three…" But no,
From the room, far back, a grey-haired man
      Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
      And tightening the loosened strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
      As a caroling angel sings.



The music ceased, and the auctioneer,

      With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"
      And he held it up with the bow.
"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?
      Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,
    And going and gone," said he.



The people cheered, but some of them cried,

    "We do not quite understand.
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
    "The touch of the Master's hand."
And many a man with life out of tune,
      And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd
      Much like the old violin.



A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,

    A game — and he travels on.
He is "going" once, and "going" twice,
    He's "going" and almost "gone."
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
    Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
    By the touch of the Master's hand.



O. Henry
The Gift of the Magi
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
     There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
     While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.
     In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
     The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
     Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim.
     There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 Bat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
     Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
     Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out of the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
     So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
     On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she cluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.
     Where she stopped the sign read: 'Mme Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.' One Eight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the 'Sofronie.'
     "Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
     "I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
     Down rippled the brown cascade.
     "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
     "Give it to me quick" said Della.
     Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
     She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value - the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 78 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
     When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task dear friends - a mammoth task.
     Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
     "If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do - oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"
     At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
     Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, God, make him think I am still pretty."
     The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two - and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves.
     Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
     Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
     "Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again - you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
     "You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labour.
     "Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
     Jim looked about the room curiously.
     "You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
     "You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you - sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
     Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year - what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
     Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
     "Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
     White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
     For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise-shell, with jewelled rims - just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
     But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
     And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
     Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to {lash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
     "Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
     Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
     "Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
     The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

XX.  The Necklace

By Guy de Maupassant
SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education.   1
  She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames.   2
  She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five o'clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired.   3
  When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu. I don't know anything better than that," she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.   4
  She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after.   5
  She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days, whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much did she suffer as she came away. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress.   6
  
But one evening her husband came in with a proud air, holding in his hand a large envelope.   7
  "There," said he, "there's something for you."   8
  She quickly tore the paper and took out of it a printed card which bore these words:—   9
  "The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to do them the honor to pass the evening with them at the palace of the Ministry, on Monday, January 18."  10
  Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with annoyance, murmuring—  11
  "What do you want me to do with that?"  12
  "But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here's a chance, a fine one. I had the hardest work to get it. Everybody is after them; they are greatly sought for and not many are given to the clerks. You will see there all the official world."  13
  She looked at him with an irritated eye and she declared with impatience:—  14
  "What do you want me to put on my back to go there?"  15
  He had not thought of that; he hesitated:—  16
  "But the dress in which you go to the theater. That looks very well to me—"  17
  He shut up, astonished and distracted at seeing that his wife was weeping. Two big tears were descending slowly from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. He stuttered:—  18
  What's the matter? What's the matter?"  19
  But by a violent effort she had conquered her trouble, and she replied in a calm voice as she wiped her damp cheeks:—  20
  "Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I."  21
  He was disconsolate. He began again:—  22
  "See here, Mathilde, how much would this cost, a proper dress, which would do on other occasions; something very simple?"  23
  She reflected a few seconds, going over her calculations, and thinking also of the sum which she might ask without meeting an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the frugal clerk.  24
  "At last, she answered hesitatingly:—  25
  "I don't know exactly, but it seems to me that with four hundred francs I might do it."  26
  He grew a little pale, for he was reserving just that sum to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting, the next summer, on the plain of Nanterre, with some friends who used to shoot larks there on Sundays.  27
  But he said:—  28
  "All right. I will give you four hundred francs. But take care to have a pretty dress."  29
  
The day of the party drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Yet her dress was ready. One evening her husband said to her:—  30
  "What's the matter? Come, now, you have been quite queer these last three days."  31
  And she answered:—  32
  "It annoys me not to have a jewel, not a single stone, to put on. I shall look like distress. I would almost rather not go to this party."  33
  He answered:—  34
  "You will wear some natural flowers. They are very stylish this time of the year. For ten francs you will have two or three magnificent roses."  35
  But she was not convinced.  36
  "No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women."  37
  But her husband cried:—  38
  "What a goose you are! Go find your friend, Mme. Forester, and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You know her well enough to do that."  39
  She gave a cry of joy:—  40
  "That's true. I had not thought of it."  41
  The next day she went to her friend's and told her about her distress.  42
  Mme. Forester went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large casket, brought it, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel:—  43
  "Choose, my dear."  44
  She saw at first bracelets, then a necklace of pearls, then a Venetian cross of gold set with precious stones of an admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, and could not decide to take them off and to give them up. She kept on asking:—  45
  "You haven't anything else?"  46
  "Yes, yes. Look. I do not know what will happen to please you."  47
  All at once she discovered, in a box of black satin, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with boundless desire. Her hands trembled in taking it up. She fastened it round her throat, on her high dress, and remained in ecstasy before herself.  48
  Then, she asked, hesitating, full of anxiety:—  49
  "Can you lend me this, only this?"  50
  "Yes, yes, certainly."  51
  She sprang to her friend's neck, kissed her with ardor, and then escaped with her treasure.  52
  
