LITERATURE CLASS

9° GRADE
LITERATURE BOOKLET #3
2021

Teacher: Ana Alicia Rodriguez Solórzano

Student`s name: _______________________________________________________ Class: 9-____
CONTENT: Short stories

Elements of a Short Story

• Theme
• Setting
• Characters
• Moral
• Point of view (1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person,omniscient)
• Characterization
• Symbols
• Conflict: There are two types of conflict:
1) External - A struggle with a force outside one's self.
2) Internal - A struggle within one's self; a person must make some decision, overcome pain,
quiet their temper, resist an urge, etc.

1. Person vs. Fate/God

2. Person vs. Self
3. Person vs. Person
4. Person vs Society
5. Person vs. Nature
6. Person vs. Supernatural
7. Person vs. Technology

• Plot

rising actions

conflict

climax

falling actions

resolution
 The Three Sheiks and Queen of Arabia

Maura, who liked to be thought of as the most beautiful and powerful

queen of Arabia, had many suitors. One by one she discarded them, until her
list was reduced to just threes sheiks, all equally young and handsome, rich
and strong. It was very hard to decide who would be the best of them.
One evening, Maura disguised herself and went to the camp of the
three sheiks, as they were about to have dinner, and asked them for something
to eat.
The first gave her some leftover food; the second gave her some unappetizing
camel’s tail; the third sheik, who was called Hakim, offered her some of the
most tender and tasty meat. After dinner, the disguised queen left the sheiks’
camp.
The following day the queen invited the three sheiks to dinner at her
palace. She ordered her servants to give each one exactly what they had given
her the evening before.
Hakim, who received a plate of delicious meat, refused to eat it if the other two
could not share it with him, and this act finally convinced Queen Maura that he
was the man for her.
“Without question, Hakim is the most generous of you,” she announced her
choice to the sheiks, “So, it is Hakim I will marry.”

Setting
(place, time, so- Place: ______________________________.
cial condition) Time: __________________________________________________
Social conditions: ___________________________________

Plot Introduction: __________________________________________________

Rising Action: __________________________________________.
Climax: __________________________________________________
Falling action: __________________________________________________
Denouement:__________________________________________________
Conflict Type: ( ) External ( ) Internal
(Type and Kind) Kind: ( ) Man vs. Man ( ) Man vs. circumstances ( ) Man vs. society ( ) Man vs. himself
Characters
Protagonist(s):
______________________________________________________________________________.
Antagonist:
________________________________________________________________________________.
Secondary characters:
______________________________________________________________________.
Point of View ( ) First person ( )Omniscient
Moral ( ) things are not always as they appear to be
( ) Love is blind
( ) Believe in yourself
( ) People are afraid of change
( ) Don't judge a book by its cover

