{ "part2_begins": "P083.L01", "scenes": [ { "id": "scn_01", "title": "The shadow bent on the wall", "span": "P001.L01–P006.L01", "part": 1, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "The narrator speaks of wounds that eat the soul in solitude, soothed only for a time by wine and opium. He resolves to write only for his shadow, bent on the wall before the lamp, which seems to swallow what he writes.", "visual": "The narrator writing by lamplight while his huge bent shadow leans over the page from the wall.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_02", "title": "A passing gleam; life within four walls", "span": "P007.L01–P011.L03", "part": 1, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He recalls a woman or angel who flashed through his life like a shooting star and vanished two months and four days ago. Since then he has withdrawn into his room, wine, opium and painting pen-case covers.", "visual": "A shooting star crossing a dark sky above a lone room where a man paints pen cases.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_03", "title": "The house among ruins and the pen-case motif", "span": "P012.L01–P013.L12", "part": 1, "kind": "reflection", "where": "house outside the city, beside ruins and a ditch; his room", "who": "narrator", "summary": "His isolated house stands among ruins at the edge of the city, like a house painted on old pen cases. Whatever he paints is always the same scene: a hunched old man under a cypress, finger to his lips, and a girl in black offering him a morning glory across a stream.", "visual": "The painted pen-case cover itself: cypress, squatting turbaned old man, girl in black holding out a morning glory across a stream.", "echoes": [], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_04", "title": "The uncle arrives on the thirteenth of Nowruz", "span": "P014.L01–P015.L11", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the uncle (hunchbacked old man)", "summary": "On Sizdah Bedar, while the city picnics outside, a hunchbacked man claiming to be his uncle enters and squats in the corner, a distorted mirror of the narrator. Looking for something to offer him, the narrator finds on a high shelf a flask of old wine made at his birth.", "visual": "A hunched old man in yellow cloak and Indian turban squatting in the corner while the narrator, lamp in hand, searches a dark closet.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_05", "title": "The vision through the vent", "span": "P015.L12–P019.L04", "part": 1, "kind": "vision", "where": "back closet of his room; open ground behind the house with cypress and stream", "who": "narrator; the old man; the ethereal girl", "summary": "Standing on a stool to reach the flask, he sees through the ventilation hole the very scene of his paintings: an old man under a cypress and a girl in black offering him a blue morning glory. Her bewitching eyes swallow his life; she tries to leap the stream and cannot, and the old man bursts into a dry, hollow laugh.", "visual": "Seen through a small square hole in a wall: the girl in black bending toward the old man beneath a cypress, a stream between them.", "echoes": [ "scn_03" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_06", "title": "A door ajar like a dead man's mouth", "span": "P020.L01–P023.L03", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He jumps down trembling with terror and pleasure, and when he returns the uncle is gone, leaving the door ajar like a dead person's mouth. He feels he has always known the girl, but the old man's laugh has torn the bond between them.", "visual": "An empty room at dusk with a smoking lamp and a door left gaping open.", "echoes": [ "scn_04" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_07", "title": "The vent sealed in lead", "span": "P024.L01–P024.L11", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "back closet of his room", "who": "narrator", "summary": "After two days of fear he goes to return the flask and finds no opening at all in the wall. He beats the wall with his fists by lamplight, but it has become a single mass of lead.", "visual": "A man on a stool pounding with his fists on a blank, dark wall by lamplight.", "echoes": [ "scn_05" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_08", "title": "Two months of searching at sunset", "span": "P025.L01–P028.L19", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "the waste ground around his house", "who": "narrator; a dog", "summary": "For two months and four days he circles the house every sunset like a decapitated chicken, seeking the cypress, the stream and the girl. He finds only refuse, hot sand, a horse's rib bone and a dog nosing in rubbish, and concludes she belongs to no earthly world.", "visual": "A lone figure kneeling in moonlight among rubbish heaps, a dog sniffing at a horse's rib bone.", "echoes": [ "scn_05" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_09", "title": "The black-clad figure on the doorstep", "span": "P029.L01–P031.L08", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "fog-bound street before his door; his room", "who": "narrator; the ethereal girl", "summary": "Returning from his last rainy walk in thick fog, he finds a woman in black seated on the platform at his door and recognizes her eyes by the flare of a match. She rises as if she knows the way, walks into his room and lies down on his bed like a sleepwalker.", "visual": "In dense fog, a match flaring in a man's fingers before a doorway where a woman in black sits on the step.", "echoes": [ "scn_05" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_10", "title": "Eyes like black diamond in tears", "span": "P032.L01–P036.L04", "part": 1, "kind": "vision", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the girl", "summary": "Silent before her, he sees the whole painful story