Read Online A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury - Free Book Online Page B

shoulders sagging, he walked into the store, his money held loosely in his hand.
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    â€œMaria!” He ran up the steps two at a time. It was nine o’clock at night and he had managed to beg off in the middle of his overtime at the lumberyard to rush home. He rushed through the open doorway, smiling.
    The apartment was empty.
    â€œAh,” he said disappointedly. He laid the receipt for the new bed on top of the bureau where Maria might see it when she entered. On those few evenings when he worked late she visited with any one of several neighbors downstairs.
    I’ll go find her, he thought, and stopped. No. I want to tell her alone. I’ll wait. He sat on the bed. “Old bed,” he said, “good-by to you. I am very sorry.” He patted the brass lions nervously. He paced the floor. Come on , Maria. He imagined her smile.
    He listened for her quick running on the stair, but he heard only a slow, measured tread. He thought: That’s not my Maria, slow like that, no.
    The doorknob turned.
    â€œMaria!”
    â€œYou’re early!” She smiled happily at him. Did she guess? Was it written on his face? “I’ve been downstairs,” she cried, “telling everyone!”
    â€œTelling everyone?”
    â€œThe doctor! I saw the doctor!”
    â€œThe doctor?” He looked bewildered. “And?”
    â€œAnd, Papa, and —”
    â€œDo you mean—Papa?”
    â€œPapa, Papa, Papa, Papa!”
    â€œOh,” he said, gently, “you walked so carefully on the stairs.”
    He took hold of her, but not too tight, and he kissed her cheeks, and he shut his eyes, and he yelled. Then he had to wake a few neighbors and tell them, shake them, tell them again. There had to be a little wine and a careful waltz around, an embracing, a trembling, a kissing of brow, eyelids, nose, lips, temples, ears, hair, chin—and then it was past midnight.
    â€œA miracle,” he sighed.
    They were alone in their room again, the air warm from the people who had been here a minute before, laughing, talking. But now they were alone again.
    Turning out the light, he saw the receipt on the bureau. Stunned, he tried to decide in what subtle and delicious way to break this additional news to her.
    Maria sat upon her side of the bed in the dark, hypnotized with wonder. She moved her hands as if her body was a strange doll, taken apart, and now to be put back together again, limb by limb, her motions as slow as if she lived beneath a warm sea at midnight. Now, at last, careful not to break herself, she lay back upon the pillow.
    â€œMaria, I have something to tell you.”
    â€œYes?” she said faintly.
    â€œNow that you are as you are.” He squeezed her hand. “You deserve the comfort, the rest, the beauty of a new bed.”
    She did not cry out happily or turn to him or seize him. Her silence was a thinking silence.
    He was forced to continue. “This bed is nothing but a pipe organ, a calliope.”
    â€œIt is a bed,” she said.
    â€œA herd of camels sleep under it.”
    â€œNo,” she said quietly, “from it will come precincts of honest voters, captains enough for three armies, two ballerinas, a famous lawyer, a very tall policeman, and seven basso profundos, altos, and sopranos.”
    He squinted across the dimly lighted room at the receipt upon the bureau. He touched the worn mattress under him. The springs moved softly to recognize each limb, each tired muscle, each aching bone.
    He sighed. “I never argue with you, little one.”
    â€œMama,” she said.
    â€œMama,” he said.
    And then as he closed his eyes and drew the covers to his chest and lay in the darkness by the great fountain, in the sight of a jury of fierce metal lions and amber goat and smiling gargoyles, he listened. And he heard it. It was very far away at first, very tentative, but it came clearer as he listened.
    Softly, her arm back over her