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“It so happened that during those days, among so many other…

“It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The admission to see her was not only less…but people were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents’ house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth.”  

“She slipped into the booth beside me.  ‘I have to tell you…

“She slipped into the booth beside me.  ‘I have to tell you something…I made up my mind if I ever saw you again, I’d tell you… …Listen to me.  I really did think she was black.  I didn’t make that up.  I really thought so.  But now I can’t be sure.  I remember her as old, so old.  And because she couldn’t talk — well, you know, I thought she was crazy.  She’d been brought up in an institution like my mother was and like I thought I would be too.  And you were right.  We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls.  Only them.  But, well, I wanted to.  I really wanted them to hurt her.  I said we did it, too.  You and me, but that’s not true.  And I don’t want you to carry that around.  It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day — wanting to is doing it.'”