Charles
The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls
with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the
first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life
was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a longtrousered,
swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.
He came home the same way, the front door slamming open, his cap on the
floor, and the voice suddenly become raucous shouting, “Isn’t anybody here?”
At lunch he spoke insolently to his father, spilled his baby sister’s milk, and re-
marked that his teacher said we were not to take the name of the Lord in vain.
“How was school today?” I asked, elaborately casual. “All right,” he said. “Did
you learn anything?” his father asked. Laurie regarded his father coldly. “I
didn’t learn nothing,” he said. “Anything,” I said. “Didn’t learn anything” “The
teacher spanked a boy, though,” Laurie said, addressing his bread and butter.
“For being fresh,” he added, with his mouth full. “What did he do?” I asked.
“Who was it?” Laurie thought. “It was Charles,” he said. “He was fresh. The
teacher spanked him and made him stand in a corner. He was awfully fresh.”
“What did he do?” I asked again, but Laurie slid off his chair, took a cookie, and
left, while his father was still saying, “See here, young man.” The next day Lau-
rie remarked at lunch, as soon as he sat down, “Well, Charles was bad again to-
day.” He grinned enormously and said, “Today Charles hit the teacher.” “Good
heavens,” I said, mindful of the Lord’s name, “I suppose he got spanked again?”
“He sure did,” Laurie said. “Look up,” he said to his father. “What?” his father
said, looking up. The Library of America • Story of the Week Excerpt from
Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (The Library of America, 2010), pages 73–
77. Originally appeared in Mademoiselle (July 1948). Reprinted in The Lottery;
or, The Adventures of James Harris (1949). © Copyright 1949 by Shirley Jack-
son. Copyright renewed 1976 by Laurence Hyman, Barry Hyman, Sarah Web-
ster, and Joanne Schnurer. Reprinted by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.“Look down,” Laurie said. “Look at my
thumb. Gee, you’re dumb.” He began to laugh insanely. “Why did Charles hit
the teacher?” I asked quickly. “Because she tried to make him color with red
crayons,” Laurie said. “Charles wanted to color with green crayons so he hit the
teacher and she spanked him and said nobody play with Charles but everybody
did.” The third day—it was Wednesday of the first week—Charles bounced a
see-saw on to the head of a little girl and made her bleed, and the teacher made
him stay inside all during recess. Thursday Charles had to stand in a corner dur-
ing storytime because he kept pounding his feet on the floor. Friday Charles was
deprived of blackboard privileges because he threw chalk. On Saturday I re-
marked to my husband, “Do you think kindergarten is too unsettling for Laurie?
All this toughness, and bad grammar, and this Charles boy sounds like such a
bad influence.” “It’ll be all right,” my husband said reassuringly. “Bound to be
people like Charles in the world. Might as well meet them now as later.” On
Monday Laurie came home late, full of news. “Charles,” he shouted as he came
up the hill; I was waiting anxiously on the front steps. “Charles,” Laurie yelled
all the way up the hill, “Charles was bad again.” “Come right in,” I said, as soon
as he came close enough. “Lunch is waiting.” “You know what Charles did?” he
demanded, following me through the door. “Charles yelled so in school they
sent a boy in from first grade to tell the teacher she had to make Charles keep
quiet, and so Charles had to stay after school. And so all the children stayed to
watch him.” “What did he do?” I asked. “He just sat there,” Laurie said, climb-
ing into his chair at the table. “Hi, Pop, y’old dust mop.” “Charles had to stay af-
ter school today,” I told my husband. “Everyone stayed with him.” “What does
this Charles look like?” my husband asked Laurie. “What’s his other name?” 74
the lottery“He’s bigger than me,” Laurie said. “And he doesn’t have any rubbers
and he doesn’t ever wear a jacket.” Monday night was the first Parent-Teachers
meeting, and only the fact that the baby had a cold kept me from going; I
wanted passionately to meet Charles’s mother. On Tuesday Laurie remarked
suddenly, “Our teacher had a friend come to see her in school today.” “Charles’s
mother?” my husband and I asked simultaneously. “Naaah,” Laurie said scorn-
fully. “It was a man who came and made us do exercises, we had to touch our
toes. Look.” He climbed down from his chair and squatted down and touched
his toes. “Like this,” he said. He got solemnly back into his chair and said, pick-
ing up his fork, “Charles didn’t even do exercises.” “That’s fine,” I said heartily.
“Didn’t Charles want to do exercises?” “Naaah,” Laurie said. “Charles was so
fresh to the teacher’s friend he wasn’t let do exercises.” “Fresh again?” I said.
“He kicked the teacher’s friend,” Laurie said. “The teacher’s friend told Charles
to touch his toes like I just did and Charles kicked him.” “What are they going
to do about Charles, do you suppose?” Laurie’s father asked him. Laurie
shrugged elaborately. “Throw him out of school, I guess,” he said. Wednesday
and Thursday were routine; Charles yelled during story hour and hit a boy in the
stomach and made him cry. On Friday Charles stayed after school again and so
did all the other children. With the third week of kindergarten Charles was an in-
stitution in our family; the baby was being a Charles when she cried all after-
noon; Laurie did a Charles when he filled his wagon full of mud and pulled it
through the kitchen; even my husband, when he caught his elbow in the tele-
phone cord and pulled telephone, ashtray, and a bowl of flowers off the table,
said, after the first minute, “Looks like Charles.” During the third and fourth
weeks it looked like a reformation in Charles; Laurie reported grimly at lunch
on Thursday charles 75of the third week, “Charles was so good today the
teacher gave him an apple.” “What?” I said, and my husband added warily, “You
mean Charles?” “Charles,” Laurie said. “He gave the crayons around and he
picked up the books afterward and the teacher said he was her helper.” “What
happened?” I asked incredulously. “He was her helper, that’s all,” Laurie said,
and shrugged. “Can this be true, about Charles?” I asked my husband that night.
“Can something

