Teaching English to Absolute Beginners

This article was a guest-blog entry on http://www.jobs.ac.uk/blogs/my-tefl-journey/

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Teaching English to Absolute Beginners

Today’s blog is a guest entry by Joan Taber, a highly experienced educator, and someone with a lot of worthwhile things to say. Have a look at her entertaining and informative blog here. Joan also maintains a fascinating series of academic papers on ESL, language, and translation that is well worth reading. Today, she’s talking to us about teaching English to students who have no ability in the language whatsoever. How do you start? How can you help them to improve? Take it away, Joan Taber.

Teaching the basics

People often ask me how I go about teaching English to students who have no English-language background. For me, the best place to begin is on a trusty page of commonality--that is, the world map. Here, north and south are in the same position in any language, the equator always runs through Ecuador, the poles are “frrreeeeeezing” (at least for now), “the ocean is blue,” but Greenland isn’t always green.

With the help of the map, “Where do you come from?” is transformed into a real place. Students are invited to “come to the map,” point to their country of birth, announce whether it’s north or south of the equator, east or west of the Prime Meridian. I show them where I’m from, where my mother was from, where one finds the most beautiful people (Italy, of course), where the climate is “sooooo hot,” where ordinal and cardinal directions lead to every part of the globe.

Using the map

So, during the first forty-minute lesson, students can distinguish directions, indicate “near” and “far,” acquire the lexicons of map study-continent, country, city, river, ocean, color-and travel-airplane, airport, train, taxi. They get a feel for syntax: “On this map, Europe is red and Africa is green.”

They learn idiomatic expressions related to climate--it’s hot, it’s cold--and feelings: “I sad I go from El Salvador.”

“Yes, you were sad when you left El Salvador.”

Joan on textbooks

I’m fortunate to work in a school district that gives me the liberty to teach without prescribed texts. However, I have been stuck in teaching positions where I’ve been handed a “textbook” of sorts and forced to use it as the sole teaching prop. If that happens to you, you’ve just got to shut the classroom door and cheat.

If you’re nervous about keeping your job, then search the text for ways to transform phony dialogue into real situations. ”I see the yellow bus” can become a virtual bus ride. Have your students “board” the bus, ask if a seat is free, ask the driver where to get off, bump into someone and say “Excuse me.” At the very beginning, you can provide students with written prompts in the form of cloze dialogues or a few cue cards.

Joan on grammar

I think it’s against current academic law to utter words such as “adjective” or “verb.” In fact, just whispering the word “grammar” might incite a mob of theoretical academics to throw rocks through your classroom windows.

If you’re just starting out your teaching career, please remember that some of us need to understand structure. If we’re over the age of eight or nine, we’re simply not equipped to learn language the way we did as babies. We need it all-reading, listening, speaking, writing, acting, repetition, and grammatical explanation, yes, even at the beginning.

There’s nothing wrong in saying, “In English, the adjective comes before the noun” or “In English we don’t have our years; we are our years.” (Babelfish or IGoogle translators can be helpful with this, but never assume they’re completely accurate.)

Conclusion

That world map is your springboard into language acquisition. You can rearrange and group desks into continents or countries, create cultural and culinary feasts with your students, conduct “map Olympics” and dole out gold and silver medals made of chocolate. You can turn your classroom into a solar system, a theatrical stage, or an airplane. Or, you can follow the text, and your students will be able to say: “The big yellow bus goes to the little red-brick school.” (Okay, I admit to hyperbole, but I think you get it.)

A Brief History of ESL Instruction: Theories, Methodologies, Upheavals

Since the 1940s, the definitive solution to successful ESL instruction has been discovered many times. Like bestsellers, pop stars, and ice-cream flavors, second-language theories and methodologies enjoy a few afternoons or years in the spotlight and then stumble into the dusk of old age. There is always another tried-and-true methodology from yet another expert theorist who may or may not have had first-hand experience learning a second language. Before the late nineteenth century, second-language instruction mirrored the so-called Classical Method of teaching Latin and Greek; lessons were based on mental-aerobics exercises—repetition drills and out-of-context vocabulary drills as well as lots of reading and translations of ancient texts. Brown notes that languages were “not being taught primarily to learn oral/aural communication, but to learn for the sake of being ‘scholarly’ or…for reading proficiency” (15). Theories of second-language acquisition didn’t start to pop up until the instructional objective became oral competence.

THEORY-FREE METHODOLOGY
According to T. Rogers, the very concept of method involves “the notion of a systematic set of teaching practices based on a particular theory of language and language learning…” (paragraph 1). However, it is possible to develop a set of teaching practices and then go in search of a theory. It’s called having an agenda. But, for the sake of classification, let us include non-theory-based practices under the heading of methods.

Grammar-Translation
From the turn of the nineteenth century until the late 1940s, the grammar-translation method ruled. In the few instances of attempted coups, it lost some ground, but academia always beckoned it back. Despite its antiquity, or because of it, the grammar-translation method is still alive and well in language classrooms throughout Europe, Asia, and even in the Americas. It is easy to teach; it requires no more than the ability to memorize lists of isolated vocabulary words; and it aims low in terms of oral communication and aural comprehension—no one teaching or learning a target language is required to speak, pronounce, or even understand the spoken language. Because the target language is taught in the students’ native language, it is possible for students to have studied it for years without having been required to participate in the most elementary conversation. Indeed, the only real challenge confronting students and teachers in the grammar-translation classroom is overcoming boredom.
A typical one-hour class might begin with ten minutes of synchronized verb declensions. This might be followed by the instructor’s explanation of a particular grammatical feature of the target language. The instructor might then assign students a series of fill-in-the-blank exercises or sentence constructions that demonstrate the grammar point. Other features of the grammar-translation class include translations of literary passages from the target language into the native language, identifying antonyms and synonyms, drilling vocabulary words, memorizing vocabulary lists, creating sentences with the new vocabulary words, and writing compositions in the target language. Except for the repetition drills, most of the above work is written.

One might wonder why this obviously antiquated method is still used. Aside from the aforementioned virtue of being easy for both teacher and student, some claim it is the most effective way to introduce literature in the target language. That is, in learning how to read in the target language, students are exposed to a variety of grammatical structures, thousands of vocabulary words in context, and they learn to translate across linguistic borders. It does not

Most ESL instructors have witnessed the results of the grammar-translation method in students who have studied English as a foreign language in their native countries. They are often able to read and write English—sometimes better than native speakers—but they have had no experience listening to or speaking the language. In fact, ESL teachers face the challenge of defossilizing incomprehensible deviations in students’ pronunciation and inflections. Furthermore, grammar-translation students are accustomed to doing fill-in-the-blank exercises, learning grammar rules before applying them, memorizing lists of vocabulary words, and creating artificial sentences to prove their mastery of the lexicon and syntax. When they are exposed to more creative methods of language instruction, they often find it difficult to perform and, as a result, lament the ostensible lack of structure.

Some theorists maintain that because the grammar-translation method is not research-based, it has no academic status. But, as we know, one can always find a matching theory. Grammar-translation’s theoretical base might be called behavioristic—that is, habit formation via repetition and reinforcement. This is a stretch in the sense that the method is really centuries old, having been employed long before Pavlov began torturing dogs to measure their saliva output.

PRE-BEHAVIORISM
The first theory-based methods of second-language instruction started with François Gouin in the mid-nineteenth century. And even though his work did not win universal and lasting recognition, it set the stage for later theorists.

The Series Method
As the story goes, Gouin’s theory of language acquisition rose out of the ashes of his own failure to learn German. The modern observer can only wonder why he bothered spending a year in Germany sequestered in his study, memorizing thousands of verb declensions and vocabulary words, and all the while, avoiding conversation with native speakers of German. Imagine trying to learn a foreign language by shunning interaction with the very people who speak it. Well, it was the nineteenth century. Discouraged and effectively monolingual, he returned to his native France and discovered that during his twelve-month absence, his three-year-old nephew had become miraculously fluent in French. Wondering how a toddler could so easily out-perform his own considerable intellect, he decided to observe his nephew and other children who were in the process of acquiring language. As a consequence, he was able to theorize that the language one uses is related to one’s actions at the time of the utterance. On these bases, he developed the Series Method, which sought to teach second language by recreating conditions in which children learn a first language. Specifically, the teacher does an activity—walking to the door—and simultaneously verbalizes the process of walking to the door: “I walk toward the door. I draw near to the door. I draw nearer to the door. I get to the door. I stop at the door” (Brown 44). The student then mimics the instructor. As time goes on, the student is able to expand his/her linguistic skills: “Am I walking to the door?” “Did I walk to the door?” “I am thinking about walking to the door. “I am walking to the window.”

Although the method was deemed successful, it faded after a brief hour of glory and the good old grammar-translation method returned in full-dress regalia. Nonetheless, as shall see, the Series Method was gone, but would one day enjoy a resurrection of sorts. Gouin, if seems, was born in the wrong century.

The Direct Method
Second-language theorists maintain that the first real method of language teaching was the Direct Method, which was developed as a reaction against the monotony and ineffectiveness of grammar-translation classes. The Direct Method was the brainchild of Charles Berlitz, a nineteenth-century linguist whose schools of language learning are famous throughout the world. It borrowed and applied Gouin’s findings of the previous generation, seeking to imitate his naturalistic approach. In light of Gouin’s miserable failure in German, Berlitz wanted to immerse students in the target language. He believed, as did Gouin, that one could learn a second language by imitating the way children learn their first language; that is, directly and without explanations of grammatical points and using only the target language. Therefore, grammar was taught inductively. The objectives were speaking and listening comprehension, not translation; for this reason, vocabulary was introduced in context and through demonstrations and pictures; and an emphasis was placed on correct usage and pronunciation. Students learned to write by taking dictation in the target language.

A typical Direct Method class had few students. Students might first take turns reading aloud, preferably a dialogue or anecdotal passage. To test for understanding, the teacher would then ask questions in the target language and students would have to respond appropriately in the target language. Following the question-response session, the instructor might dictate the passage to the students three times. Students would then read the dictation back to the class.

