Already, thought Marda West, Nurse Ansel fitted in. She saw herself putting flowers in the small guest-room, choosing the right books, fitting a portable wireless in case Nurse Ansel should be bored in the evenings.
"I'll be with you at eight o'clock."
The door closed. Nurse Ansel had gone.
Marda West lifted the hand-mirror and looked into it. Nothing changed in the room, the street noises came from outside, and presently the little maid who had seemed a weasel yesterday came in to dust the room. She said, "Good morning," but the patient did not answer. Perhaps she was tired. The maid dusted, and went her way.
Then Marda West took up the mirror and looked into it once more. No, she had not been mistaken. The eyes that stared back at her were doe's" eyes, weary before sacrifice", and the timid deer's" head was meek, already bowed"
NOTES:
bandage – rrOBH3KR
fit lenses – BCTRBHTb JINH3bI
surgeon – xepypr
endure – nepea
tip-toe – xopїva aa qbmoszax
temporary – apeMeїssiA
dissolve – paccesvacz
in pasture – ea nacv6їїe
on purpose – zapoїHO
in the deception – B MRCKRX
weasel – zracza
sedative – ycrrozoevezasoe
adjust oneself – npecnoco6evsca
trickery – o6MaH
guardedly – ocvopomao
mock – їacncexaTbCB
distressed – paccvpoeHHhIN
carnation – raoapeza
eonspiracy – saroaop
have a showdown – ace o6ї5ICHMTb
trap – aoayxuxa
flushed – BO36ympeavbrA
vulture – rpeQ
too numb – CJINIIIKOM
the plan still held – nzaz ocvaaaїca
scores of them – oseHb MHOI'0
as right as rain – coaepuzeHHO 3pOpOBbIM
deceptive – o6MaHHNBbIN
toad – ma6a
panther – їaHTepa
baboon – 6a6yeH
hyena – rneza
prick – yxozr
hideous – ymaCHBIH
doe – zraїb
sacrifice – mepvsonpїїomevve
deer – oїeїa
bowed – CKJIOHCHHbIA
Comprehension:
1) Why was Marda West in hospital?
2) What was the effect of the blue lenses?
3) Why was the woman frightened?
4) What did she suspect at first?
5) When did she understand that she had been mistaken?
6) Did animal heads have anything to do with their masters characters?
7) Did the new lenses put everything in its place?
The Last Inch by J. Aldridge
At forty you were lucky if you still enjoyed flying after twenty years of it, and you were lucky if you could still feel that artistic pleasure of a beginner when you brought the plane down well.
It was all gone; and he was forty-three and his wife had gone back to Linnean Street, Cambridge, Mass., and was leading the life she liked to lead, taking the streetcar to Harvard Square, shopping at the market, living in her old man's decent old farm house which made a decent life for a decent woman.
He had promised to join her before the summer but he knew he would never do it. He also knew he would never get another flying job at his age, not for his sort of flying, even in Canada.
That left him with an apathetic wife who didn't want him, and a ten-year-old boy who had come too late and was, Ben knew in his heart, not part of either of them: a very lonely boy lost between them, who understood, at ten, that his mother had no interest in him, and that his father was a stranger who couldn't talk to him and was too sharp with him in the rare moments when they were together.
This particular moment was no better than the others. Ben had the boy with him in an Auster bumping violently down the 2,000 feet corridor over the Red Sea coast, waiting for the boy to be airsick.
"If you want to be sick," he said to the boy, "put your head well down on the floor so that you don't make the plane dirty."
"Yes," the boy said miserably.
"Are you afraid?"
"A little," the boy answered: a rather pale, shy and serious voice for a North-American boy. "Can these bumps smash the plane?"
Ben had no way of comforting him, excepting the truth. "Only if the plane has not been looked after and periodically checked."
"Is this..." the boy began, but he was too sick to go on.
"It's all right," his father said irritably. "It's a good enough plane."
The boy had his head down and was beginning to cry quietly.
"Don't cry!" Ben ordered him now. "There's no need to cry. Get your head up, Davy! Get it up!"
"How do you know where the wind is?" the boy asked.
"The waves, the odd cloud, the feel," Ben shouted back.
But he no longer knew what.directed his flying. Without thinking about it he knew to a foot where he would put the plane down. He had to know here, because there were no feet to spare-' on this piece of natural sand, which was impossible to approach in anything but a small plane. It was a hundred miles from the nearest native village. It was dead desert country.
"This is what is important," Ben said. "When you level off it's got to be' six inches. Not one foot, or three feet. Six inches! If it's too high and you come down hard, you'll wreck the plane. If it's too low, you hit a bump and go over. It's the last inch that's important."
Davy nodded. He knew. He had seen an Auster like this one go over at Embaba. The student flying it had been killed.
"See!" his father shouted. "Six inches. When she begins to sink, I ease back the stick. I ease it back. Now!" he said and the plane touched down like a snowflake. The last inch! He cut off the engine instantly and put on the heel brakes4 which stopped them short of the sudden drop into the water by six or seven feet.
The two pilots who had discovered this bay had called it Shark Bay, not for its shape but for its population. It was always well filled with good-sized Red Sea sharks who came into it after the big shoals of herring and mullet which looked for a safe place in here from time to time.
It was sharks Ben was here for; and now that he was here he forgot the boy, except to instruct him how to help unload, how to pack the food bag in wet sand, how to keep the sand wet with buckets of sea water, and to bring the tools and the small things necessary for his aqualung and cameras.
"Does anybody ever come here?" Davy asked him.
Ben was too busy to hear him now, but he shook his head. “Nobody! Nobody could get here, except in a light plane. Bring me the two green bags from the floor”, he said, “and keep your head covered against the sun. I don't want you to get sunstroke”.
It was Davy's last question. He had asked his questions seriously trying in that way to soften his father's hard answers. But he gave up the attempt and simply did as he was told. He watched carefully while his father prepared his aqualung eqvipment and underwater cameras to go into the perfect clear coral water to film sharks.
"Don't go near the water!" his father ordered.
Davy said nothing.
"These sharks," his father warned, "will be glad to take a bite at you,' especially on the surface; so don't even put your feet in."
Davy shook his head.
Ben wished he could do more for the boy, but it was too late by many years. When he was away flying (which had been most of the time since Davy was born and since he was a baby, and now when he was growing into his teens) he had never had contact with him. In Colorado, in Florida, in Canada, in Iraq, in Bahrein, and here in Egypt: it should have been his wife's work, Joannie's work, to keep the boy lively and happy.
In the early days he had tried himself to make friends with the boy. But he was very rarely at home, and the "home" was some outlandish place of Arabia which Joannie had hated and had continually compared with the clear summer evenings and cold sparkling winters and quiet college streets of that New England town. She had found nothing interesting in the mud houses of Bahrein at 110 degrees with 100 degrees humidity; nor in the iron encampments of oilfields, nor even in the dusty streets of Cairo. But all that apathy, (which had increased until it had beaten her) should be disappearing, now when she was at home. He would take the boy back to her, and hope that she would begin to take some interest in him now when she was where she wanted to be. Butshe hadn't shown much interest yet, and she'd left three months ago.