of his life in her immense wet eyes and feels the earth tremble. Her eyelids slowly close; she lies biting the nail of her left forefinger, and he feels no bond with her at all.", "visual": "Close on the girl's face on the bed, enormous black eyes half closing, a finger at her lips.", "echoes": [ "scn_05" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_11", "title": "Wine through clenched teeth", "span": "P037.L01–P038.L06", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the girl", "summary": "Thinking she may be hungry, he again takes down the inherited flask from the high shelf. He pours a cup of wine between her clenched teeth as she sleeps like an exhausted child, and feels calm for the first time in his life.", "visual": "The narrator bending over the sleeping girl, tipping a cup of wine to her lips.", "echoes": [ "scn_04" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_12", "title": "Cold hair: the dead girl and the mandrake embrace", "span": "P039.L01–P042.L09", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the dead girl", "summary": "Touching her damp hair he finds it ice-cold; there is no heartbeat and no breath on the mirror. He undresses and lies against her like the male and female mandrake, trying to warm her, then faces a long night beside a corpse.", "visual": "Two bodies entwined on a narrow bed like mandrake roots, a hand mirror held near her lips.", "echoes": [ "scn_09" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_13", "title": "Communion with all beings", "span": "P043.L01–P044.L06", "part": 1, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the dead girl", "summary": "In the frozen night he feels joined to all nature and able to grasp the symbols of old paintings. He longs, as a mere pen-case painter, to draw her closed eyes and keep them.", "visual": "The room dissolving into threads that connect the narrator to stars, plants and shadows.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_14", "title": "Drawing the corpse by candlelight", "span": "P044.L07–P047.L03", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the dead girl", "summary": "He puts out the smoking lamp, sets two candles above her head and draws her face again and again. Until nearly morning he tears up every attempt.", "visual": "Two candles over a dead woman's head; the painter at her bedside, torn sheets around him.", "echoes": [ "scn_03" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_15", "title": "The eyes open at dawn", "span": "P048.L01–P049.L05", "part": 1, "kind": "vision", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the dead girl", "summary": "At first light he cannot capture her eyes, when suddenly her cheeks flush butcher-red and her reproachful eyes open and look at him, then close. He fixes their expression on paper, but up close she smells of decay, with worms on her body and two golden wasp-flies circling the candles.", "visual": "The corpse's eyes wide open in grey dawn light, the painter's brush frozen mid-stroke.", "echoes": [ "scn_10" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_16", "title": "The drawing in the tin box; night leaves on tiptoe", "span": "P050.L01–P051.L04", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "Possessing her eyes on paper, he no longer needs her body and hides the drawing in his tin money box in the back closet. Night withdraws, stars fade and a rooster crows far away.", "visual": "A drawing being laid in a tin box as pale dawn enters the window.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_17", "title": "The bone-handled knife and the suitcase", "span": "P052.L01–P053.L08", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the dead girl", "summary": "Determined that no stranger's eye should see her, he decides to cut up the body and bury it far away. With his bone-handled knife he tears off her black dress, severs head, hands and feet, packs them in his old suitcase and covers them with the dress.", "visual": "The narrator kneeling with a bone-handled knife beside an open suitcase, the black dress draped over its contents.", "echoes": [], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_18", "title": "The old man under the cypress offers his hearse", "span": "P054.L01–P055.L03", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "misty ground near his house, under a cypress", "who": "narrator; the hunchbacked old man (hearse driver)", "summary": "In light rain he goes out for a porter and finds a hunchbacked old man in a scarf seated under a cypress. With a two-toned laugh the old man offers his hearse and coffins and says he already knows the house.", "visual": "In rain and mist, a scarf-wrapped hunchback squatting under a cypress, laughing, as the narrator approaches.", "echoes": [ "scn_05", "scn_04" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_19", "title": "The hearse through the geometric country", "span": "P056.L01–P060.L13", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "road out of the city; jagged mountains; geometric houses; enclosure at 'Shah Abdol-Azim'", "who": "narrator; the old hearse driver", "summary": "Lying in the coffin space with the suitcase on his chest, he rides a dilapidated hearse drawn by two skeletal black horses with ringing bells. They pass jagged mountains, crooked trees and windowless prism and cube houses wreathed in morning glories, and stop at a secluded enclosure covered with blue morning glory.", "visual": "A rickety black hearse with two skeletal horses crossing a misty landscape of geometric houses, a man lying inside clutching a suitcase.", "echoes": [], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_20", "title": "The grave by the dry river; the Ragha jar", "span": "P061.L01–P064.L04", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "enclosure by a dry river and a cypress", "who": "narrator; the