[p. 46r][0995] gladly. [0996] Amen. [0997] I waited for the dawn. [0998] Doing what? [0999] I don't know. [1000] What I had to do. [1001] I watched for the window. [1002] I gave rein to my pains, my impotence. [1003] And in the end it seemed to me, for a second, that I was going to have a visit!
[1004] The summer holidays were drawing to a close.
[1005] The decisive moment was at hand when the hopes reposed in Sapo were to be fulfilled, or dashed to the ground.
[1006] He is trained to a hair, said Mr Saposcat.
[1007] And Mrs Saposcat, whose piety grew warm in times of crisis, prayed for his success.
[1008] Kneeling at her bedside, in her night-dress, she ejaculated, silently, for her husband would not have approved, Oh God grant he pass, grant he pass, grant he scrape through!
[1009] When this first ordeal was surmounted there would be others, every year, several times a year.
[1010] But it seemed to the Saposcats that these would be less terrible than the first which was to give them, or deny them, the right to say, He is doing his medecine, or, He is reading for the bar.
[1011] For they felt that a more or less normal if unintelligent youth, once admitted to the study of these professions, was almost sure to be certified, sooner or later, apt the to exercise them.
[1012] For they had experience of doctors, and of lawyers, like most people.
[1013] One day Mr Saposcat sold himself a fountain-pen, at a discount.
[1014] A Bird.
[1015] I shall give it to him on the morning of the examination, he said.
[1016] He took off the long cardboard lid and showed the pen to his wife.
[1017] Leave it in its box!! he cried, as she made to take it in her hand.
[1018] It lay almost hidden in the
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[1018] scrolled leaflet containing the instructions for use.
[1019] Mtr Saposcat parted the edges of the paper and held up the box for his wife to look inside.
[1020] But she, instead of looking at the pen, looked at him.
[1021] He named the price.
[1022] Might it not be better, she said, to let him have it the day before, to give him time to get used to the nib?
[1023] You are right, he said, I had not thought of that.
[1024] Or even two days before, she said, to give him time to change the nib if it does not suit him.
[1025] A bird, its yellow beak agape to show it was singing, adorned the lid, which Mr Saposcat now put on again.
[1026] He wrapped with expert hands the box in tissue-paper and slipped over it a narrow rubber band.
[1027] He was not pleased.
[1028] It is a medium nib, he said, and it will certainly suit him.
[1029] This conversation was renewed the next day.
[1030] Mr Saposcat said, Might if 
not be better if we just lent him the pen and told him he could keep it for his own, if he passed?
[1031] Then we must do so at once, said Mrs Saposcat, otherwise there is no point in it.
[1032] To which Mr Saposcat made, after a silence, a first objection, and then, after a second silence, a second objection.
[1033] He first objected that his son, if he received the pen forthwith, would have time to break it, or lose it, before the paper.
[1034] He then secondly objected that his son, if he rece[⁁]ived the pen immediately, and assuming he neither broke nor lost it, would have time to get so used to it and, by comparing it with the pens of his less impoverished friends, so familiar with its defects, that its possession would no longer tempt him.
[1035] I did not know it was an inferior article, said Mrs Saposcat.
[1036] Mr Saposcat laid placed his hand on the table-cloth and sat gazing at it for some time.
[1037] Then he
[p. 48r]
[1037] laid down his napkin and left the room.
[1038] Adrian, cried Mrs Saposcat, come back and finish your sweet.!
[1039] Alone before the table she listened to the steps on the garden-path, clearer, fainter, clearer, fainter.
[1039|001] The Lamberts. [1040] One day Sapo arrived at the farm earlier than usual.
[1041] But do we know waht [ ] time he usually arrived?
[1042] Lengthening, fading shadows.
[1043] He was surprised to see, at a distance, in the midst of the young stubble, the father's big red and white head.
[1044] His body was in the hole or pit he had dug for his mule, which had died during the night.
[1045] Edmund came out of the house, wiping his mouth, abnd joined him.
[1046] Lambert then climbed out of the hole and the son went down into it.
[1047] Drawing closer Sapo saw the mule's black corpse.
[1048] Then all became clear to him.
[1049] The mule was lying on its side, as was to be expected.
[1050] The forelegs were stretched out straight and rigid, the hind drawn up under the belly.