The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The Minister took notice of her.  53
  She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness made up of all these tributes, of all the admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this victory so complete and so sweet to a woman's heart.  54
  She went away about four in the morning. Since midnight—her husband has been dozing in a little anteroom with three other men whose wives were having a good time.  55
  He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought to go home in, modest garments of every-day life, the poverty of which was out of keeping with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to fly so as not to be noticed by the other women, who were wrapping themselves up in rich furs.  56
  Loisel kept her back—  57
  "Wait a minute; you will catch cold outside; I'll call a cab."  58
  But she did not listen to him, and went downstairs rapidly. When they were in the street, they could not find a carriage, and they set out in search of one, hailing the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance.  59
  They went down toward the Seine, disgusted, shivering. Finally, they found on the Quai one of those old night-hawk cabs which one sees in Paris only after night has fallen, as though they are ashamed of their misery in the daytime.  60
  It brought them to their door, rue des Martyrs; and they went up their own stairs sadly. For her it was finished. And he was thinking that he would have to be at the Ministry at ten o'clock.  61
  She took off the wraps with which she had covered her shoulders, before the mirror, so as to see herself once more in her glory. But suddenly she gave a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her throat!  62
  Her husband, half undressed already, asked—  63
  "What is the matter with you?"  64
  She turned to him, terror-stricken:—  65
  "I—I—I have not Mme. Forester's diamond necklace!"  66
  He jumped up, frightened—  67
  "What? How? It is not possible!"  68
  And they searched in the folds of the dress, in the folds of the wrap, in the pockets, everywhere. They did not find it.  69
  He asked:—  70
  "Are you sure you still had it when you left the ball?"  71
  "Yes, I touched it in the vestibule of the Ministry."  72
  "But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab."  73
  "Yes. That is probable. Did you take the number?"  74
  "No. And you—you did not even look at it?"  75
  "No."  76
  They gazed at each other, crushed. At last Loisel dressed himself again.  77
  "I'm going," he said, "back the whole distance we came on foot, to see if I cannot find it."  78
  And he went out. She stayed there, in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, on a chair, without a fire, without a thought.  79
  Her husband came back about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.  80
  Then he went to police headquarters, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab company; he did everything, in fact, that a trace of hope could urge him to.  81
  She waited all day, in the same dazed state in face of this horrible disaster.  82
  Loisel came back in the evening, with his face worn and white; he had discovered nothing.  83
  "You must write to your friend," he said, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it repaired. That will give us time to turn around."  84
  She wrote as he dictated.  85
  
At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, aged by five years, declared:—  86
  "We must see how we can replace those jewels."  87
  The next day they took the case which had held them to the jeweler whose name was in the cover. He consulted his books.  88
  "It was not I, madam, who sold this necklace. I only supplied the case."  89
  Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for a necklace like the other, consulting their memory,—sick both of them with grief and anxiety.  90
  In a shop in the Palais Royal, they found a diamond necklace that seemed to them absolutely like the one they were seeking. It was priced forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six.  91
  They begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made a bargain that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand, if the first was found before the end of February.  92
  Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He had to borrow the remainder.  93
  He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one, five hundred from another, five here, three louis there. He gave promissory notes, made ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers, with all kinds of lenders. He compromised the end of his life, risked his signature without even knowing whether it could be honored; and, frightened by all the anguish of the future, by the black misery which was about to settle down on him, by the perspective of all sorts of physical deprivations and of all sorts of moral tortures, he went to buy the new diamond necklace, laying down on the jeweler's counter thirty-six thousand francs.  94
  When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace to Mme. Forester, the latter said, with an irritated air:—  95
  "You ought to have brought it back sooner, for I might have needed it."  96
  She did not open the case, which her friend had been fearing. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Might she not have been taken for a thief?  97
  
Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed the servant; they changed their rooms; they took an attic under the roof.  98
  She learned the rough work of the household, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing out her pink nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the towels, which she dried on a rope; she carried down the garbage to the street every morning, and she carried up the water, pausing for breath on every floor. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting for her wretched money, sou by sou.  99
  Every month they had to pay notes, to renew others to gain time. 100
  The husband worked in the evening keeping up the books of a shopkeeper, and at night often he did copying at five sous the page. 101
  And this life lasted ten years. 102
  At the end of ten years they had paid everything back, everything, with the rates of usury and all the accumulation of heaped-up interest. 103
  Mme. Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed, with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud, and she washed the floor with splashing water. 104
  But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and she thought of that evening long ago, of that ball, where she had been so beautiful and so admired. 105
  What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular life is, how changeable! What a little thing it takes to save you or to lose you. 106
  Then, one Sunday, as she was taking a turn in the Champs Elysées, as a recreation after the labors of the week, she perceived suddenly a woman walking with a child. It was Mme. Forester, still young, still beautiful, still seductive. 107
  Mme. Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid up, she would tell her all. Why not? 108
  She drew near. 109
  "Good morning, Jeanne." 110
  The other did not recognize her, astonished to be hailed thus familiarly by this woman of the people. She hesitated— 111
  "But—madam—I don't know—are you not making a mistake?" 112
  "No. I am Mathilde Loisel." 113
  Her friend gave a cry— 114
  "Oh!—My poor Mathilde, how you are changed." 115
  "Yes, I have had hard days since I saw you, and many troubles,—and that because of you." 116
  "Of me?—How so?" 117
  "You remember that diamond necklace that you lent me to go to the ball at the Ministry?" 118
  "Yes. And then?" 119
  "Well, I lost it." 120
  "How can that be?—since you brought it back to me?" 121
  "I brought you back another just like it. And now for ten years we have been paying for it. You will understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last, it is done, and I am mighty glad." 122
  Mme. Forester had guessed. 123
  "You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?" 124
  "Yes. You did not notice it, even, did you? They were exactly alike?" 125
  And she smiled with proud and naïve joy. 126
  Mme. Forester, much moved, took her by both hands:— 127
  "Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most they were worth five hundred francs!" 128
  
Oh I believe, in Yesterday...

 


Dear Sea, see "Julian, Adam, Nanna... and" and Why it's art.






--

Adam Marshall Dobrin
about.me/ssiah


Unless otherwise indicated, this work was written between the Christmas and Easter seasons of 2017 and 2018. The content of this page is released to the public under the GNU GPL v2.0 license; additionally any reproduction or derivation of the work must be attributed to the author, Adam Marshall Dobrin along with a link back to this website, fromthemachine.org.