The Direct Method was popular in Europe and the United States, especially during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, its very intensity and necessarily small class sizes made the method impossible for public schools. In addition, it was considered a weak method because it was not supported by heavy-duty theories and it depended too much on teachers’ ability to teach—God forbid—as well as their fluency in the target language. So, it was back to the old reliable grammar-translation method until behaviorism began to shine its light on the field of second-language teaching.

BEHAVIORISM
We can thank researchers such as Pavlov, Skinner, and Watson for behaviorism-based techniques employed in US classrooms as well as the Audiolingual Method of second-language instruction. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning is based on the concept that learning results from a change in overt behavior. Applied to language acquisition, one learns language by emitting an utterance (operant), which is reinforced by a response by another (consequence). If the consequence of the imitated behavior is negative, one does not repeat the behavior; if the response is positive, one repeats the behavior. Repetition then leads to habit formation. Thus, behaviorists agree with the likes of Francis Bacon and John Locke that one is born a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and all learning is the result of outside stimuli. From this thinking sprang the popular Audiolingual Method, which left grammar-translation by the wayside.

The Audiolingual Method (ALM)The Audiolingual Method was first known as the Army Method because it had been adopted by the military during the Second World War when it became evident that most Americans were hopelessly monolingual. ALM is not unlike the Direct Method in that its purpose is to teach students to communicate in the target language. The Audiolingual Method is a purely behavioristic approach to language teaching. It is based on drill work that aims to form good language habits, and it makes use of extensive conversation practice in the target language. Students enter the target-language classroom with their cognitive slates entirely blank—at least in theory—and they receive various linguistic stimuli and respond to them. If they respond correctly, they enjoy a reward and repeat the response, which promotes good habit formation. If they respond incorrectly, they receive no reward and therefore repress the response, which represses the response. Voila! Fluency.

Its theoretical support also comes from post-war structural linguists. Structural linguists analyze how language is formed, not in a historical-descriptive, or diachronic, sense, but as it is “currently spoken in the speech community” (Stafford paragraph 3). Language was now seen as a set of abstract linguistic units that made up a whole language system. The realization that all languages are complex, unique systems allowed linguists to understand the multifaceted, singular structure of English without comparing it to Latin, which had long been the paragon of excellence among prescriptive grammarians. This led to new thinking in terms of how language should be taught. Individual structures should be presented one at a time and practiced via repetition drills. Grammar explanations should be minimal or nonexistent, for students will learn grammatical structures by inductive analogy.

A typical ALM class consists of ten-minute drill periods interspersed with activities such as the reading and memorization of a dialogue. The instructor then examines a grammar point by contrasting it with a similar point in the students’ native language. (The teacher speaks in the native language, but discourages its use among students.) This is followed by more drills—chain drills, repetition drills, substitution drills. Target language vocabulary is introduced and learned in context, and teachers make abundant use of visual aids. Like its predecessors, ALM focuses on the surface forms of language and rote learning.
While some students, especially those who could memorize dialogues, did well in the classroom, they still were not able to use the target language with any proficiency.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
The 1960s shook up traditional thinking about the need to avoid errors and the idea that language learning was a matter of developing good habits by mimicry, repetition, and over-learning. Noam Chomsky entered the scene with a brand new view of first-language acquisition, which had a resounding effect on theories and methods of second-language acquisition. No longer did babies begin life with a tabula rasa; in fact, it was just the opposite—they are born with an innate system of grammar already fired up and ready to go. Behaviorism went right out the window. Humanistic thinkers such as Carl Rogers insisted that people are—well—people. Everyone is a unique individual who responds in her/his unique way to any given situation. No wonder no one had been able to learn a second language! Victims of grammar-translation, the Direct Method, and ALM had been tormented long enough. It was time to compensate for their suffering and devise kinder, gentler teaching methodologies.

David Ausubel was there to help. Influenced by Piaget and other cognitive psychologists, Ausubel theorized that the most important factor influencing learners is what the learner already knows (cf Bowen paragraph 3). He repudiated the old rote-learning methods in favor of meaningful, or relevant, methods of instruction. When material is meaningful, students are able to relate, or subsume, the new information to elements in their cognitive structure (Brown 84). Consequently, a new series of so-called “designer” methods of second-language teaching was developed during the 1970s (Brown 103). Their initial popularity was short-lived; but many linger on the periphery of current methodologies, and some still make cameo appearances in classroom mini-lessons. The underlying message in cognitive language learning is that individual learners must be gently guided toward their own comprehension of prescriptive rules.

Community Language Learning
Developed by Charles Curan in 1972, Community Language Learning dispensed with the hierarchical student-teacher relationship and adopted a counselor-client relationship. The idea was to eliminate any sense of challenge or risk-taking from the emotionally delicate client, which theoretically would free him/her to learn a second language without really trying. The counselor would translate and gently facilitate all learning activity. Community Language Learning was inspired by Rogers’ theory that all living creatures are motivated to live up to their potential; but, human beings are often blocked by environmental and personal problems. Once the problems are eliminated, the individual can live up to his/her potential. We will see that this thinking was further developed during the 1980s by Stephen Krashen in his examination of affective filters. In terms of second-language acquisition, certain affective factors—elements in the environment or in the student’s psyche—may cause a mental block that prevents input (target language) from reaching the language acquisition device” (cf Cook paragraph 5).
In a typical session, ‘clients’ (AKA students) and ‘counselor’ (AKA teacher) are seated in a circle. The counselor begins by explaining what the clients will be doing. When moved by the spirit, one client will raise his/her hand, a signal for the counselor to approach. The client then says a phrase in her/his native language, which the counselor repeats in the target language. The client then repeats the phrase in the target language. The target-language portion of this “conversation” is recorded. The class listens to the recording. The counselor then writes the client’s portion of the conversation on the board and the most courageous fellow clients volunteer to translate the sentences into their native language. All the while, clients receive tender reassurance from the counselor.

Suggestopedia
Yet another you-don’t-have-to-work-for-anything theory was developed by Georgi Lozanov in 1979. It states that when the mind and body are relaxed, the brain absorbs knowledge without effort. Thus, another academic panacea was applied in the language classroom, producing yet another group of graduates who couldn’t speak the target language. The Suggestopedia classroom uses music—particularly Baroque music with its ideal sixty beats per minute—to help soothe students as teachers employ various language-learning activities. In this classroom, even adult learners are encouraged to behave as pliable, suggestible children, and to regard their teacher as a super-mentor parental figure. Imagery, music, suggestion, relaxation, comfy armchairs, and dim lighting are the essential ingredients of the Suggestopedia classroom. With soft music playing in the background, students role-play and learn vocabulary under the guidance of the all-powerful teacher.

In a typical lesson—or concert—the teacher plays a piece of music, preferably Baroque, but any emotionally charged music will do. S/he then reads a passage from a text in the target language, trying to harmonize with the music while maintaining a slow, rhythmic pace. Students follow along with their own texts and translation. Students then return their translations to the teacher, close their eyes and settle back to listen to a replay of the music and reading performance.


The Silent Way
The Silent Way found its way into classrooms following the publication of Gattegno’s text, also called The Silent Way. According to Sidhakara, the Silent Way “is based on a theory of learning and teaching rather than on a theory of language” (paragraph 1). The objective is to make learning automatic by encouraging students to discover, rather than memorize, the lexicon and prescriptive rules of the target language. This is achieved by teaching students to associate physical objects—specifically, color-coded rods—with phonemes. The teacher is supposed to be a facilitator who only intervenes in students’ learning if they are wandering hopelessly off course. In addition to the colored rods, classroom materials include a sound/color wall chart, with each color representing a phoneme; a 500-word color-coded word chart; a spelling chart, or Fidel, that color-codes all possible spellings for every phoneme; and wall pictures that represent everyday scenes.

While the Silent Way encourages students to become active discoverers, it also leaves them to their own limited communicative devices. Once the uniqueness of the phonemic rods wears off, “the [Silent Way classroom] resembles any other language classroom” (Brown 106).

Total Physical Response (TPR)
In the nothing-is-gone-forever category, Total Physical Response harkens back to Gouin’s Direct Method of the mid-nineteenth century. James Asher reasoned that since children in the process of acquiring their native language seem to listen more than they speak and often react physically to speech, second-language learners might learn a target language in the same way. In addition, he felt that language classes were too stressful for learners, and he wanted to create an atmosphere in which learners didn’t have to do anything other than respond to imperatives such as “Go to the door!” or “Walk slowly to the chalkboard!” Students could absorb other linguistic forms, such as questions by watching and imitating the teacher shrug his/her shoulders, look confused, and ask, “Where is the book?” In these ways, students magically begin asking questions and creating their own commands. In theory, this process guides them to fluency in the target language.

TPR can be an effective methodology in small doses when language learners have no knowledge of the target language. It has the advantage of getting students out of their seats, which alleviates boredom and allows students to associate specific actions with specific language.

ALONG CAME KRASHEN
In 1983, Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell published The Natural Approach, which set forth both the theory and application of the Natural Approach to language teaching. They had the unique idea that the purpose of language is to communicate meanings and messages (Kiymazarslan II.1), which can be achieved simply by learning the lexicon of the target language. Krashen and Terrell felt that the initial “silent period” should be honored until students begin to speak naturally; that is, when speech in the target language emerges of its own accord. This is supposed to occur when teachers create a non-risky environment by incorporating TPR at the beginning level, and by aiming low in terms of communicative skills; that is, by limiting learning objectives to basic interpersonal communicative skills.

The Natural Approach is supported by Krashen’s famous Monitor Model of Language Acquisition, a set of five hypotheses:
The Acquisition vs. Learning Hypothesis distinguishes the subconscious process of first-language acquisition in children from the conscious process language learning in adults.
The Natural Order Hypothesis states that morphemes are acquired in a predictable order ([-ing] is the first acquired morpheme in English).
The Monitor Hypothesis maintains that acquisition, not learning, is responsible for fluency. Learning—for example, knowledge of grammar and other linguistic structures—functions as a monitor, or editor during and after the acquisition process.
The Input Hypothesis asserts that language is acquired when students receive comprehensible input that is a tad beyond their level of competence.
The Affective Filter Hypothesis claims that one cannot acquire a language unless one feels confident, relaxed, and diverted.

