Someone who has never stolen is not going to under-stand me. And someone who has never stolen roses will never be able to understand me. When I was little, I stole roses.

My wife, my daughter, and I live on the bluff overlooking the river. The river is wide, and it is swarming with crocodiles and hippos. Courtesy of our unique ecosystem, they have developed a taste for each other’s flesh, and some days the banks are thick with pink froth. Sometimes the crocodiles are up, sometimes the hippos. It’s your standard vicious cycle.

“The children made chase, but the dog was too fast for them, cutting a jagged path through several of the older girls and boys who tried to intercept it at the corner. Zheng waited with Chen Wei, 

His story, as the story of every one of us, started long before we were born. For dynasties, our town provided the imperial families their most reliable servants. Eunuchs they are called, though out of 

April comes and April goes, and May, and June, all passing by without shedding a drop of rain. The sky has been a blue desert since spring. The sun rises every morning, a bright white disk growing 

“Muss es sein?” I asked. “Shall the clouds return after the rain?”

Mrs. Willoughby woke, because of an insinuating pressure on her thigh. Hearing her stir on the other side of the thin wall that separated her room from mine, I went to her. 

It was the day of the boat races, and Stanley Marvel and his friend Rolly were there, sitting on a grassy bank overlooking the river. The river was brown. On it sped the thin bright shells of the rowing teams.

Down at the asylum, the best-behaved patients were out walking around loose, roaming the grounds in their bathrobes and pajamas or sitting on benches staring at the road.

The light that dripped through the Venetian blinds was so inviting that the doctor, waking up, wanted to lick it like caramel syrup. He slid away from the sheets, lowered his naked feet onto the rug