Before and After Drowning
They sat around the lip of the water well. They looked
at it. The water was deep and dark, with a few white spots.
If the pipe fell from their pocket into the well, the toothpick,
the key, a comb, or that secret picture of the shapely woman
with the sea lilies on her breasts, she had a ring around
her ankle, too. A hole made by a nail was visible on the wall
since we had it permanently placed on the wall, and the old
pendulum was heard exactly behind the picture in the next
room of the old woman. “It’s her heart,” she said, “not of
the old woman,” he explained,” perhaps a similarity. And
suddenly the dark water rose and drowned them. The next
day we found that fat woman floating on the water with
an obvious eudemony and not having that ring on her ankle.
