Free Black Light by Galway Kinnell

up.”
    â€œWell,” said Jamshid, “in the first dream I was working in my old shop—I used to be a rug-repairer—and I was looking at the sunlight on the floor beside me. I was knotting in the head of a bird—a white bird I think—when a shadow came across the embroidered curtain on the window. I got up and tore the curtain away. Instead of a window I found a dim room. In it sat a man covered from head to foot with wounds and running sores—he looked at me and said, ‘Jamshid! Jamshid!’ . . . there was more . . . I have forgotten it.” Jamshid turned to her. The widow was gazing gravely at him.
    â€œIt is a ‘woman’s dream’, let’s hope,” she said in her quiet voice. “One which means something deeper than what it says. Let’s hope it means that inside you will be well even if outside you are sick and hurt.” She spoke these words so that Jamshid understood she felt concern forhim. Until then she had seemed to live and move only by necessary impulses.
    As Jamshid drank his third glass of tea he remembered the police. Yet the sky had never been so blue and seldom had he felt so happy. Perhaps he would sit just awhile longer before turning himself in. He might as well get well rested up, in case the police should want to question him at great length.
    â€œDo you mind if I sit around awhile?” he said.
    â€œSit,” the woman said. “You were Ali’s friend and now you are my friend too.”
    He watched the widow as she went about her chores. He fell into daydreams of starting a new life. If only the police don’t hang me, he thought. Let them do anything, but not hang me. He wondered what a new life would be like. It could not be anything like the old one, he knew that.
    A knock came at the door. Jamshid saw the widow put her eye to the peephole, then come quickly toward him. He already knew what she had seen.
    She seized his hand, closed her eyes a moment, then said, “Come!”
    She took him into a dark room. “Wait, I will be back soon.” As she went out she accidentally brushed against him.

chapter fifteen chapter fifteen
    â€œM urdered as he merited, if I may say so,” an official-sounding voice was saying. “And with that dog’s son of a carpet-repairer’s big carpet shears sticking right out of his chest . . .”
    â€œQuarreling,” another voice was saying, “unless I’m much mistaken. The one was as evil-tempered as the other . . .”
    In the darkness Jamshid felt shock and anger. Would the widow believe that he himself had killed Ali?
    â€œA murderer the like of whom hasn’t been seen in this country for a generation . . .”
    â€œBloodthirsty as a lion. Cunning as a Zoroastrian. Strong as a strength-house champion. He had to be, to manage to kill, begging your pardon, that vicious old man . . .”
    The voices moved out of earshot. Nearly in tears of frustration and anger, Jamshid lay back on the bed to await the widow’s return. Would she betray him? But the minutes passed, and the police did not burst in. Or was she reserving the delights of revenge for herself? They would pay the thousand tomans for him dead just as well as for him alive.
    There was a sudden moment of light in the room, as the door opened and closed.
    â€œWidow,” Jamshid said, “is that you?”
    â€œIt is,” came back her expressionless voice.
    â€œWidow,” he said, “I beg you get a candle, I hate the darkness.”
    After a few minutes she returned with a sputtering candle. She came over to him holding it in both hands. As the flame wavered it made a dark flashing across her face.
    â€œListen,” Jamshid said, sitting up. “They lie. Ali was killed by five dog’s sons of Yazdis. I . . .” He stopped short. A look of anger had crossed the widow’s face.
    She put down the candle and took Jamshid’s hand. “I am angry