The typical Natural Approach classroom is teacher-centered. Textbooks are not used and it is the teacher’s responsibility to make the classroom experience enjoyable and unchallenging. Students are not expected to be responsible for their own learning. Their role is to absorb the input provided by teachers. The trick is not to tell the students they are learning or to suggest they are capable of making an error. The order of business is to give students a steady flow of comprehensible input and just enough extra information to help them acquire, rather than consciously learn, the target language.

In the Natural Approach classroom, the teacher plays the role of actor and prop person and students play the role of “guessers and immersers” (Rogers fig. 2). The teacher/actor is called upon to create a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere and to develop units of study—or, guessing—based on topics that interest the students (Reynor paragraph 3). Students are encouraged to express their thoughts, opinions, and feelings in the target language. The teacher speaks only in the target language; but, in keeping with the no-pressure approach, students are permitted to use their native language. Theoretically, in this way, students acquire language without effort.

THE COMMUNICATIVE METHOD (CLT)
In perusing the literature regarding second-language methodologies and their supporting theories, it is almost impossible to make sense out of the discrepancies in terminology and theoretical bases. For some, the Direct Method is without theoretical basis; for others, it belongs to behaviorism. For some, the grammar-translation method is not a method, but a non-theory-based approach; for others, it is indeed theory-based, because it teaches by rote and assumes that repetition will lead to the formation of correct linguistic habits. For some, the Communicative Method was developed during the 1960s; for others it is a more recent phenomenon that comprises all sorts of methodologies; and still others consider it another name for the Natural Approach. In my own experience as an instructor of foreign language, the only difference between the Natural Approach and the Communicative Method is that in the Communicative classroom, students are expected to avoid using their native language.

The Communicative Method was the flavor of the decade during the 1990s, at least when classroom doors were open. CLT does not teach about language; rather, it teaches language. It is often associated with the Functional-Notional Approach; that is, the emphasis is on functions such as time, location, travel, measurements. In short, it seeks to recreate real-life social and functional situations in the classroom to guide students toward communicative competence. The linguistic accuracy that was deemed so essential in grammar-translation, the Direct Method, and other approaches is a mere trifle in the Communicative classroom. Ideally, grammar is not taught at all. Teachers avoid upsetting their students by requiring them to identify or recognize nouns, verbs, or direct objects; instead, they guide them to second-language proficiency by employing “the three Ps”— presentation, practice, and production. Teachers present the target language via everyday situations; they give students time to practice the language via structured situational dialogues; and, finally, they step aside for students’ production of the language—the phase in which they are able to function independently in the target language.

In truth, many teachers—especially those whose school administrators or university chairs insist that CLT is the heaven-sent panacea for second-language teaching—find the method excessively superficial, uninspiring, and hopelessly without structure. Many close the classroom door and support their teaching units with mini-grammar lessons. Because theorists and administrators—some of whom have never taught or achieved fluency in a second language—support the Communicative Method, in terms of theory years, it has enjoyed a relatively long life. But, it is hardly the superhighway to linguistic competence or proficiency.

CONCLUSION
Second-language instruction has come a long way since the bad old days of rote learning. Still, it has a long way to go. The trend since the late 1990s has been toward eclecticism, and this is probably the healthiest approach for it accommodates many styles of learning and endeavors to do more than elicit monosyllabic utterances from students. Furthermore, an eclectic approach allows teachers to glean the effective elements from many methods that really work in the classroom. A little TPR is a great warm-up activity; a little prose translation is often a welcome relief from guided conversation in the target language; and a five-minute session of target-language only can give students a sense of true accomplishment.

Language learning methodologies certainly mirror the times in which they thrive; but some have claimed to have virtues that are not evident beyond their theoretical framework. I have attended many faculty meetings in which the chair insisted that teachers “make sure the kids are having fun in language class”—as though having fun were the one and only criterion for success. On the other end of the spectrum, I have observed language classes whose professors demean learners who don’t respond to their textbook approach to language instruction. Neither extreme—fun or misery—is laudable or effective.

The eclectic approach takes the best that theorists have to offer and incorporates it with techniques that work. Language learning is difficult business. Students’ attitudes about school and authority, their home situations, literacy, self-confidence, academic level, identification with their native language and country are only a few factors that affect their ability to learn or acquire a new language. In the end, teachers have a tremendous challenge in trying to give their students the tools with which to function on all levels in the target language.


WORKS CITED

Bowen, Barbara. “Educational Psychology: David Ausubel.” <http://web.csuchico/.edu/~ah24/ausubel.htm>.

Brown, H. Douglas. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching 4th edition. New
York: Addison, Wesley, Longman, 2000.

Cook, Vivian. “Krashen’s Input Model of L2 Learning.” Http://privatewww.essexac.uk~vcook/Krashen.htm>.

Reyhner, Jon “Language Immersion for Indigenous Language Revitalization.” Teaching
Indigenous Languages. December 2002.

Rogers, Theodore. “Language Teaching Methodology.” ERIC Digest Sept. 2001 Issue Paper

Sidhakarya, I. Wayan. “The Silent Way Plus: The Search of a Method and Curriculum.”

Stafford, Amy. “Structural Linguistics: Its History, Contributions and Relevance.”

Vedat Kiymazarslan “The Natural Approach: What is it?” 1995.

The Road to Phonemic Awareness (or) Wel’kum ta Kin'rgar'n: Lyf 'n da fas layn

Many researchers proclaim that grade-school children who are not able to read are also lacking essential phonemic awareness, which is defined generally as the ability to recognize that words are made up of smaller segments, or sounds. More specifically, it refers to one's conscious ability to recognize and manipulate sound segments within words. Because there seems to be such an irrefutable body of evidence supporting the essential connection between reading and phonemic awareness, it has been suggested that educators identify phonemically unaware students as soon as possible, even as they cross the threshold into kindergarten, thereupon beginning a formal regimen of phonemic awareness training. This early intervention via formal lessons in sound segmentation promises to transform children into good, or even great, readers. And so begins life in the fast lane, at age five.

In order to determine the general thinking among researchers regarding phonemic awareness training as a prerequisite for reading, I did an Internet search, first using a standard search engine with keywords phonemic awareness, then using the ERIC database, with keyword literacy and subject words phonemic awareness. I pulled twelve articles at random and read through all of them. Eleven of the twelve articles praised the merits of phonemic awareness instruction while sounding a warning against the evils of nonintervention. The only dissenting voice was that of Stephen Krashen. What follows is a summary of three of those articles, including Krashen’s. Subsequent to the summary, for which I have made a Herculean effort not to reveal my concerns, I explain my personal and professional reactions to the papers’ findings. Finally, I offer my own suggestions for guiding children to a love and understanding of reading without daily phoneme injections.


The Articles

Kerry Hempenstall “Phonemic Awareness: What Does it Mean?”

Hempenstall’s article, which is written for fellow linguists, purports to define phonemic awareness and the role it should play in teaching beginning and dyslexic learners how to read. The article begins with a brief explanation of the differences in meaning between phonemic, phonological, and phonetic awareness; whereupon the author lists eleven stages of phonological awareness, none of which define phonemic awareness. Hempenstall then examines some ways other linguists define phonemic awareness. To this end, he discusses researchers Blachman and Stanovich who have worked to streamline a description that might be acceptable to all researchers. Alas, Stanovich rejects the word awareness because he deems it impossible to define adequately; thus, quashing Hempenstall’s own attempts to define the term.

Although Hempenstall never actually defines phonemic awareness, he does discuss some aspects of it. First, he notes that phonemic awareness has nothing to do with meaning and everything to do with the structure of words; and, for this reason, it is important that learners understand the existence of a “spelling-to-sound” correspondence in English. Second, learners must recognize that words can be broken down, or decomposed, into individual sounds that are not necessarily syllables. This brings him to a discussion of rhyme and alliteration in which he cites evidence to support the hypothesis that children who have been exposed to rhyme by age three will prove to be good readers by age six. The same holds true, he claims, for children who can identify alliterative pairs or series of words. Hempenstall then examines the possibility of teaching onset-rime distinction as a more efficacious way to teach reading; however, he quickly dismisses the approach as too difficult for young children.

At last, under the subheading Phoneme Awareness, the author discusses “two requirements of beginning reading … phonemic analysis and phonemic synthesis” (3). He notes that children are usually able to blend sounds into words before they can analyze them; which is why they can recognize the word cat before they can describe the sounds involved in producing the word.
The conclusion of his paper laments the lack of valid testing to measure the stages of reading development in at-risk and so-called normal children. He leaves readers to consider the possibility that children might develop phonemic awareness as a result of having learned how to read; it is not necessarily a separate and requisite learning task that leads to proficient reading.

Stephen E. Krashen “Phonemic Awareness Training for Prelinguistic Children: Do We Need Prenatal PA?”

Krashen’s tongue-in-cheek article lambastes researchers whose studies of phonemic awareness have led to California’s education legislation, which seems determined to suck the joy from reading. In that state, says Krashen, lawmakers have sought to boost children’s reading scores by screening for “phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling and grammar” (167). He cites Chaney, who claims that educators can predict preschoolers’ future reading ability by measuring their phonemic awareness skills (cf also Gough, Larson, and Yopp 1). He notes that preschoolers who receive formal training in phonemic awareness will become better readers than preschoolers who don’t receive such training. Krashen suggests that, given the desperate need for higher reading scores, such training should begin at birth. He bemoans the terrible disadvantages “PA-poor” toddlers will have when they enter preschool.

Citing well-known researchers such as Yopp, who suggests that teachers select children’s stories based, not on content, interest, or intelligence, but, on their repetitions of particular sounds, Krashen agrees that this is an excellent way to teach children to read. Indeed, he expands the notion, suggesting that we eliminate all real words from children’s books, replacing them with syllables. He praises Yopp’s idea that teachers — or PA trainers as he prefers to call them — teach their students songs that emphasize particular sounds. For example, “P-p-p-pop goes the weasel.” Indeed, he thinks children would learn even more if teachers encouraged “deliberate stuttering all day long” (168).

