Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle LenaStein, Gertrude
General
Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
Stein, Gertrude
Working class women -- Fiction
The eating room in all these houses is the living room in winter. It
has a round table in the centre covered with a decorated woolen cloth,
that has soaked in the grease of many dinners, for though it should be
always taken off, it is easier to spread the cloth upon it than change
it for the blanket deadener that one owns. The upholstered chairs are
dark and worn, and dirty. The carpet has grown dingy with the food
that's fallen from the table, the dirt that's scraped from off the
shoes, and the dust that settles with the ages. The sombre greenish
colored paper on the walls has been smoked a dismal dirty grey, and
all pervading is the smell of soup made out of onions and fat chunks
of meat.
The medium brought Mrs. Lehntman and our Anna into this eating room,
after she had found out what it was they wanted. They all three sat
around the table and then the medium went into her trance.
The medium first closed her eyes and then they opened very wide and
lifeless. She took a number of deep breaths, choked several times and
swallowed very hard. She waved her hand back every now and then, and
she began to speak in a monotonous slow, even tone.
"I see--I see--don't crowd so on me,--I see--I see--too many
forms--don't crowd so on me--I see--I see--you are thinking of
something--you don't know whether you want to do it now. I see--I
see--don't crowd so on me--I see--I see--you are not sure,--I see--I
see--a house with trees around it,--it is dark--it is evening--I
see--I see--you go in the house--I see--I see you come out--it will
be all right--you go and do it--do what you are not certain about--it
will come out all right--it is best and you should do it now."
She stopped, she made deep gulps, her eyes rolled back into her head,
she swallowed hard and then she was her former dingy and bland self
again.
"Did you get what you wanted that the spirit should tell you?" the
woman asked. Mrs. Lehntman answered yes, it was just what her
friend had wanted so bad to know. Anna was uneasy in this house with
superstition, with fear of her good priest, and with disgust at all
the dirt and grease, but she was most content for now she knew what it
was best for her to do.
Anna paid the woman for her work and then they came away.
"There Anna didn't I tell you how it would all be? You see the spirit
says so too. You must take the place with Miss Mathilda, that is what
I told you was the best thing for you to do. We go out and see her
where she lives to-night. Ain't you glad, Anna, that I took you to
this place, so you know now what you will do?"
Mrs. Lehntman and Anna went that evening to see Miss Mathilda. Miss
Mathilda was staying with a friend who lived in a house that did have
trees about. Miss Mathilda was not there herself to talk with Anna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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