old hearse driver", "summary": "The old man refuses his two qerans and an abbasi and nimbly digs a hole exactly the size of the suitcase beside the cypress. In digging he unearths a glazed Ragha jar, takes it as his wages, and vanishes into the mist on his hearse.", "visual": "The hunchback digging beside a cypress and a dry riverbed, lifting a glazed jar from the earth.", "echoes": [ "scn_03" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_21", "title": "One last look into the suitcase", "span": "P065.L01–P066.L09", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "secluded enclosure among hills, ancient mud-brick ruins", "who": "narrator", "summary": "Alone, he opens the suitcase once more and among clotted blood and worms sees her two large black eyes staring at him. He buries it, plants scentless blue morning glories over it and scatters gravel until even he cannot find the grave.", "visual": "Two black eyes gazing up from a suitcase of blood and black cloth; then a grave covered with blue morning glories.", "echoes": [ "scn_15" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_22", "title": "The spreading bloodstain", "span": "P067.L01–P068.L05", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "the enclosure; the road at dusk", "who": "narrator", "summary": "His clothes are torn and caked with blood, wasp-flies circle him and worms cling to him; rubbing the stain only spreads it over his body. He follows the hearse's wheel tracks until darkness erases them.", "visual": "A man in bloodied clothes rubbing at a stain while two golden flies circle him at sunset.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_23", "title": "Gift of the jar in the cemetery", "span": "P069.L01–P073.L05", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "a roadside cemetery at night", "who": "narrator; the old man (gravedigger)", "summary": "Exhausted, he sits on a gravestone until a dry laugh wakes him: the scarf-wrapped old man, now a gravedigger, sits beside him with a bundle. He gives the narrator the Ragha jar as a keepsake, refuses payment and takes him home in his hearse.", "visual": "Night cemetery: a hunched figure on a gravestone holding out a jar wrapped in a handkerchief.", "echoes": [ "scn_18", "scn_20" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_24", "title": "Night ride home with the jar on his chest", "span": "P074.L01–P074.L10", "part": 1, "kind": "action", "where": "the road back in darkness", "who": "narrator; the old hearse driver", "summary": "Lying in the coffin space, he feels the jar weigh on his chest like a dead body while stars look down like eyes in clotted blood. Crooked trees seem to hold hands and he feels he has spent his whole life carried in a coffin by a faceless hunchback.", "visual": "Night road: twisted trees joining branches, the hearse passing faintly glowing geometric houses.", "echoes": [ "scn_19" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_25", "title": "Her face on the jar", "span": "P075.L01–P076.L06", "part": 1, "kind": "vision", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "The driver vanishes before he can pay him; by lamplight the narrator wipes the jar and finds, inside a border of blue morning glories, the painted face of the woman with her accusing eyes. He compares it with his drawing: they are identical, as if by the same wretched pen-case painter.", "visual": "The violet-glazed jar beside the paper drawing, the same woman's face with great black eyes on both.", "echoes": [ "scn_15", "scn_20" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_26", "title": "The ancient fellow-sufferer", "span": "P077.L01–P079.L05", "part": 1, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "Two pairs of the buried woman's eyes now stare at him, unbearable. Yet he takes comfort in an ancient painter of Ray who burned in the same black eyes thousands of years before.", "visual": "A ghostly ancient painter at work in ruined mud-brick Ray, mirroring the narrator.", "echoes": [ "scn_25" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_27", "title": "Opium before the two portraits; the fall down the well", "span": "P080.L01–P082.L07", "part": 1, "kind": "dream", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He sets the drawing beside the jar, lights his brazier and smokes all his remaining opium. His life runs backward into childhood, he hangs from a hook in a dark well, falls endlessly and wakes in a small room.", "visual": "A man before a glowing brazier and the two portraits, his body dissolving into smoke and a falling shaft of darkness.", "echoes": [ "scn_25" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_28", "title": "Waking in the ancient room with bloody hands", "span": "P083.L01–P084.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "a small room in ancient Ray (his room in Part 2)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He wakes in a world more familiar than his former life, a tallow lamp on the shelf, his cloak and scarf spotted with blood. Expecting the police chief, with poisoned wine waiting on the shelf, he draws the lamp toward him and begins to write.", "visual": "Twilight in a small room: a bloody-handed man drawing a tallow lamp toward a sheet of paper.", "echoes": [ "scn_01" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_29", "title": "Wine of my life for the shadow's throat", "span": "P085.L01–P093.L07", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; his shadow", "summary": "He will press his life like grapes and drip its bitter wine into the dry throat of his bent shadow. Yesterday a sick young man, today he is a white-haired hunchback with a harelip, unsure whether he sits in Nishapur, Balkh or Benares.", "visual": "A bunch of grapes squeezed above the open mouth of a shadow on the wall.", "echoes": [ "scn_01" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_30", "title": "A room like a tomb; two windows on Ray", "span": "P094.L01–P096.