Night-Side

Contents

Night-Side
The Widows
Lover
The Snowstorm
The Translation
The Dungeon
Famine Country
Bloodstains
Exile
The Giant Woman
Daisy
The Murder
Fatal Woman
The Sacrifice
The Thaw
Further Confessions
The Blessing
A Theory of Knowledge

Excerpt

From "Further Confessions"

Very early in the morning of October third, however, I had been visited by a ghastly dream that could not so easily be brushed aside. It was utterly silent—except for the stray, seemingly accidental, and very faint cries of seabirds: a dream of my own death, my own corpse, laid in state in an enormous coffin that was at the same time a kind of boat, pushing out to sea. Hideous . . . ! At each of the four corners of the darkly gleaming coffin was a bird of death which flapped its wings solemnly; its eyes were agates, cloudy and opaque. The corpse—my corpse—lay with its head resting upon a pillow of white satin, eyes shut, lips firmly closed, an expression of sorrow giving the face a grayish cast: aging it by ten years at least. But the face showed not merely sorrow; it showed, as well, a certain resentment, a look of vexation, almost, as if the death that had come was really a most unpleasant surprise. I stared and stared upon that extraordinary sight. I awaited a flicker of life, a movement of the eyelids—a glance of recognition. Could I really be dead? I, Felix, so young, so handsome, hardly across the threshold of a life that promised great riches of all kinds? Incredible that the adventure might be so abruptly halted: yet the corpse was my own. Those fair brown curls arranged about the waxen, peevish face were my own, "arranged" just as artificially as they would be, no doubt, if a stranger were given license to dress them for the grave.

Reviews

• Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1977, p875
• Publishers Weekly, August 22, 1977, p60
• Library Journal, October 15, 1977, p2182
• New York Times Book Review, October 23, 1977, p15, 18
• Best Sellers, November 1977, p231
• Booklist, November 1, 1977, p463
• Washington Post Book World, November 20, 1977, pE7
• New Republic, November 26, 1977, p44-45
• Choice, February 1978, p1646
• Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1978, p67-68
• Sewanee Review, Summer 1978, p469
• Commonweal, September 15, 1978, p601
• New Statesman, January 12, 1979, p54
• Observer, January 14, 1979, p35
• Spectator, January 27, 1979, p23
• Listener, August 23, 1979, p254
• Times Literary Supplement, November 23, 1979, p43

Epigraph

A CLEAR MIDNIGHT

This is thy hour O soul,
thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art,
the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best:
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Walt Whitman

Awards

• New York Times Notable Books of the Year
• Best American Short Stories, 1978: "The Translation"

Other Editions