Krashen also commends the 1971 study by Eimas et al.., which discovered that three-day-old babies will suck if they hear a new phoneme. After a while, however, they get bored and stop sucking; but, upon hearing another new phoneme, they will resume sucking activity. Since babies are so inspired by phonemes, says Krashen, perhaps PA training should begin while babies are still in the womb. (Ah, yes, the sweet chimes of Swiftian humor.)

Finally, Krashen mentions an alternative to phonemic-awareness training; that is, leave children to learn it on their own. When children listen to interesting books, they become interested in reading; thus, they become readers. What’s more, early training in phonemic awareness does not make better readers or life-long readers. Instead of training children in phonemic awareness, give them access to good libraries and helpful librarians.

Gary L. Shaffer, Patricia Campbell, Sondra Rakes: “Investigating the Status and Perceived Importance of Explicit Phonic Instruction in Elementary Classrooms”

Shaffer, Campbell, and Rakes explain the procedure and results of their survey of 208 elementary school teachers to determine their attitudes toward phonics and phonemic awareness instruction. Most teachers were female [no surprise, since most teachers are female] and held at least a master’s degree [no surprise here either]. Teachers reported an average teaching experience of about eight years.

The researchers determined that teachers as a group agree that children who receive phonics and phonemic awareness instruction become good readers. The researchers concede that a small minority of dissenting teachers considers such instruction “the enemy.” However, they offer no explanation of possible reasons for the opinions of these dissenters. Most teachers who answered the survey reported that programs to promote phonemic awareness were only “moderately developed” in their schools. They also stated that their own third- and fourth-grade students were not yet prepared to understand the intricacies of phonics and phonemic study. Finally, the respondents lamented that their undergraduate pedagogy classes did not adequately prepare them for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness.

Shaffer et al. conclude that teachers are overwhelmingly in favor of preparing students for a lifetime of independent reading by teaching them the principles of phonemic awareness. Furthermore, they claim that the most important finding of their study underscores the need for schools to offer more in-service programs to teach teachers how to teach phonemic awareness and phonics.

A Few Observations about the Articles

Phonemic awareness as a panacea for the creation of good readers presents some problems. Indeed, all approaches that promise too much, too soon leave me suspect, as well they should. Although I was happy to find Krashen’s article, both for its Swiftian humor and its good sense, it also elucidated and supported my own uneasiness with daily lessons in phonemic awareness. In fact, after praising the virtues of phonemic awareness instruction, even Hempenstall finally concedes that reading and phonemic awareness might occur concurrently after all. But, the concession seems gratuitous, a covering of her tracks in case popular opinion swings in Krashen’s direction. She is among the majority of researchers, who purport that phonemic awareness, no matter how one defines the term, is essential to early reading. Whether this assumption is correct or not, researchers fail to answer many questions regarding research methods and the goals and objectives of phonemic awareness instruction.

Is it necessary to teach phonemic awareness separately from reading? Researchers whose studies support PA instruction also support the idea that children who read early become academic successes. There is, however, no literature supporting such a claim. In addition, they equate academic success with a child’s ability to pass standardized reading tests, with or without understanding or appreciating content. Indeed, phonemic awareness seems to be a natural outgrowth of the latest test-taking madness now dominating school curricula — a shortcut of sorts to the nirvana of academic success.

If some studies have in fact proven the effectiveness of phonemic awareness instruction, what long-term difference does it make? We have no idea whether six-year-olds who have been taught phonemic awareness will, in the long run, be better readers than those who have not undergone such training. We can look to Europe, where children begin reading instruction around age seven, without special training in phonemic awareness. If it were possible to give the same reading test to high-school students in the United States and those in European countries, it is unlikely that US students would score higher than European students.

There are also questions regarding the research implementation. Aside from their short-term parameters, researchers don’t include a variety of subjects in their studies. Students in groups of ten or twenty or even fifty can provide some research data, but they certainly don’t represent the majority. To be sure, most studies are conducted in schools within the same school district. Furthermore, as every teacher (and actor) knows, group dynamics change enormously with the addition or subtraction of even one element. We have no idea, for instance, how effectively researchers instruct their subjects. Neither do we know how the individual subjects respond to authority in general. For these reasons, before jumping on the phonemic awareness bandwagon, educators must consider their own and their colleagues’ real-world teaching experiences.

Another dynamic missing from the research is a description of subjects’ background and experience. Although researchers easily label particular groups of children “at risk,” they fail to explain how they arrive at such conclusions. Are they referring to children whose parents are poor or who have non-mainstream last names? In short, how valid are these studies? Eimas et al.. seem to be reaching when they inform readers about an important study that “discovered” children’s ability to blend sounds before they can explain how to blend them. It almost rivals their aforementioned study about the power of phonemes to inspire sucking behavior. Any mother could have provided the information, thereby saving researchers the trouble of conducting an elaborate study.

Finally, the problem with the survey by Shaffer et al. is that it tells us nothing we couldn’t already have guessed. Yes, the majority of teachers agree that phonemic awareness helps children read — i.e., the majority of the teachers in the survey. The study didn’t ask teachers why they agreed. Teachers sometimes agree with techniques and methodologies simply because that’s the way they learned how to teach in their university pedagogy classes. This is indicated by yet another survey, which also included an interview with teachers of English as a foreign language. Borg (1999) wanted to find out whether teachers had pedagogical reasons for incorporating formal grammar lessons into their curriculum; specifically, did they believe students benefited from grammar instruction? In all cases, teachers admitted they did not believe grammar instruction had any positive effect on students; nonetheless, they continued to teach it because they had been taught to teach it in their pedagogy classes in undergraduate school. It’s no secret that teachers often take a particular pedagogical tact, even if it has proven less than effective, simply because they have been trained in that particular pedagogy. Teachers also take pedagogical roads that have been decreed by their administrators, some of whom have spent no more than three years in a classroom. Education falls prey to trendy panaceas, just as most professions do; and phonemic awareness training seems to be resting in this unhappy category.

Pedagogical Possibilities

A few years ago, I had a five-year-old kindergarten student from Russia, who had come to the United States without knowing a word of English. In a matter of four months, his English, though still heavily accented, would have scored proficient on any assessment exam. When I read to the students, he would sit enrapt; and more often than not, he had already heard the story in Russian. “Oh, I have this one from my mother. I know this!” One day, I asked him what he had been doing before coming to my class. He replied, “I did drawing, I was so playing outside, I have snack, so good, and then I have phonemic awareness.” When I mentioned this to his classroom teacher, she said she taught a half-hour phonemic awareness lesson every day, and she was also aware that Zhenya was already reading with understanding, excelling beyond his native-speaker-of-English classmates. Clearly, since he was also reading Russian, having mastered its heavily declined verb system and Cyrillic alphabet, he was not further enriched by daily instruction in phonemic awareness.

One might argue that this student was an exception, and other students will benefit from such intervention. Nonetheless, phonemic awareness instruction had begun in this particular school district some six or seven years before Zhenya toddled off the airplane in the USA. If the PA-intervention program was so beneficial, it would follow that all, or most, students would be reading at or above grade level throughout their primary and elementary school years. But, this is not the case. Quite the contrary: it is apparent that phonemic awareness training is not producing better readers.

Children whose home environments are rich with reading material and whose parents read both to themselves and to their offspring love to read because somewhere along the line, they learned that reading was enjoyable. The proponents of PA training, however, suggest that children who come from print-poor homes and non-reading parents are automatically disadvantaged, and the only way to help them catch up is to teach them to become aware of the sounds of word segments. From a purely academic viewpoint, I might agree with the first generalization; but I have yet to find an unflawed study that proves formal training in phonemic awareness is the true road to reading success.

I had another five-year-old student. Carlitos never missed an opportunity to proclaim his dislike of reading. “I hate reading. It’s borrrrring, borrrrring, borrrrring.” When I asked him why, if he hated reading so much, he liked listening to the stories I read to the class every day, he laughed: “That’s not reading; that’s stories.” So, thanks to his daily dose of phonemic awareness, Carlitos equated reading with sounding out letters and tapping out sound segments. Unbeknownst to his well-meaning classroom teacher, he and other children like him are cultivating a dislike for reading without knowing what reading is. You can only tap out so many sound segments before the thrill is gone.

What can teachers do?

As many educators, including Vacca and Vacca, point out, the most efficacious way to introduce a subject is to stimulate students’ prior knowledge. All hearing students, whether they're phonemic-awareness handicapped or not, have an awareness of sound. Just as teachers use techniques to stimulate students’ curiosity about a reading passage, they can do the same for sound. Young children learn about sound segments, especially alliteration and rhyme, through poetry and through songs. It's the educator's job to make sure children are exposed to a wealth of materials in these and other genres, such as short stories and theatrical pieces.

Guided imagery is an excellent way to make children aware of the phonemic makeup of words. Try xeroxing and cutting out pictures of animals from stories such as "How the Rabbit Got its Short Tail." After reading the story a few times, give each student a cutout and ask her/him to describe the animal. Then ask the class to mimic the sound the animal makes when it talks. Write the sound graphemes on the board, and give students time to play with the sounds. Point to the graphemes and have the class call out the sounds in unison. Then, please forget about it. This should be a game for young children, not a formal lesson in the relationship between sound segments and their graphemic counterparts.

Another way to enrich students’ phonemic awareness is to ask one student to make an animal sound and ask students to draw a picture of the animal associated with the sound. For example, you might model the activity with ssssssssssssssssss or baaa-baaa, and draw a picture of a snake or a sheep.

Children love to rhyme, especially when they get to rhyme their own name, their teacher’s name, the principal’s name, their town’s name, anything that touches them personally. Again, this is another way to stimulate prior knowledge. Encourage rhyming in your classroom by reading lots of rhyme verse and by allowing children to play with sound. In these ways, children learn to love sound; so, manipulating sounds within sentences and words will be an enjoyable game rather than a daily trudge into the dry sands of the PA desert.

For older students, formal lessons in phonemic awareness are not so simple. A teacher’s decision as to how to make students phonemically aware often depends on the cultural and academic backgrounds of the students. Some insist on learning every aspect of a foreign language; others are discouraged by a concentration on detail and want to start speaking right away. The answer is to find a balance. One way to do this is to have phonemic warm-up exercises for the first five minutes of each class. I often include a linguistic warm-up exercise that is not unlike the tuning up of an orchestra in the moments before a concert. It’s loud, it’s cacophonic, but students enjoy loosening up their linguistic muscles and tuning up their phonemic stings before the start of class.