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "His whitewashed room is like a tomb, with a cradle nail in the wall and stale smells seeping from behind a loose board. Two small windows open on the courtyard and the alley of Ray, and a mirror shows him his face.", "visual": "Cross-section of a cramped tomb-like room with a nail, a mirror and two tiny windows onto a sprawling city.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_31", "title": "The butcher and the black packhorses", "span": "P097.L01–P097.L14", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "butcher's shop opposite his window", "who": "narrator (watching); the butcher; packhorses; a yellow dog", "summary": "Each morning two coughing black packhorses bring sheep carcasses to the butcher, who strokes his henna beard and hangs them on hooks. With a bone-handled knife he cuts them up with evident pleasure while a yellow dog watches.", "visual": "Through a small window: the butcher hanging carcasses on hooks as two lean black packhorses wait and a yellow dog looks on.", "echoes": [ "scn_17", "scn_19" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_32", "title": "The old junk dealer under the arch", "span": "P098.L01–P099.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "beneath an arch opposite his window", "who": "narrator (watching); the old junk dealer", "summary": "Under an arch sits an old peddler with a dirty scarf, inflamed eyelids and a cloth of junk: sickle, horseshoes, knife, small spade and a glazed jar under a checked handkerchief. The nurse says he was a potter who kept only that one jar.", "visual": "A hunched old man under an arch behind a cloth of rusty objects, a jar covered by a checked handkerchief.", "echoes": [ "scn_04", "scn_18", "scn_23" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_33", "title": "Naneh-Joon, the aunt, and the twin brothers", "span": "P100.L01–P101.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the family house; India", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon; his wife; the aunt; father and uncle", "summary": "Only his nurse Naneh-Joon and his harlot wife, his milk-sister raised by his aunt, remain to him. Naneh-Joon tells him his father and uncle were identical twins who traded goods from Ray, pen-case covers among them, in India.", "visual": "Two identical young merchants with bales of cloth and pen cases setting out for India.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_34", "title": "The Bogam-dasi of the Lingam temple", "span": "P101.L07–P101.L19", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "Lingam temple, Benares", "who": "the father; the Bogam-dasi (mother); musicians", "summary": "In Benares his father falls for a temple dancing girl with slanting eyes, joined brows and a red forehead mark. Bewitched by her dance and scent, he adopts her religion, and she is expelled from the temple when pregnant.", "visual": "A temple dancer in a silk sari, bangles at wrists and ankles, dancing before a Lingam to turbaned musicians.", "echoes": [ "scn_05" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_35", "title": "The cobra ordeal", "span": "P102.L01–P104.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "Benares; a dark dungeon-like room", "who": "the father; the uncle; the Bogam-dasi; a snake charmer; a cobra", "summary": "When the uncle seduces the dancer by impersonating his twin, she demands the brothers be shut in a dark room with a cobra, the survivor to have her. She dances a last time like a cobra; a mad laugh rises from the room, and one brother emerges with white hair, his identity forever unknown.", "visual": "Torchlight: the dancer twisting like a cobra before a dungeon door while a snake charmer plays his pipe.", "echoes": [ "scn_05", "scn_34" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_36", "title": "The poisoned wine left as keepsake", "span": "P105.L01–P107.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "Ray; an imagined square in India", "who": "the narrator as infant; father/uncle; the aunt; the Bogam-dasi", "summary": "The surviving brother brings the infant to Ray and leaves him with his aunt, along with a flask of purple wine dissolved with cobra venom. He imagines his mother still dancing like a snake in an Indian square before a white-haired hunchback.", "visual": "A flask of purple wine handed over at parting; inset, a dancer encircled by a crowd by torchlight.", "echoes": [ "scn_04", "scn_11" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_37", "title": "At the bier of the aunt", "span": "P108.L01–P108.L18", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the dead aunt's room", "who": "narrator; the dead aunt; the future wife; her father (hunchbacked, scarfed)", "summary": "At night he visits his dead aunt, lit by two camphor candles with a Quran on her belly. Her daughter enters and kisses him passionately before the corpse until her hunchbacked father parts the curtain and laughs his dry, hair-raising laugh.", "visual": "Two candles over a shrouded corpse; a young couple embracing beside it as a hunched man laughs at the curtain.", "echoes": [ "scn_14", "scn_05" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_38", "title": "The wedding night and the floor", "span": "P109.L01–P110.L10", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the marriage chamber", "who": "narrator; his wife", "summary": "Forced to marry the non-virgin girl, he is refused on the wedding night and sleeps on the floor for two months and four days while a pigeon-blood handkerchief fools the household. One night he tries to force her; she leaves, and he sleeps happily in her warm bed.", "visual": "A man curled on the floor across a dark room from a trembling bride.", "echoes": [ "scn_08" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_39", "title": "Procurer of her lovers", "span": "P111.L01–P113.