like this happen?” “Wait and see,” my husband said cynically. “When you’ve
got a Charles to deal with, this may mean he’s only plotting.” He seemed to be
wrong. For over a week Charles was the teacher’s helper; each day he handed
things out and he picked things up; no one had to stay after school. “The P.T.A.
 meeting’s next week again,” I told my husband one evening. “I’m going to find
Charles’s mother there.” “Ask her what happened to Charles,” my husband said.
“I’d like to know.” “I’d like to know myself,” I said. On Friday of that week
things were back to normal. “You know what Charles did today?” Laurie de-
manded at the lunch table, in a voice slightly awed. “He told a little girl to say a
word and she said it and the teacher washed her mouth out with soap and
Charles laughed.” “What word?” his father asked unwisely, and Laurie said,
“I’ll have to whisper it to you, it’s so bad.” He got down off his chair and went
around to his father. His father bent his head down and Laurie whispered joy-
fully. His father’s eyes widened. “Did Charles tell the little girl to say that?” he
asked respectfully. “She said it twice,” Laurie said. “Charles told her to say it
twice.” “What happened to Charles?” my husband asked. “Nothing,” Laurie
said. “He was passing out the crayons.” Monday morning Charles abandoned
the little girl and said the evil word himself three or four times, getting his
mouth washed out with soap each time. He also threw chalk. 76 the lotteryMy
husband came to the door with me that evening as I set out for the P.T.A. meet-
ing. “Invite her over for a cup of tea after the meeting,” he said. “I want to get a
look at her.” “If only she’s there,” I said prayerfully. “She’ll be there,” my hus-
band said. “I don’t see how they could hold a P.T.A. meeting without Charles’s
mother.” At the meeting I sat restlessly, scanning each comfortable matronly
face, trying to determine which one hid the secret of Charles. None of them
looked to me haggard enough. No one stood up in the meeting and apologized
for the way her son had been acting. No one mentioned Charles. After the meet-
ing I identified and sought out Laurie’s kindergarten teacher. She had a plate
with a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake; I had a plate with a cup of tea
and a piece of marshmallow cake. We maneuvered up to one another cautiously,
and smiled. “I’ve been so anxious to meet you,” I said. “I’m Laurie’s mother.”
“We’re all so interested in Laurie,” she said. “Well, he certainly likes kinder-
garten,” I said. “He talks about it all the time.” “We had a little trouble adjusting,
the first week or so,” she said primly, “but now he’s a fine little helper. With oc-
casional lapses, of course.” “Laurie usually adjusts very quickly,” I said. “I sup-
pose this time it’s Charles’s influence.” “Charles?” “Yes,” I said, laughing, “you
must have your hands full in that kindergarten, with Charles.” “Charles?” she
said. “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten.”

Questions

1. What is the main idea of "Charles"?

2. Why does Charles become a well-known character to the family?

3. What changes does Laurie’s mother observe in her son the day he starts kindergarten? 

4. Why did Laurie act the way he did in school?

5. Give three examples of Charles's bad behavior at school.

6. What clues to the identity of Charles can you find in the opening paragraph of the story?

7. how does Laurie feel about his/Charles' behavior?

8. How does the change in Laurie's clothing on his first day of school signal a change his behavior?

9. how did Laurie change when he started kindergarten in the story "Charles" by Shirley Jackson?

