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He shows his hands as bidden. Across each palm, and flecking the edges also of his bare soles, doily patterns of lesion and wart: the arsenic array. His hands outstretched toward the inspector, palms up, thumbs east and west, elbows extended from his deflated torso, his fingers cupped to receive whatever is freely given or falls from the sky, he doesn’t beg, he isn’t grateful, doesn’t wish or want, has no questions, gives from his poverty, can’t be helped. His cupped hands are as likely offering as asking. They seem empty, but in their lines they trace the journey of the king’s advisers to this desiccated village with its wells tapped deep into poison. The women are too weak to walk to clean water. The children wither inward from the fingertips and toes. In the land of flood and drought, too much water kills what too little water doesn’t. For the ancestors, pests that mutated in water that pooled when the floods receded took off the weak and weary. Longevity disfavored the thirsty. Then workers, sent by the king to tap the artesia, planted pumps within steps of the huts, so the villagers weaned themselves from the pools, and drank and bathed and boiled their grains with pump water whenever they wished. Now those wells are poison, too, and workers have painted the handles red but not dismantled the old pumps. Healthful water has been tapped a short walk away, to no avail. He denies the old well was better than the pond, and anyway wanting better is striving and striving is shameful. He was content to have no king, have no pump, to drink pond water, drink red water, or do without. If the well outside his door goes dry, he’ll cup his hands and accept the dew.
Original Copyright © 1997
Revised Copyright © February 15, 2026
They were torches to our matchsticks. They ate our city’s oxygen along with everything our celebrated bakers, butchers, and distillers prepared to order. Early in the occupation we glimpsed them at the opera, at better cafes, at the racetrack calculating odds. Their uniforms were tailored to broaden their shoulders and taper their waists; the sharp black bills of their caps reflected lustre. No one disputes this. Today the world squints back at the startling clarity of their eyes and calls it all arrogance and brutality, and we don’t deny it, but they spoke our language carefully, not well, but apologetically. You’ll say we were charmed. As more arrived in caravans or after long marches through the provinces, we saw them get out of cabs to help children down from streetcars. Elsewhere, our own terrorists bruised the land with dynamite, derailed trains and unbridged rivers, to the cheers of resisters in exile, but those of us who occupied these roofs and stones had a different sort of politics and bunkered down into the essentials. At brothels, they were favored for their generosity and scrupulous demeanor. For the ladies, and for themselves, they demanded intimate examinations. Ask a madame still alive and she’ll remember. We knew them already as cross-border neighbors and tourists. We understood, also, that the few thousand we hosted were the finest. They should have been as discerning about us. We had them where we wanted them. Memories of their home lives surrendered to the crisp linens, soft women, angular music of our raucous nightlife. After armistace, they resented going home. Partisans condemn us for bringing out our best while battles raged nearby, and we don’t dispute anything that happened. We only want to say it isn’t easy to live, and we too defeated them in our way.
Original Copyright © January 30, 2007
Revised Copyright © January 31, 2026
Very Short Novels 
This is a close relative of a Very Short Novel titled Short for Family from 20 years ago. The revisions…