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the house; the streets of Ray", "who": "narrator; his wife; her lovers; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "He courts and brings to her the lovers she prefers: tripe seller, jurist, chief constable, well digger, philosopher. Humiliated and degraded, he becomes a moving corpse while neighbours pity his wife for her mad husband.", "visual": "A line of rough men at a door, the narrator bowing them in.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_40", "title": "The physician of the rabble", "span": "P114.L01–P115.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the family physician; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "Wasting with butcher-red cheeks, he welcomes the dust of death in his eyes. The turbaned physician with a beard three fistfuls long takes his pulse and prescribes donkey's milk and absurd decoctions.", "visual": "A long-bearded physician in a white turban taking the pulse of a flushed, gaunt man in bed.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_41", "title": "Nurse's tales and the cradle for two", "span": "P116.L01–P118.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "At his bedside Naneh-Joon tells how his wife bit her left fingernail even in the cradle, the large cradle they shared. Her stories carry him back to childhood and convince him life itself is a foolish tale.", "visual": "An old nurse at a bedside; behind her, a ghostly double cradle with two infants.", "echoes": [ "scn_10" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_42", "title": "A cool hand in the dark", "span": "P119.L01–P121.L07", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; his wife (unseen)", "summary": "Near dawn, coughing like the packhorses and feeling himself a child in the cradle, he senses someone beside him and a cool hand on his burning forehead. The nurse later says his wife cradled his head and rocked him like a child.", "visual": "Total darkness pierced only by a pale hand resting on a feverish brow.", "echoes": [ "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_43", "title": "The tomb-room and the harlot's name", "span": "P122.L01–P128.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "Bedridden for two years and four months, he explores an inner world of half-dreams and feels himself decomposing alive. He explains why he calls his wife 'harlot' and resolves, like a mangy dog, to go off and lose himself.", "visual": "A man in bed whose limbs seem to drift apart amid floating images.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_44", "title": "Flight through the geometric lanes", "span": "P129.L01–P132.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "lanes of Ray; city gate; sun-scorched plain", "who": "narrator; the rabble", "summary": "At dawn he slips out with two cookies, passes the greedy rabble and walks deserted lanes of cube, prism and cone houses out through the gate. The plain's smell revives his childhood, but his former self is a stranger to him.", "visual": "A lone figure walking between blank geometric houses under a blazing sun.", "echoes": [ "scn_19" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_45", "title": "By the Soren stream", "span": "P133.L01–P136.L04", "part": 2, "kind": "vision", "where": "the Soren stream; enclosure of blue morning glories beneath a mud-brick fortress", "who": "narrator; a little girl in black; (in memory) the wife as a child, his mother-in-law", "summary": "Resting under an old cypress by the Soren stream, he sees a girl in black biting her left fingernail glide toward the fortress and vanish. He recalls a childhood Sizdah Bedar game of hide-and-seek here, when the harlot fell into the stream and he spied her body behind a cypress.", "visual": "Under an old cypress by a stream, a man in the sand watching a girl in black glide toward a hilltop fortress.", "echoes": [ "scn_05", "scn_20", "scn_09" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_46", "title": "Cookies and a bitter kiss on the platform", "span": "P137.L01–P139.L04", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "the platform before his father-in-law's house", "who": "narrator; his little brother-in-law; the father-in-law (hunchbacked old man)", "summary": "He drifts back to the city to his father-in-law's house, where his wife's little brother, her very image, sits with a finger in his mouth. He gives the boy the cookies, kisses his cucumber-bitter lips, and the hunchbacked father passes laughing without looking.", "visual": "A man on a doorstep holding a slant-eyed boy in his lap as a hunchbacked figure walks past laughing.", "echoes": [ "scn_12", "scn_37" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_47", "title": "The headless shadow", "span": "P139.L05–P141.L10", "part": 2, "kind": "vision", "where": "moonlit streets of geometric houses; his room", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "Walking home at dusk past white geometric houses, he sees his shadow cast in moonlight without a head, an omen of death within the year. Home, his nose bleeds, he faints, and in bed he murmurs, 'Death... where are you?'", "visual": "A man before a pale wall where his moonlit shadow has no head.", "echoes": [ "scn_44" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_48", "title": "The gallows at Mohammadiyeh", "span": "P142.L01–P142.