10. what are some of the characteristics of Laurie in "Charles"?

11. Why does Laurie's mother miss the first P.T.A. meeting in "Charles"?

12. Why do you think Laurie reported Charles's good behavior grimly, while he had delighted in telling about Charles's

bad behavior?

13. What are the settings in "Charles" by Shirley Jackson?

14. What are 3 examples of Laurie's bad behavior at home in the story "Charles"?  

15. what is Laurie's relationship with his parents like? How would it be described?

16. why were Laurie's parents looking forward to meeting the kindergarten teacher?

17. What parts of the story demonstrate the theme of appearance versus reality?

18. what are the problems that Laurie and his parents experience as he makes the transition from nursery school to

kindergarten?

19. What are three clues Jackson gives that indicate that Laurie, not Charles, is the problem?

20. Why didn't Laurie's mom realize that Laurie was really Charles in Shirley Jackson's short story "Charles"? 

21. What is the internal and external conflict in "Charles" by Shirley Jackson?

22. Would Laurie's mother punish him? Why or why not?

23. Whose words reveal that Charles is Laurie?

 Rumpelstiltskin

Original pictures for Story by Sophie Green.

Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that
he had an audience with the king, and in order to make himself appear as a person of importance
he said to him, “I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold.” The king said to the miller,
“That is an art which pleases me well; if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her tomor-
row to my palace, and I will try what she can do.”

When the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave
her a spinning wheel and a reel, and said, “Now set to work, and if by tomorrow morning early
you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die.” Thereupon he himself
locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller’s daughter, and for the
life of her could not tell what to do; she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she
grew more and more miserable, until at last she began to weep.

All at once the door opened, and in came a little man, who said, “Good evening, Mistress Miller;
why are you crying so?”
“Alas!” answered the girl, “I have to spin this straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it.”
“What will you give me,” said the manikin, “if I do it for you?”

“My necklace,” said the girl. The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the
wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full; then he put another on, and
whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until the
morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold. By daybreak the king
was already there, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his heart be-
came only greedier. He had the miller’s daughter taken into another room full of straw, which
was much larger, and commanded her to spin that also in one night, if she valued her life.

The girl knew not how to help herself, and was crying, when the door again opened, the little
man appeared and said, “What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?”

“The ring on my finger,” answered the girl. The little man took the ring. He again began to turn
the wheel, and by morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.

The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had not good enough; and he had the
miller’s daughter taken into a still larger room full of straw, and said, “You must spin this too, in
the course of this night; but if you succeed, you shall be my wife.”
“Even if she be a miller’s daughter,” thought he, “I could not find a richer wife in the whole
world.”
When the girl was alone, the manikin came again for the third time and said, “What will you
give me if I spin the straw for you this time also?”

“I have nothing left that I could give,” answered the girl.

“Then promise me, if you should become queen, your first child.”
“Who knows whether that will ever happen?” Thought the miller’s daughter, and not knowing
how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he
once more span the straw into gold.

When the king came in the morning and found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and
the pretty miller’s daughter became a queen.

A year after, she had a beautiful child, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. Suddenly he
came into her room, and said, “Now give me what you promised.” The queen was horror struck,
and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the
manikin said, “No, something that is living is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world.”
Then the queen began to weep and cry, so that the manikin pitied her. “I will give you until three
days’ time,” said he, “and if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child.”

So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a
messenger over the country to enquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be.
When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar and said all
the names she knew, one after another; but to everyone the little man said, “That is not my
name.”
On the second day she had enquiries made in the neighborhood as to the names of the people
there, and she repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. “Perhaps your name is
Short ribs, or Sheepshanks, or Lace leg?” But he always answered, “That is not my name.”
On the third day the messenger came back again and said, “I have not been able to find a single
new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare
bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and
round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping. He hopped upon one leg, and
shouted;

“Today I bake, tomorrow brew,

The next I’ll have the young queen’s child.
Ha! Glad am I that no one knew
That Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.”
You may think how glad the queen was when she heard the name! When soon afterwards the lit-
tle man came in and asked, “Now, Mistress Queen, what is my name?” At first she said, “Is your
name Conrad?”
“No.”
“Is your name Harry?”
“No.”
“Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?”
“The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that!” Cried the little man, and in his anger
he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in; and then in rage he
pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

Read the story of "Rumpelstiltskin" and answer the questions.