CONCLUSION

Although I don’t dispute the connection between phonemic awareness and reading, I question the efficacy of teaching it formally. When researchers such as Smith state, “The better a young child is at segmenting words into their individual sounds, the better they are likely to read, and the faster the reading process (20), I get worried. In no article has a researcher defined reading or the purpose of reading. If the purpose of early reading is to win an academic race without enjoying or understanding the run, I wish to dissent. When researchers such as Allor et al. refer to toddlers “with and without lexical retrieval weaknesses,” I cringe. There was a time in this country when kindergarten was a gentle introduction to formal education. Now, any child entering kindergarten without an academic curriculum vitae — or shall I say, academic pedigree? — is at risk. At risk for what? Does this child risk becoming a literary loser unless s/he is trained in the joys of phonemic awareness? Or perhaps it is just possible that even phonemically challenged children can learn to read with understanding and enjoyment. I must agree with Krashen that children who are exposed to reading — or stories, as Pauly calls it — will learn to read and, in the process, learn to be phonetically aware. The two processes cannot and should not be separated. Yes, some researchers contend that students who are taught the intricacies of the phonemic maze at age three will be better readers at age six. Whether they will enjoy reading at age six is another matter. Whether they will bother picking up a book at age ten or twenty remains to be seen.

Joy Turner, a Montessori teacher, suggests that teachers employ word-play games, rime books, and reading that “combines a rich pre-reading background with manageable and multisensory alphabetic instruction […] the best of all worlds in terms of preparing the child to read” (37). Flet and Condman list twenty ways to promote phonemic awareness. Among their suggestions: teach nursery rhymes and simple poems, read stories containing rhymes, play words games, talk about sounds and what they do, play all sorts of games with sounds. In other words, allow children to explore the wonders of sound, read them exciting stories, play lots of music, and encourage the natural curiosity that is inherent in everyone. This is the magical road that leads children to a genuine love and understanding of reading. Researchers will continue to conduct studies, and educators will do well to keep abreast of those studies. But, we must not allow methodological trends to mislead us into believing there is one answer to all our teaching challenges.

WORKS CITED

Allor, Jill Howard; Douglas Fuchs, Patricia G. Mathes. “Do Students With and
Without Lexical Retrieval Weaknesses Respond Differently to Instruction?”
Journal of Learning Disabilites 34.3 (May/June (2001)): 264-75. (ERIC Data
Base Service Number BED101015939).

Borg, Simon. “Teachers’ Pedagogical Systems and Grammar Teaching: A Qualitative
Study.” TESOL Quarterly 32.1 (Spring 1998): 9-38.

Flett, Angela, Gregory J. Conderman. “20 Ways to Promote Phonemic Awareness.” In-
tervention in School and Clinic 37.4 (March 2002): 242-5. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service Number BED102008538).

Gough, Philip B., Kevin C. Larson, Hallie Yopp. “The Structure of Phonemic Aware-
ness.” Internet document. Webite address:
http://www.phy.utexas.edu/psy/klarson/recife.html

Hempenstall, Kerry. EducationNews.org Phonemic Awareness: What Does it Mean?
http://www.educationnews.org/phonemic_awareness

Krashen, Stephen D. “Phonemic Awareness Training for Prelinguistic Children: Do We Need Prenatal PA?” Reading Improvement 35.:4 (Winter 1998): 167-71. (ERIC
Document Reproduction Service BED198035099)

Richgels, Donald J. “Phonemic Awareness.” The Reading Teacher 55.3 (November
2001): 274-8. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service Number BED101029097)

Shaffer, Gary L., Campbell, Patricia, Rakes, S Sondra. “Investigating the Status and
Perceived Importance of Explicit Phonic Instruction in Elementary Classrooms.”
Reading Improvement 37.3 (Fall 2000): 110-18.

Smith, Corrine Roth. “From Gibberish to Phonemic Awareness: Effective Decoding
Instruction.” Teaching Exceptional Children 30. 6 (July/August 1998): 20-25.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service Number BED198022428).

Turner, Joy. (1998) How Do Children Learn to Read? Montessori Life 10.10 (Fall 1998),
37 (ERIC Document Reproduction Service Number BED198031160).

Vacca, Richard T. and Jo Anne L. Vacca. Content Area Reading 6th Edition. New York:
Longman (Addison-Wesley) 1999 (cf Chapter 8, 314-353).

Il fratello cambiato: "The Changed Brother" A translation

Literally, Il fratello cambiato translates as "The Changed Brother," but I don't like this title at all. If I were taking liberties with the translation, I'd title it "Carlo."

Il fratello cambiato
byDino Buzzati

When we were children, my younger brother, God bless him, caused a great deal of worry because of his restlessness, unruliness, and completely indifference to his studies. After various punishments had proven ineffective, and after having set off a large firecracker in the middle of class with the excuse that it was carnival time, he was expelled from school and our father felt obliged to put him in boarding school.

Nothing in the world frightened us more than boarding school. Each time we passed under the large gloomy building, the two of us would try to catch sight of one of those poor wretches on the other side of the windows. We didn’t have the slightest doubt that they were miserable. To us, they seemed like strange inhabitants from another world. The very mention of the words boarding school gave us the shivers, even more so than other words such as prison, penitentiary, gallows, noose, which, for us, belonged to the same general category.

I understood immediately that Carlo—that was my brother’s name—was alarmed at the news, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to admit it. On the contrary, he laughed defiantly and confidentially told me that it wouldn’t take more than a week at the most, before he would run away. “I tell you, I’ll croak rather than stay inside that place.”

Just in case escape wasn’t possible during the first days, my brother worked out a plan of secret communication. Every afternoon from three to four, I was to stand outside the wall that surrounded the school; in fact, that was their daily outdoor recreation hour. To signal his presence, Carlo was to whistle the first notes of a popular song. I was supposed to answer him with the same tune. At this point I was to go to the main gate, which was hermetically sealed and reinforced with a metal panel that prevented anyone from looking inside, but perhaps it would be possible to exchange a few words from there.

And if Carlo couldn’t manage to get to the gate? In this case, he was to write a message on a slip of paper, fold it into a wad, and toss it over the wall to me. Or, as a last resort, he was to communicate the situation to me by whistling various, agreed upon tunes. To simplify things, we decided on six different tunes that would mean, respectively: I will escape this evening; unforeseen difficulties; they’ve discovered me; everything is okay; going from bad to worse; throw me a cigarette.

But it was also necessary to anticipate that none of this would be implemented and that Carlo would be forced to communicate with me via regular mail, which was, of course, subject to censorship. Therefore, we established a secret code made up of conventional phrases. For example: “The food is good here” meant “I’m starving to death.” “All the teachers are good” meant “They’re a bunch of skunks,” and so on. There were no phrases to express favorable conditions inasmuch as it seemed absurd that anything good could exist in boarding school.

That wasn’t all. Because our imaginations had ascribed a diabolical cunning and severity to the headmasters of the boarding school, we agreed on a very important rule: aside from the double entendres that we had established, I wasn’t to believe one word of anything that Carlo, for the sake of propriety or otherwise, might write to me. In case he had other information that couldn’t be written in code, it would be preceded by the expression, “Brother dear” (instead of “Dear brother”), and followed by the words, “So then...” Finally, if, in his letters or in conversation, he denied or voided this secret agreement, it would mean that he had been forced to write or to talk like that against his will, and I wasn’t to believe him.

He left the house one Monday morning while I was still sleeping and, for this reason, I didn’t see him. But, the next day by three o’clock in the afternoon, I was already on duty by the wall. I had prepared three small paper cartridges to throw over the wall, each one with a cigarette inside. I waited in vain. It was raining that afternoon and there was no outside recreation at the boarding school.

It was also raining the following day. But I had some luck. While I stood on the sidewalk with my umbrella open, waiting in case the boarders would be led into the courtyard despite the bad weather, I felt someone staring at me. Looking around, I didn’t see anyone at first. Then, looking up, I saw him. (From a first-floor window—opened, who knows how, Carlo was looking at me.) He was wearing the school’s gray uniform and holding himself motionless with a equanimity not at all like him. Perhaps he had been there for a few minutes. Why hadn’t he called me right away? A little whistle would have sufficed.

“Carlo, Carlo!” I called in a whisper. It was doubtful that he hadn’t seen me. How absurd! He had seen me all right! Seen me and observed me for a long time and without batting an eyelash. For what reason? Behind his back, invisible to me, perhaps a “prefect” was watching him? But then, without smiling, he raised his right hand, making a gesture that meant: “Wait, don’t get upset, stay calm.” As if it were I, not he, who had to be patient!

He stood by the window for a few more seconds and then disappeared. The windows, their lower panes frosted, were closed. Very confused, I went away. Anyway, I wasn’t worried about his projected escape from the boarding school. For me, one thing was certain: within a few days, Carlo would be expelled. I knew him too well. It was out of the question that those teachers would be able to put up with him for any length of time.

To keep my promise, however, I returned to the school everyday around three in the afternoon. On the other side of the wall, I would hear the children’s voices, a few quarrels quickly extinguished, some rare laughs. But I couldn’t distinguish my brother’s voice. I waited for him to make himself known with the agreed-upon whistle, but he never appeared. Then, I tried to whistle. Nothing. It was like that for four days. Was he ill?

Finally, on the fifth day, after several attempts to catch his attention, a wad of paper thrown from the courtyard landed in front of me. I opened it. Someone had written: “Everything is okay. Your coming is useless.” It wasn’t much, but I breathed a sigh of relief. At the earliest, perhaps this evening, Carlo would try to escape.

But a day passed, two, three, and no alarm sounded from the boarding school. Carlo hadn’t escaped. Then, I received a letter. “Dear brother,” it said, “I want to let you know that I am very happy here and everyone is good to me. Many things, which earlier I saw under a false light, have been cleared up for me, and therefore I see my future in a very different way. Don’t worry about me. They reported to me that you come to the school everyday in the hope of seeing me or speaking to me. Since I understand your affection for me, promise me not do it anymore. A hug from your brother, Carlo.”