[1051] The yawning jaws, the wreathed lips, the enormous teeth, the bulging eyes, composed a stirking [ ] death's-head.
[1052] Edmund handed up to his father the pick, the shovel and the spade and climbed out of the hole.
[1053] Together they dragged the mule by the legs to[⁁] the edge of the hole and heaved it in, on its back.
[1054] The forelegs, pointing towards heaven, projected above the level of the ground.
[1055] Old Lambert banged them down with his spade.
[1056] He handed the spade to his son and went towards the house.
[1057] Edmund began to fill up the hole.
[1058] Sapo stood watching him.
[1059] A great calm stole over him.
[1060] Great calm is an exaggeration.
[1061] He felt better.
[1062] The end of a life is always vivifying.
[1063] Edmund paused to rest, leaned panting on the spade and smiled.
[1064] There were great pink gaps in his front teeth.
[1065] Big Lambert sat by the window, smoking, drinking,
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[1065] watching his son, drinking his own marc. son.
[1067] Sapo sat down before hi him, laid his hand on the table and his head on his hand, thinking he was alone.
[1068] Between his head and hsis hand he slipped the other hand and sat there marble still.
[1069] Louis began to talk.
[1070] He seemed in good spirits.
[1071] The mule, in his opinion, had died of old age.
[1072] He had bought it, two years before, on its way to the slaughter-house.
[1073] So he could not complain.
[1074] After the transaction the owner of the mule predicted that it would drop down dead at the first ploughing.
[1075] But Lambert was a connoisseur of mules.
[1076] In the case of mules it is the eye that counts, the rest is unimportant.
[1077] So he looked the mule full in the ey[⁁]e[⁁], at the gates of the slaughter-house, and saw it could be still[ ] mafde to serve.
[1078] And the mule returned his gaze, in the yard of the slaughter-house.
[1079] As Lambert unfoleded his story the slaughter-house loomed larger and larger.
[1080] Thus the wsite of the transaction shifted gradually from the road that led to the slaughter-house to the gates of the slaughter-house and thence to the yard itself.
[1081] Yet a little while and he would have contended for the mule with the knacker.
[1082] The look in his eye, he said, was like a prayer to me to take him.
[1083] It was covered with sores, but in the case of mules one should never let oneself be deterred by senile sores.
[1085] Someone said, He's done ten miles already, you'll never get him home, he'll drop down dead on the road.
[1086] I thought I might screw six months out of him, said Lambert, and I screwed two years.
[1087] All the time he told this story he kept his eyes fixed on his son.
[1088] There they sat, the table between them, in the gloom, one speaking, the other listening, and far removed, the one from what he said, the other from what he heard, and far from each other.
[1089] The heap of
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[1089] earth was dwindling., [1090] T the earth shone strangely in the raking evening light, glowing in patches as though with its own fires, in the fading light.
[1091] Edmund stopped often to rest, leaning on the spade and looking about him.
[1092] The slaughter-house, said Lambert, that's where I buy my beasts, [1093] will you look at that oloafer.
[1094] He went out and set to work, beside his son.
[1095] They worked together for a time, heedless of each other. Then the son dropped his shovel, turned aside and moved slowly away, passing from toil to rest in a single unbroken movement that did not seem of his doing.
[1096] The mule was no longer visible.
[1097] The face of the earth, on which it had plodded its life away, would see it no more, toiling before the plough, or the [tumbrel.]
[1098] And Big Lambert would soon be able to plough and harrow the place where it lay, with another mule, or an old horse, or an old ox, bought at the knacker's yard, knowing that the share would not turn up the putrid flesh or be blunted by the big bones.
[1099] For he knew how the dead and buried tend, contrary to what one might expect, to rise to the surface, [1100] in which they resemble the drowned.
[1101] And he had made allowance for this when digging the hole.
[1102] Edmund and his mother passed each other by in silence.
[1103] She had been to see a neighbour, to borrow a pound of lentils for their supper.
[1104] She was thinking of the handsome steelyard that had served to weigh them and wondering if it was true.
[1105] Before her husband too she rapidly passed, without a glance, and in his attitude there was nothing to suggest that he had seen her either.
[1106] She lit the lamp where it stood at its usual place on the chimney-piece, beside[⁁] between beside the alarm-clock