（外文电子版资料）Sucharitkil, Somtow - The Fallen Country.docVIP

Scanned by gojukai From Tales of Fantasy, Elsewhere Vol. II Edited by Terri Windling Mark Alan Arnold The Fallen Country Somtow Sucharitkul He had blank, sky-blue eyes and confused blond hair. He had a wry, dry voice with just a lemon twist of longing in it He was small for his age, almost as though he had willed himself not to grow. As I dosed the door behind us, my hand brushed against his and he flinched away violently in the split second before willing himself to smile; from this I pegged him as a victim of child abuse. Hi, I said, answering him. My name is Dora Marx. 1 eased him into the brown, wombish chair that faced my desk. You may call me— I sat down myself, with the stuck-record-in-a-groove smoothness that comes from seeing a thousand children a year for twenty years, —either Dora, or Mrs. Marx. Whichever makes you feel more comfortable. I think I’d prefer Mrs. Marx,” he said. But. he added, You can call me Billy. Touche. He didnt look at me. I went to the window to slam out the eleven oclock yelling from the schoolyard. God damn it, they should never make you work under these condi- tions . . . I said, Youre the one who— They found at five in the morning, dinging to the steeple of Santa Marias. You read the papers? Sometimes, I said, flicking the dipping out of his file. BILLY BINDER. AGE 12— Whered you get that scar?” —like an albino earth- worm, wriggling into the sleeve of his teeshirt. Fell off my bike. Sure. —FOUND HALF-DEAD ON THE LEDGE, HIS ARMS AROUND THE STEEPLE ON THE SIDE OVERLOOK- ING ANGEL PLAZA. FATHER EPSTEIN, SUMMER- TIME PASTOR STANDING IN FOR FATHER SANTINI, WHILE TRYING TO RING THE BELL— It says here,” I said, that you were suffering from severe frostbite. Yes. From the snow. It doesnt snow in Florida in the middle of August— No point trying to argue with him yet. My job was to listen, only to listen. I wasnt trained to root out traumas. It wasnt up to me to pronounce the kid an attempted suicide either, or to solve the mystery of ho