I was flabbergasted. It seemed like some horrible joke. This was a letter from Carlo? Aside from the fact that he had never written so correctly, not one of those words could have been his. And the tone was all the more surprising because I could find no hidden meanings in it. There wasn’t even one phrase of our secret code. But, still more disconcerting, was the postscript: “Perhaps you might remember that before coming to boarding school, I had spoken to you about using a coded language to give you news of me. Absolutely do not attach one iota of importance to that foolishness. Besides, all this would be useless because I enjoy the greatest of freedom here.”

A forged letter? No, because the handwriting was beyond suspicion. What then? How could Carlo, with his indomitable cockiness, have changed his mind so soon? Not only his mind, but even his character seemed radically transformed; as though he had become someone else, an entirely different human being.

I don’t know myself why that inconceivable change awakened a mystifying horror in me; it was almost as though I had been told that Carlo was dead and a stranger had take his place. Without wondering if it was a good idea or not, I couldn’t help but tell everything to my father who, indeed, laughed at my fears. But, I noticed that even he seemed profoundly struck.

What agonizing days waiting to see him again. It took almost a month before he was allowed to spend a Sunday at home. Never will I forget that morning. At the appointed hour, the doorbell rang and I ran to open the door. All it took was one glance. The face, the body, the tone of voice were Carlo’s, but inside there was another: well-behaved, quiet, reasonable. Even his motions, under some somber magic spell, were calm and composed. He, who had never been able to take a step without smashing something!

“And, so?” I asked him.

“And, what?” he asked.

“But, didn’t you swear that you’d run away from school?”

“What does it matter?” he said. “I didn’t know then how it would be”

“But, do they treat you well?”

“Well, of course they do.”

“And they never punish you?”

“Punish me? Why? What an idea!”

And he made a slight, compassionate smile. And he was gazing at me. And it seemed that in the depth of his eyes there was an ambiguous shadow, some unspeakable secret, the true explanation; something that he couldn’t reveal to me.

Neither has he changed since then. After three months he left the boarding school; and he went on to another school. We went on vacation together. Never again was he the same boy he had been. He grew quiet and subdued, dedicated to his studies, full of courtesy when he spoke, disciplined in a way that was almost obsequious.

He grew up, he became a man. And when I would ask him what they had done to him during his first days at boarding school, he would give vague answers or indicate that he really didn’t understand the question. But always with a shadow of apprehension in the depth of his gaze, as if his true life had been cut short on that faraway day and now he was obliged to play a part that was not his, and he was absolutely unable to explain to me why.

He is almost forty. Today he is the father of a family, has a good job, is a model citizen esteemed by his colleagues and supervisors. We love each other. Yet, each time I see him again, there wells up in me the mad hope of seeing him—even large and fat as he now is—turn a somersault, say bad words, throw rocks at a window. In short, I hope that he returns, my real brother who was lost on that remote Monday morning. No, he doesn’t make faces or say bad words; he sits in his armchair with great dignity, opens the newspaper, reads the articles from cover to cover.

“Listen,” I sometimes say to him, thinking perhaps our old confidence will resurface, “but there, at the boarding school, do you remember if you were really happy?”

“Certainly,” he responds, “extremely.” And he looks at me with that indefinable pain.

“Why?” I still ask myself on those nights when I can find no peace. What did they do to him in that accursed school? What means did they use to extinguish him, to change him into a larva? Why doesn’t he rebel? Why doesn’t he have the courage to speak?

Suicido al parco 'Suicide In Park"

Suicido al Parco

By Dino Buzzatti

“SUICIDE IN PARK”: A Translation

Nine years ago, Stefano, my friend and colleague, thirty-four-years old, contracted automobile disease. He owned a 1960 model, but until that time he had never shown any symptoms of this terrible illness. Its course was rapid. Like great and fatal loves that overpower men, within a period of only a few days, Stefano became a slave to the idea of owning a luxury car, and he could talk of nothing else.

The automobile! Not the usual everyday vehicle that needs only to travel from one place to another, but the car of cars, the symbol of success, the statement of personality and command over the world, the extension of oneself, the instrument of adventure; in short, the modern symbol of encoded happiness.

The desire, therefore, the obsession, the craving for an automobile of the elite—extremely beautiful, strong, sleek, difficult, super human—to make the masses turn their heads as it drove past them down the street. Was it a fatuous sentiment? Childish? Idiotic? I don’t know. I didn’t experience it, and it is never wise to judge other people’s hearts.

In today’s world, thousands are infected with the illness. Their goal isn’t the happiness of their families, a profitable and satisfying career, the conquest of riches or power, the ideal of art, or the attainment of spirituality. No. For them the ultimate dream is a one-of-a-kind such-and-such car about which all the sun-tanned sons of successful industrialists make up stories in the fashionable cafés. However, Stefano earned very little, and the object of his daily raptures remained at a tremendous distance. Stefano tormented himself with this obsession, infected his friends, and distressed his wife Faustina, a kind and gracious creature too much in love with him. How many evenings she endured his long and painful discourse!

“Do you like it?” he would ask anxiously handing Faustina an advertisement for some incredible car.

She would just glance at it. In any case, she already knew the scenario. “Of course I like it,” she would answer.

“Do you really like it?”

“But, of course.”

“Do you really like it very much?”

“Please, Stefano,” and she would smile at him as one smiles at a sick person who can’t help himself.

And then after a long silence, he would say, “Do you know how much it costs?”

Faustina would try to joke, “I think it’s better not to know.”

“Why?”

“You know better than I do, sweetheart; because we could never afford to satisfy such a whim.”

Stefano would become angry. “Sure, you . . . just to oppose me . . . even before you know . . . .”

“Me? Oppose you?”

“Yes. You seem to do it on purpose. You know this is my passion, you know how important it is to me, you know it would be my greatest joy. And you . . . instead of giving me hope, all you can do is make fun of me.”

“Now, you’re not being fair, Stefano. I never make fun of you.”

“You . . . even before you know how much the car costs, right away, you’re against me.”

And so on, for hours.

I remember that one day when her husband wasn’t within earshot, Faustina said to me: “Believe me, this fuss about a luxury car has become a real cross for me to bear. From morning till night all he talks about is Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar—may the devil take them—as if he had to have one tomorrow. And I don’t know what to think; I don’t recognize him anymore. Even you remember how wonderful Stefano was in the good old days. Sometimes I wonder if he’s lost a screw. Do you think it’s possible? We’re young. We love each other. We have something to live for. Stefano is doing very well at work, his co-workers like him very much. Why do we have to poison life? I swear, just to see this over with, just to see him happy with his damned ‘one-of-a-kind,’ I swear I’d even be willing to . . . don’t let me say any more.”

And she burst into tears.

Crazy? Deranged? Who knows? I liked Stefano very much. Perhaps his dream car was something that we couldn’t understand, something beyond the beauty and perfection of a vehicle, like a talisman, like a key opening the greedy doors of destiny.

I’ll never forget the day Stefano showed up at the wheel of a car that I had never seen before. It was blue, it was long, it was low, it was new, it was a flowing and sinuous two-seater, all stretched out in the front. At a rough guess, I would say it cost at least five million lire; who knows how Stefano had been able to dig up that kind of money.

“It’s yours?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Good Heavens. Congratulations. You finally did it.”

“You know, save, save, save . . . .”

I walked around the vehicle to look. I didn’t recognize the make. On the top of the hood there was a sort of coat of arms with a complicated interweaving of initials.

“What sort of car is this?”

“English,” he said. “A limited edition. An almost secret make of car; it must be from a branch of Daimler Corporation.”

It was completely marvelous, even for me, who doesn’t make a big fuss about cars. The line, the compactness of the body, the arrogant spring of the tires, the precision of the instrument panel, the dashboard that looked like an altar, the thick black leather seats, soft as an April wind.

“Come on, get in so I can show you,” he said.

It didn’t roar, it didn’t make a lot of noise; it only took some breaths, some athletic breaths, delicious to hear, and with every breath, the houses on each side of the road flashed wildly backwards.

“What’d you say?”

“Stupendous!” I answered, not finding a better word. “And, tell me, what does Faustina think of it?”

His face darkened for a second. He was silent.

“Why? Faustina doesn’t approve?”

“No,” he answered.

“So?”

“Faustina left.”

Silence.

She left. She said she couldn’t live with me anymore.”

“For what reason?”

“You go figure out these women.” He lit a cigarette. “And I thought that she loved me.”

“The hell she didn’t.”

“Well, she left all the same.”

“Where? Back to her family?”

“Her family doesn’t know anything. She’s gone. I haven’t heard a word.”

I looked at him. He was a little pale. But he gripped the steering wheel sensually, caressing the swollen skin of the gear shift. His foot pumped the accelerator up and down with the tenderness of a man pressing against his lover’s flesh. And, with each touch, the car palpitated, quivering like a young girl.

We left the city and Stefano turned on to the Autostrada for Torino, where we arrived in less than a quarter of an hour. A wild ride; yet, strangely, the machine had such a sense of domination that I wasn’t afraid. What’s more, it seemed that the car had given itself up to Stefano’s will, interpreting and anticipating his secret desires. Yet, Stefano was making me angry. It was all well and good that he had a car, that he had satisfied his frenetic desire, but Faustina, that adoring woman, had left him. And he was completely indifferent.

Some time after this, I had to leave the area for a long absence. When I returned, as happens, my life took another road. I saw Stefano, yes, but not often as I had before. In the meantime, he had found a new job, he was doing very well, and traveled about in his formidable machine. And he was happy.

The years passed, Stefano and I would see each other on occasion and I always asked after Faustina, and he would say that Faustina had really disappeared for good. I would ask about the car and he would say that the car, yes, was still a great vehicle of course, but it was beginning to show its age, it was in the machine shop every minute, and few mechanics were capable of handling it, a difficult and foreign motor that almost no one understood.