A.How did the king learn of the miller's daughter's ability to turn straw into gold?
a. she bragged about it

b. he saw her do it

c. the miller told him

d. she won a contest

B.What problem did the miller's daughter have at the beginning of the story?
a. She did not have any money.

b. She could not turn straw into gold.

c. She was scared of the little old man.

d. She got into a fight with her father.

C.Which word best describes the king?

 a. greedy

b. honest

c. hungry

d. old

D.What problem did the miller's daughter face on the third night?
a. She fell asleep.

b. Rumpelstiltskin did not come.

c. The king asked to watch her.

d. She had nothing to give Rumpelstiltskin.

E.How did the messenger discover Rumpelstiltskin's name?

a. He saw him singing.

b. He tricked him into telling him.

c. He asked Rumpelstiltskin's mother.

d. He looked at Rumpelstiltskin's name tag.

1. What threat did the king make if the girl didn't spin straw into gold?they don’t get
married
2. What lie did the miller tell the king? He said “my doughter turn the straw into gold
3. What did the miller’s daughter do when she was locked in the room with the straw?
4. The dwarf turn the straw into gold
5. How did the king react when he found the room full of gold What did the miller’s
daughter offer the manikin next in return for his help?

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Translated by Gregory Rabassa
 

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his
drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and
they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single
ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had be-
come a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back
to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and
groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man,
lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enor-
mous wings.

Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick
child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor.
He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull
and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any
sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entan-
gled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame
their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an in-
comprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. That was how they

skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely cast-
away from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman

who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their
mistake.

“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that
the rain knocked him down.”

On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house.
Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive sur-
vivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him
all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of
the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the
rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without
a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with
fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out
into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken
coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the open-
ings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.

Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o’clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less friv-
olous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the
captive’s future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of
sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some
visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who
could take charge of the universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust wood-
cutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so
that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fas-
cinated chickens. He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels
and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he
only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the
chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an im-
poster when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.
Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors,
the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terres-
trial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. Then he came out of the
chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded
them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He ar-
gued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an air-
plane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his
bishop so that the latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in or-
der to get the final verdict from the highest courts.

His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few
hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to
disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up
so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see
the angel.

The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the
crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but,
rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor
woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese
man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to
undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that
shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less
than a week they had crammed their rooms with

money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.

The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in
his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been
placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom
of the wise neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he
turned down the papal lunches that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was be-
cause he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His
only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at
him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to
touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so
they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side
with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was
dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his
wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic
that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but
of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passiv-
ity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.

Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting
the arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of ur-
gency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with
Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with
wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not
put an end to the priest’s tribulations.

It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town
the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents.
The admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted
to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one
would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of
a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere afflic-
tion with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked
out of her parents’ house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having
danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came
the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meat-
balls that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth
and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who
scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain men-
tal disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who
didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those conso-
lation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel’s reputation when the
woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga
was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo’s courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it
had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story man-
sion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with
iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town
and gave up his job as a bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many
dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The
chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and
burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the
dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At
first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that

he not get too close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell,
and before they child got his second teeth he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the

wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tol-
erated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down
with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn’t resist the temptation
to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kid-
neys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his
wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other
men didn’t have them too.

When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the
chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would
drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in
so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d be duplicated, that he was reproducing
himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living
in that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he
went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a
blanket over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they no-
tice that he had a temperature at night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian.
That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the
wise neighbor woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.

And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He re-
mained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him,
and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a
scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason
for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea
chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of
onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went
to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails
opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the un-
gainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn’t get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain alti-
tude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last
houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him
even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for
her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon
of the sea.