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "dream", "where": "Mohammadiyeh square", "who": "narrator; the old junk dealer; drunken police; mother-in-law; the executioner", "summary": "He dreams the old junk dealer hanging on a tall gallows while drunken police drink below. His mother-in-law drags him through the crowd to the red-clad executioner, saying 'Hang this one too.'", "visual": "A gallows in a crowded square with the junk dealer hanging, a woman pointing out the narrator to an executioner in red.", "echoes": [ "scn_32" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_49", "title": "The water jar breaks; morning", "span": "P143.L01–P145.L07", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "Sleepless, his hand strikes the water jar on the shelf and it shatters. Dawn brings the nurse with bread and cheese, her face elongated as in a distorting mirror, and her hookah and family gossip.", "visual": "A shattered water jar on the floor and a trembling patch of reflected sunlight on the ceiling.", "echoes": [ "scn_25" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_50", "title": "The embroidered curtain above the korsi", "span": "P146.L01–P147.L16", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "his room in winter, around the korsi", "who": "narrator (as child); Naneh-Joon; his wife (as child)", "summary": "He remembers sleeping around the korsi with the nurse and the harlot, when the gold-embroidered curtain seemed to come alive. On it a turbaned old man under a cypress plays a setar while a temple dancer with chained hands is forced to dance.", "visual": "A child's view of an Indian curtain: old man with a setar under a cypress, chained dancer before him.", "echoes": [ "scn_03", "scn_05", "scn_35" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_51", "title": "The overturned soup; opium prescribed", "span": "P148.L01–P150.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon; the household; his wife; the physician", "summary": "He knocks the soup bowl from beneath and screams until the household gathers; his wife passes by, visibly pregnant. The physician prescribes opium, which lifts him on golden moth wings into a shining void.", "visual": "Household faces crowding a doorway over a spilled bowl; a pregnant woman passing behind them.", "echoes": [ "scn_27" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_52", "title": "The nurse in the courtyard; prayers against death", "span": "P151.L01–P154.L04", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "his room; the courtyard", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon; her daughter-in-law", "summary": "Through the window he hears the nurse say God should kill him and give him rest, then smile at him with red eyes. He recalls her breasts, her potions and omens, and finds religion useless before the fear of death.", "visual": "The nurse cleaning vegetables in the sunlit courtyard, seen from a dark window.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_53", "title": "Night window: call to prayer and drunken watchmen", "span": "P155.L01–P157.L01", "part": 2, "kind": "vision", "where": "his window; the alley", "who": "narrator; drunken watchmen", "summary": "At nightfall he sees a dry black tree and the shuttered butcher's shop; an untimely call to prayer suggests a woman, perhaps his wife, in labor. Drunken watchmen pass singing, 'Come, let us drink the wine of Ray.'", "visual": "A star-pricked tar-black sky over a dead tree and shuttered shop as watchmen stagger by below.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_54", "title": "The figure behind the curtain; the mirror", "span": "P158.L01–P160.L03", "part": 2, "kind": "vision", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; a shadow-double", "summary": "In the dark a motionless figure by the curtain stares at him, a face first seen at the Soren stream that resembles the butcher. When he lights the lamp it vanishes, and in the mirror his reflection has grown stronger than he.", "visual": "A dark room with a shapeless seated figure by a curtain, and a man before a mirror with his hand over his eyes.", "echoes": [ "scn_31", "scn_45" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_55", "title": "Dream city of the stiffened dead", "span": "P161.L01–P163.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "dream", "where": "an unknown city of geometric houses; a butcher's shop; his father-in-law's door", "who": "narrator; a butcher-junk-dealer figure; the brother-in-law", "summary": "He dreams of a morning-glory-wreathed city whose people stand stiffened with blood at their mouths, and every head he touches falls off. A man like the junk dealer holding a knife loses his head, and so does his brother-in-law when offered cookies.", "visual": "A street of geometric houses with frozen figures, a severed head rolling from a knife-holding man.", "echoes": [ "scn_19", "scn_46", "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_56", "title": "The butcher seen from upstairs", "span": "P164.L01–P164.L08", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "upstairs room by the sash window", "who": "narrator; the butcher; packhorses", "summary": "Breakfasting upstairs, he sees the butcher from above as ridiculous, a man merely acting the part. The packhorses deliver carcasses again and the butcher strokes the sheep's thighs.", "visual": "High angle from a sash window down onto the butcher fondling a carcass.", "echoes": [ "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_57", "title": "The knife under the pillow", "span": "P165.L01–P165.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He takes the bone-handled knife from its box in the back closet, wipes the blade and puts it under his pillow, wanting to imitate the butcher. With death at his throat he resolves to take the harlot with him.", "visual": "A bone-handled knife slipped beneath a pillow under a sky of yellow death-laden clouds.", "echoes": [ "scn_17" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_58", "title": "A coffin passes the window", "span": "P166.L01–P166.