Then I read that news item in the paper:

STRANGE ESCAPE OF AUTOMOBILE

Yesterday, at 5 PM, a blue coupe, which had been left unattended for a moment in front of a cafe on 58 Moscova Street, shifted into gear of its own accord. Crossing the intersections along Garibaldi and Montello Avenues with ever-increasing speed, the car turned to the left and then to the right, turned on to Elvezia Avenue, and finally smashed against the ruins of the ancient fortress outside the park, where it caught fire and was destroyed.

It is difficult to explain how the car, left by itself, was able to zigzag along the stretch of road without encountering any obstacles, despite the heavy traffic, and how it was able gradually to accelerate its speed.

Few of those present paid attention to the car traveling by itself. They imagined that the driver was playing a joke, scrunching down under the steering wheel and watching the road with a mirror. In fact, their statements concur: it didn’t seem to be a driverless car, but a car driven with great ability and decision. What’s more, when a motorbike turned into the traffic from Canonna Street, the car swerved frantically and avoided hitting it by a hair.

We report these details purely for the record. Many episodes of this sort have already occurred, even in our city. And there is no need to resort to supernatural hypotheses.

The owner of the car was identified by the license plate. He is a 43-year-old advertising executive named Stefano Ingrassia, of 12 Manfredini Avenue. Ingrassia stated that he had left the car unattended in front of the cafe on Moscova Avenue, but denies that the motor was running.

As soon as I finished the article, I hurried to find Stefano and found him at home, very upset.

“Was it her?” I asked.

He nodded yes.

“It was Faustina?

“Yes, Faustina. My poor little star. You knew?”

“I wasn’t sure. Sometimes I had my doubts, but it seemed so absurd.”

“Absurd, yes,” he said covering his face with his hands. “But these miracles of love do happen in this world. One night, nine years ago; one night as I held her in my arms. A terrible thing. And wonderful. She began to cry, to tremble, and then her body became rigid and began to swell. And she did it just in time to make it out into the street; otherwise she never would have made it through the door. Luckily, no one was outside. It was a matter of two or three minutes. Then, there she was, waiting for me at the curb, new and gleaming. The paint smelled like Hélas, her favorite perfume. Remember how beautiful she was?

“And then?”

“And then, I’m a skunk, a scoundrel. And then she got old and the engine didn’t work anymore, and every day there was another ailment. And no one looked at her anymore when we drove down the street. And so I began to think maybe it was time to trade her in. I really couldn’t go on forever with that broken down old wreck. Do you know what a bastard, what a pig, I am? Do you know where I was going when I stopped on Moscova Avenue yesterday? I was taking her to sell. I wanted to buy another. It’s frightening. I was taking my wife, who had given her life for me, to sell her for 500,000 lire. Now you know why she killed herself.”

La giacca stregata: Translation of Dino Buzzatti's Story

La giacca stregata

THE ENCHANTED JACKET

a translation

Although I appreciate elegance of dress, I usually don’t pay attention to the perfection with which my acquaintances’ clothing is or is not cut. However, one evening, during a reception at a house in Milan, I met a man, about forty years old from the look of him, who literally glowed because of the definitive and utter beauty of his clothing.

I don’t know who he was. I was meeting him for the first time and, as often happens, it was impossible to understand his name when he was introduced. He seemed to be a polite and civil man, yet with an aura of sadness. With perhaps exaggerated familiarity—if God had only dissuaded me—I complimented him on his elegance, and I even dared to ask him who his tailor was.

The man had an odd smile, almost as if he had expected the question. “He’s not well known,” he said, “but he’s a great master. And he only works when he feels like it. For a few insiders.”

“So that I . . . .?

“Oh, do try, do try. His name is Corticella. Alfonso Corticella, Via Ferrara 17.”

“I suppose he must be expensive.”

“I assume so, but I swear that I don’t know for sure. He made this suit for me three years ago and he still hasn’t sent me the bill.”

“Corticella? Via Ferrara 17, you said?”

“Exactly,” the stranger responded. And he left me to chat with another group.

In Via Ferrara 17, I found a house like so many other houses; and Alfonso Corticella’s residence was like those of so many other tailors. He came to the door himself to let me in. He was an old man with black hair, obviously dyed.

To my surprise, he wasn’t at all difficult to work with. Indeed, he seemed anxious that I become his client. I explained to him how I had gotten his address; I praised his work and asked him to make me a suit. We selected a gray flannel, whereupon he took my measurements and offered to have the suit delivered to my house. I asked him the price. There was no hurry, he answered; we could always come to an agreement. What a nice man, I thought at first. Yet later, as I was returning home, I became aware that the old man had left an uncomfortable feeling inside me—perhaps too many insistent and effusive smiles. In short, I had no desire to see him again. But by now the suit had been ordered. And in three weeks, it was ready.

When they brought it to me, I tried it on for a few moments in front of the mirror. It was a masterpiece. But, I don’t really know why, perhaps because of the memory of the disagreeable old man, I didn’t feel at all like wearing it., and weeks passed before I decided to do so.

I will remember that day forever. It was a Tuesday in April. and it was raining. When I slipped into the suit—jacket, pants, vest—I noted with pleasure that it didn’t pull me or bind me anywhere, as almost always happens with new suits. Yet, I was dressed to perfection.

As a rule I don’t put anything in the right-hand pocket of my jackets; I keep my cards in the left one. This explains why, after only a couple of hours in the office, casually slipping my hand into the right pocket, I noticed that there was a piece of paper inside. Perhaps a bill from the tailor?

No. It was a 10,000 lira note.

I was dumbfounded. I certainly hadn’t put it there. On the other hand, it was absurd to think that it was a joke played by the tailor Corticella. Much less, a gift from my housekeeper, the only person, besides the tailor, who had had occasion to be anywhere near the suit. Or could it be a counterfeit? I looked at it against the light, I compared others with it. It couldn’t be any better than this.

The only explanation possible was Corticella’s absent-mindedness. Perhaps a client had come to pay an installment on a bill, the tailor didn’t have his wallet with him at that moment and, rather than leave money lying around, he had slipped it into my jacket, which was hanging on mannequin. Things like this can happen.

I rang the bell to call the secretary. I wanted to write a letter to Corticella, returning the money that wasn’t mine. If only I hadn’t . . . and I don’t know how to explain why I did it, but I slipped my hand into my pocket again.

“What’s wrong, Doctor? Are you ill?” asked the secretary who had just come in. I must have turned pale as death. In my pocket, my fingers were touching the corners of another piece of paper, which hadn’t been there a few moments before.

“No, no, it’s nothing,” I said. “A little dizziness. It’s been happening for some time. Perhaps I’m a bit tired. Go ahead, Signorina; there’s a letter to dictate, but we’ll do it later.”

Only after the secretary had left did I dare extract the piece of paper from the pocket. It was another ten thousand lire note. Then I tried a third time. And a third bill appeared.

My heart began to pound. I had the feeling that, for some mysterious reason, I was caught up in a fabulous plot, like one of those children’s fairy-tales that no one ever believes to be true.

Using the excuse that I wasn’t feeling well, I left the office and returned home. I needed to be alone. Fortunately, the woman who cleans house for me had left. I shut the doors, lowered the shades. With the greatest haste, I began to extract, one by one, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of banknotes from my pocket.

I worked with spasmodic nervous tension, afraid that the miracle might stop at any moment. I wanted to keep going for the entire afternoon and night until I had accumulated a billion lire. But, at a certain point, the forces had dwindled.

Before me lay an impressive pile of banknotes. The important thing now was to hide them, that no one get wind of them. I emptied an old trunk full of rugs and on the bottom, I sorted the money into many little piles and counted it slowly. There was a good 58,000,000 lire.

I awoke the following morning after the cleaning woman had arrived, amazed to find me in bed, still completely dressed. I tried to laugh, explaining that I had drunk too much the pervious evening and had been suddenly overpowered by sleep.

A new worry: she asked me to take the suit off, so that she could at least give it a brushing.

I told her that I had to go out right away and that I didn’t have time to change. Then I hurried to a clothing store to buy a ready-made suit of similar material. I would leave this other one for the cleaning woman; “mine,” the suit that within in a few days would make me one of the most powerful men in the world, I would hide in a secure place.

I didn’t know if I was living in a dream, if I was happy or, instead, suffocating under the weight of too great a fate. On the street, I continually touched the magic pocket through my raincoat. With every touch, the reassuring crumple of paper money answered under the material. And I breathed a sigh of relief.

But a peculiar coincidence cooled my joyous delirium. The morning headlines announced news of a robbery that had taken place the day before. An armored truck belonging to a bank, having made the rounds of its branch offices, was carrying the day’s deposits to headquarters when it was attacked and robbed by four bandits on Viale Palmanova. As people began to arrive on the scene, one of the gangsters had started shooting in order to keep them away. And a passerby had been killed. But, I was struck, above all, by the sum of money stolen—exactly 58,000,000 lire.

Could there be a relationship between my sudden riches and the almost simultaneous attack by the thieves? It seemed ridiculous to think so. And I’m not at all superstitious. Nevertheless, the incident left me very puzzled.

The more you get, the more you desire. I was already rich, considering my modest habits. But the mirage of a life of unlimited luxury impelled me. And that very evening, I began to work again. Now I proceeded with greater calm and with less torture to my nerves. Another 135,000,000 lire were added to my first treasure.

That night, I didn’t close an eye. Was it the presentiment of danger? Or was it the tormented conscience of someone who acquires a spectacular fortune without deserving it? Or was it a sort of confused remorse? At the first light of dawn, I jumped out of bed, dressed, and ran out in search of a newspaper.

As I read, I lost my breath. A terrible fire, started in a fuel oil refinery, had almost completely destroyed a warehouse in the center of the city on Via San Cloro. The flames had devoured, among other things, the safes belonging to a huge real estate company, which had contained over 135,000,000 lire in cash. Two firefighters had met their death in the blaze.

Must I now list my crimes one by one? Yes, because by this time I knew that the money bestowed on me by the jacket had come from crime, from blood, from desperation, from death. It had come from Hell. But my mind was still trying to justify everything and mockingly refused to admit that I was at all responsible. And then temptation conquered again. Then, my hand—it was so easy!—slipped into the pocket and my fingers, with intensely fleeting pleasure, grasped the corners of a continuous flow of new bills. Money, divine money!