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "the alley outside his window", "who": "narrator; mourners; the butcher; the old junk dealer; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "A coffin draped in black with a candle on top passes; shopkeepers and the butcher walk seven steps after it, but the junk dealer does not move. The nurse, frowning, prays loudly at his door.", "visual": "A black-draped coffin with a burning candle passing a window, the old peddler motionless at his cloth.", "echoes": [ "scn_19" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_59", "title": "The room a coffin: death, fears and masks", "span": "P167.L01–P175.L04", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "His room feels like a shrinking coffin, and he broods on death, decomposition and the particles of his body mingling with the rabble. Childhood fears return in a flood, and he reflects on life's masks and the madman once chained in this room.", "visual": "Pillow feathers turning to blades and a bed becoming a gravestone in a nightmare montage.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_60", "title": "Shadow on the bathhouse wall", "span": "P176.L01–P177.L03", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the bathhouse", "who": "narrator; bath attendant; other bathers", "summary": "In the bathhouse his thin shadow on the sweating wall is the same as in childhood, quickly erased while others' shadows fall dark and heavy. Dressing again, he feels reborn into the world he hates.", "visual": "A thin shadow on a steamy bathhouse wall beside thick-necked bathers.", "echoes": [ "scn_01" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_61", "title": "The picture on the pen case before him", "span": "P178.L01–P178.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "The pen case beside which he writes bears the same mad painting: hunched yogi under a cypress, finger to his mouth. Opposite, a girl in black, perhaps a Bogam-dasi, dances with a morning glory across a stream.", "visual": "The writing pen case in close-up with the familiar cypress, old man, dancer and stream.", "echoes": [ "scn_03", "scn_50" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_62", "title": "Talking to the mirror under opium", "span": "P179.L01–P180.L10", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "Dozing by the brazier in his cloak, he realizes he sits exactly like the junk dealer and rushes to the mirror, where he urges himself to drink the poisoned wine. Turning, he finds the nurse in the doorway and bursts into laughter; she takes the brazier away.", "visual": "A flushed man addressing his reflection while an old nurse stands silent in the doorway.", "echoes": [ "scn_32" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_63", "title": "Nurse's tale: 'Undo your neck-scarf'", "span": "P181.L01–P182.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon; (reported) his wife and the junk dealer", "summary": "Before a crisis he fears everyone, the junk dealer and the butcher included. The nurse swears she saw the junk dealer enter his wife's room at night and heard her say, 'Undo your neck-scarf!', and he has seen tooth marks on her cheek.", "visual": "The nurse whispering at his bedside; behind a door, the silhouette of a scarfed hunchback.", "echoes": [ "scn_32" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_64", "title": "Buying the jar from the junk dealer", "span": "P183.L01–P183.L06", "part": 2, "kind": "memory", "where": "the junk dealer's cloth under the arch", "who": "narrator; the old junk dealer", "summary": "He went to the old man's stall and asked the price of the jar; the old man laughed through his harelip and said, 'It is not worthy of you; may you see its good.' He paid and fled in shame from the dead, rusty objects.", "visual": "Coins laid on the corner of a cloth before the laughing peddler and his wrapped jar.", "echoes": [ "scn_23", "scn_32" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_65", "title": "Lice, the bathhouse, the demigod of rags", "span": "P184.L01–P186.L03", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "The nurse spreads word that his wife has lice from a filthy beggar. He half-approves her taste, seeing the old man as a demigod of misery, and still loves the woman who has never let him kiss her lips.", "visual": "The junk dealer enthroned among his rags like an icon.", "echoes": [ "scn_32" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_66", "title": "The harlot enters in all seven cosmetics", "span": "P187.L01–P188.L05", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; his wife", "summary": "Amid kettledrums and fever, his wife comes in plump, made up and in a patterned tunic, her finger at her lips. He sees her suddenly as lean meat, no longer the ethereal girl of the Soren stream; he answers her mocking 'How are you?' harshly and she slams the door.", "visual": "A painted, plump woman in a doorway, finger to her mouth, looking down at a fevered man.", "echoes": [ "scn_45", "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_67", "title": "Weeping at her feet; soot like black snow", "span": "P189.L01–P189.L12", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; his wife", "summary": "She returns; he kisses the hem of her dress and weeps at her feet, calling her real name aloud and 'harlot' in his heart. When he comes to, she is gone, and he sits motionless as soot from the lamp falls on him like black snow.", "visual": "A man prostrate at a woman's feet; then alone beneath a smoking lamp, soot settling on him.", "echoes": [], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_68", "title": "Masks of soot in the mirror", "span": "P189.L13–P189.L30", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "The nurse screams and drops the supper tray at his blackened face; he rubs on more soot and makes faces in the mirror, finding the reciter, the butcher and his wife within himself. He bursts into the old man's laugh, coughs bloody phlegm onto the mirror and hides behind the closet curtain.", "visual": "A soot-blackened face distorted in a mirror smeared with blood, a terrified nurse behind him.", "echoes": [ "scn_32", "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_69", "title": "Ring of fire; poisoned wine for two", "span": "P190.L01–P194.L04", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; drunken watchmen", "summary": "Burning with desire for his wife's body, he wakes to the watchmen's song and remembers the cobra-venom wine. He dreams of sharing it with the harlot and dying together, and fixates on the butcher's knife.", "visual": "A ring of fire around a sleeper's head and a flask of purple wine on a shelf.", "echoes": [ "scn_36", "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_70", "title": "The first night with the knife; the stolen shirt", "span": "P195.L01–P195.L25", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "his room; his wife's dark room", "who": "narrator (disguised as the old man); his wife; an unseen laugher", "summary": "With the knife, a yellow cloak and a scarf he becomes butcher and junk dealer at once and creeps to her room, where she murmurs, 'Undo your neck-scarf!' A sneeze and mocking laugh outside stop him; he flees with her silk shirt, flings the knife onto the roof and sleeps with the shirt between his legs.", "visual": "A hunched figure in yellow cloak and scarf with a bone-handled knife bending over a sleeping woman in the dark.", "echoes": [ "scn_17", "scn_32" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_71", "title": "The knife returns from the junk dealer's cloth", "span": "P196.L01–P197.L02", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; Naneh-Joon", "summary": "At breakfast the nurse brings a bone-handled knife she bought among the junk dealer's wares; it is his own. She reports the stolen shirt, his wife's lost pregnancy and the bruises, and he laughs that the child must resemble the old reciter.", "visual": "A bone-handled knife lying on a breakfast tray beside bread and milk.", "echoes": [ "scn_17", "scn_57", "scn_70" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_72", "title": "'How does a person die?'", "span": "P198.L01–P198.L19", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; the brother-in-law", "summary": "The boy, his sister's image, says the physician predicted his death and asks how a person dies. He laughs the old man's laugh, the boy runs off, and he understands the butcher's pleasure in cutting flesh.", "visual": "A slant-eyed boy biting his nail in a doorway; beyond the window, sheep heads staring with dead eyes.", "echoes": [ "scn_46", "scn_31" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_73", "title": "Eternity by the Soren stream", "span": "P199.L01–P201.L03", "part": 2, "kind": "reflection", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "He feels himself a demigod beyond human needs. Eternity for him is hide-and-seek by the Soren stream with the harlot and hiding his head in her lap.", "visual": "A child laying his head in a girl's lap beside a stream.", "echoes": [ "scn_45" ], "tier": "optional" }, { "id": "scn_74", "title": "The owl on the wall", "span": "P202.L01–P204.L03", "part": 2, "kind": "vision", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator; his shadow", "summary": "Wrapped in fur coat, cloak and scarf before the smoking lamp, he casts a hunched shadow more real than himself, and all the others seem his shadows. The shadow becomes an owl that bends over and reads what he writes while death softly sings.", "visual": "A hunched writer before a smoking lamp, his shadow on the wall an enormous owl reading over his shoulder.", "echoes": [ "scn_01", "scn_29" ], "tier": "strong" }, { "id": "scn_75", "title": "'Undo your neck-scarf': the last embrace", "span": "P205.L01–P207.L25", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "his wife's dark room", "who": "narrator (disguised as the old man); his wife", "summary": "At the watchmen's song he dons cloak and scarf, takes the knife and creeps to her room, where she says, 'Have you come? Undo your neck-scarf!' He undresses and takes her, knife still in hand; she bites his lip in two, and in the struggle the knife enters her and she lies dead.", "visual": "Darkness, two entwined bodies like mandrake roots, a glint of a bone-handled knife.", "echoes": [ "scn_12", "scn_17", "scn_70" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_76", "title": "Her eye in his fist; the old man in the mirror", "span": "P208.L01–P209.L09", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "room (house outside the city)", "who": "narrator", "summary": "Coughing the old man's dry laugh, he returns to his room and by lamplight opens his fist to find her eye, his body drenched in blood. In the mirror he has become the old junk dealer, white-haired and harelipped, and laughs an empty laugh.", "visual": "A white-haired, split-lipped face in a mirror behind a bloody open palm holding an eye.", "echoes": [ "scn_35", "scn_32", "scn_05" ], "tier": "core" }, { "id": "scn_77", "title": "The old man vanishes into the mist with the jar", "span": "P210.L01–P211.L13", "part": 2, "kind": "action", "where": "his room; the alley in mist", "who": "narrator; the hunchbacked old man", "summary": "He wakes as if from long sleep in his former room at dawn with a rooster crowing, and the Ragha jar is gone. A laughing hunchback with a wrapped jar slips out the door and down the misty alley, leaving him bloody, crawling with worms and wasp-flies, a dead weight on his chest.", "visual": "From a window, a hunched old man with a wrapped jar disappearing into the alley mist.", "echoes": [ "scn_18", "scn_22", "scn_23", "scn_64" ], "tier": "core" } ] }