Without giving up my old apartment (so as not to arouse suspicion), I soon bought a huge villa, owned a precious collection of paintings, drove around in luxury cars, and, having left my job “for reasons of health,” traveled around the world in the company of marvelous women.

I knew that every time I withdrew money from the jacket, something sinister and painful transpired in the world. But it was always a vague awareness, unsubstantiated by proven logic. Meanwhile, with every collection, my conscience sank lower, becoming increasingly vile. And the tailor? I telephoned him to ask for the bill, but no one answered. In Via Ferrara where I went to find him, they told me that he had emigrated overseas, they didn’t know where. Everything united, therefore, to show me that, without knowing it, I had made a pact with the devil.

Finally, one morning, in the building where I had lived for many years, they found a sixty-year-old retired woman asphyxiated by gas; she had committed suicide because she had lost her monthly pension of 30,000 lire, collected only the day before (which had ended up in my hand).

Enough. enough! In order not to plunge to the bottom of the abyss, I had to rid myself of the jacket. Not by surrendering it to others because the infamy would have continued. Who would ever be able to resist such enticement?. It was imperative to destroy it.

I reached a hidden valley in the Alps by car. I left the car in a grassy opening and walked up through a wood. There wasn’t a living soul around. Passing beyond the wood, I reached the stony ground of the moraine. Here, standing between two gigantic boulders, I pulled out the abominable jacket from the backpack, sprinkled it with gasoline, and lit it. In a few minutes, nothing remained but ashes.

But at the last flicker of flames, behind me—it seemed to be two or three meters away—a voice resounded. “Too late, too late!” Terrified, I turned in a flash like a serpent. But I didn’t see anyone. I searched, jumping from one rock to another, to flush out the scoundrel. Nothing. There was nothing but rock.

In spite of the fright I had experienced, I descended back to the bottom of the valley feeling a sense of relief. Free, finally. And, fortunately, rich.

But my car was no longer in the grassy opening. And, when I returned to the city, my sumptuous villa had disappeared; in its place an uncultivated field with some signs reading: “Municipal Property For Sale.” And my savings accounts, I don’t know how, completely wiped out. And disappeared from my numerous safe deposit boxes, the large bundles of stock certificates. And dust, nothing more, in the old trunk.

Now I have begun, with difficulty, to work again. I barely manage, and, what is even more extraordinary, no one seems to be surprised by my sudden ruin. And I know that it’s not over yet. I know that one day my doorbell will ring, I will go to answer it and I will find, standing before me, the accursed tailor with his nefarious smile, asking for the final payment of his bill.

La Notte: Dino Buzzatti

La Notte

by Dino Buzzatti

THE NIGHT

(a fairly literal translation)

Fear arrives, needing nothing, at the end of certain unforeseen evenings, assembling first along the hedges in the already lusterless valleys at the feet of ancient, time-worn walls. And behind the solitary churches? Or in that meadow at the foot of the apse where no one ever passes? Since afternoon, they have been able to detect its approach here and there—for example, in those two long cries exchanged over the river from one end of the country to the other; for example, on the yellow landslide, in those small incomprehensible holes that already cheerfully anticipate the night; or in the sudden sensation that this, too, was a lost day (or perhaps a lost life?). Seated in the garden, he had seen a dog fleeing headlong through the deserted pastures high up on the hill. The animal was alone and, at a certain point, it was lost in the extreme distance, blending with the green stillness. But, no one had thought about it because it was a clear, sunny day, favorable for projects and affections, which made them forget. Alas, it was the last good afternoon, and we didn’t know it.

But then the great and just silence of the countryside arrived; the birds, wasps, all the insects, calmed; only the distant river remained with its melancholy voice. The last bells had also tolled, the rivers and houses among the trees blended with the shade, and in the heart, memories, sweet sadness, illusions. So the streets remained empty, darkness growing at the crossroads, damp vapors emanating slowly from the marsh. Is this the hour when insolent bandits, warmed with wine, move from their cave in the hollow of the ravine toward the main road, carrying their shotguns? Or is that their truck puffing as it ascends and vanishes into the distance?

It is advisable to bolt the doors now, and perhaps this is harmful because the night is no longer able to circulate freely in and out of the house; rather, slipping in through the cracks, it might collect too thickly in the rooms. He, however, has broad shoulders and the face of an old soldier, the evening is still carefree; she even chats easily during supper.

But the time passes, and they have lingered too long reading and embroidering as the clock strikes out in the hallway. Who heard it when the sun was shining? Now, it vibrates in the darkness with old bronze resonances, and the empty corners of the house respond. How discernible also her footsteps on the staircase. She stops midway. It seemed . . . Nothing. Who knows what it was. In the bedroom, the lamp gives off a tranquil light.

He too comes up to bed; he with the squared shoulders; and on top of the dresser, a loaded shotgun, a Mauser. Yet, with his feet on the first step, he turns. Naturally, the hallway is empty. Strange, however: you could almost say that it’s waiting for him to go to sleep. The walls, the chest of drawers in the corner, the metal cabinet, even the bicycles are waiting to be alone. It waits for no one and nothing to be there but the gray stone floor. Perhaps too many people have passed their lives in here, been born, matured, become adults, grown old and died; then others, then others with the passing of time left something behind, something vague and subtle that is lost in the light of day. Or, instead, is it the eternal weight of all the others, living on our solitude, only we can’t understand, and as soon as we leave the room, we suddenly turn around and the mirrors send back a strange face?

Very often, the farmers’ dogs bark mournfully, and they can pick up scents from enormous distances; listening intently, there’s not a moment of the night when they don’t hear some dog barking in the distance. But, it isn’t the dogs.

Great-grandfather’s bust appears exceptionally white at this hour, and two deep eye sockets form, pondering, remembering things that we don’t know about, but that concern us. And even the portraits stare at us with veiled allusions. But, it isn’t the bust or the portraits.

“Giovanni,” she asks in a whisper, “Giovanni, did you hear?”

“What?”

“Giovanni, they knocked at the door.”

“No. No one knocked. It’s the old metal curtain rod; it swings when there’s a bit of wind and sometimes it bangs against the door.”

“There it is, another knock.”

“Relax, Maria. I’ll have to have it taken down, that rod, seeing that it doesn’t work any more anyway. Who’d be knocking at the door at this hour? People are asleep at this hour.”

Toward 11:30, mice begin to move around in the ancient spaces of the walls. Erratically, they cause muffled roars in the adjoining room; they rustle with their soft bellies under the solemn red curtain, which will continue to hide a terrible secret until the crack of dawn. Here are the mice; they think, who will ever drive them out? Listening intently, they follow their maneuvers. Such strange sounds. Could it possibly be the mice? Or, is it a human being opening a drawer, over there, pulling it out little by little? And who is that walking in the attic? My God, whose slow footsteps are approaching the stairway door? But, it isn’t these either.

On the ceiling, a slight crack. The dampness must have seeped through, forming a stain. Lying in bed, they gaze at it. It looks just like a face, old and fat with coarse lips. But, at a certain point, the edges oscillate, a tiny movement (their eyes had been momentarily carried to another point, and the stain thought it wasn’t being observed). As soon as they turn to stare at it, immediately it immobilizes. It seems to be the same one as before, and it isn’t. In the corner of its mouth, the ripple of a sneer is born. Perhaps they just have to blink their eyelids in order to make it move again. But, this isn’t it either.

“Giovanni,” she stammers, shaking herself. “Giovanni, my mother’s calling me.”

“Your mother? But, it isn’t your mother.”

“I heard it so clearly: ‘Maria, Maria.’ Do you think I can’t recognize her voice?”

“You were probably dreaming. Your mother’s far away. Try to sleep.”

“She was here. She was here, right at the side of the bed, calling me. Giovanni, I’m afraid.”

“It was a dream; nothing more. Sleep now, it’s late.”

“Her voice, I’m telling you, it’s still in my ears. She was all out of breath as if something had happened.”

The chimney over the bed must have too wide a mouth, or the patch of zinc didn’t fix it properly. If there’s just the slightest wind, the air floods it, and it groans; really, a lament that’s descending down through the wall. It resounds vaguely in the chimney; it seems to be breathing. But it isn’t this either.

And why are great-grandmother’s armchairs standing there in that position? They seem anxious and agitated. For whom are they waiting? Who will come and sit on them? Why were they all so sleepy during the day? They aren’t afraid to reveal themselves either. Here they are: one, two, three, four, even the broken-down chair at the end of the hallway. It’s dangerous to turn off the light. What will they do as soon as it’s dark? Who will come out from the corner? But it isn’t the armchairs either.

“There’s a horse, Giovanni,” she suddenly sits up in bed. “Do you hear it? Do you hear it?”

“What’s wrong with you tonight, Darling? Everything is peaceful.”

“But how can you not hear it? On the street, it’s here that it’s coming. God, how it’s running.”

Giovanni is silent, he too is listening now. Like someone galloping, galloping. And it seems to be coming closer and instead it’s still there, down the way.

“It’s not a horse, Maria. No one is riding at this hour. It’s the water in the cistern dripping on something. Sometimes we forget to turn it off.”

“Those really are hooves beating. Not the cistern, I tell you. What could be happening that it’s running so frantic?”

And whose footsteps are in the garden now? The gravel is crunching under unknown shoes. They hear a strange noise like a wet rag being dropped on a rock. Or, for reasons not clear, the birds are suddenly awakening, bustling among the branches, making chirping, suffocated noises. Or there’s a cat slipping from room to room, searching. Or a huge flaccid butterfly is seething, his flesh beating against the window panes. Or the subtle voice that comes and goes and could belong to a woodworm. Or the large spider that, after three days, has finally set off on a journey. Or the clothing on the hangers that look so much like hanged men. And then the infinite twitches of the woodwork, the impalpable echoes of things said, names, quarrels, laughs, ancient cries, which they thought had been buried by the years. And the silence that little by little—listening—transforms into a roar with indecipherable inner voices, laments, engines, debris of existences and mere fancy, baggage wagons, melodies, screams.

But it isn’t these either. And it isn’t even our regrets. And not even God. It is death that is coming. It set out some time ago for each of us, and on certain nights in old deserted houses, we hear it come.