Short Story: Season 2
The Last Leaf's
The Last Leaf's
O. HENRY
...****************...
[Last Shelter]
O. Henry
The streets in the western district of Washington Square form strange nooks and twists. The artists had thronged the places around there and formed their own colonies. Sue and Johnsy also filled the venue and opened their own art studio in one of the large buildings. ‘Johnsy’ is a nickname of Joanna. She is from Maine, and Sue is from California. In May, they met at a banquet for artists. After talking for a long time, they realized that they had the same taste in art, so the idea came up to open a joint studio.
It's November now. An invisible alien creature, called Pneumonia by local doctors, touches one by one in the colony with its ice-cold hands. In the eastern region, this savage beast stepped up decisively and hit its victims very hard.
Mr. Pneumonia is not a knightly old man. A woman of small stature was also in her prey. Johnsie is not an exception either. He was helplessly lying on his bed. He could only look at the brick wall in front of their building through the window frame.
In the morning, a doctor came to check on her health. When she was done, she talked to Sue outside the room so that she wouldn't be heard by Johnsy.
“The chance to heal may be only one appeal... ten,” said the doctor while shaking the thermometer. “And that chance only exists if he wants to stay alive. This is one of the things that makes no sense in the paramedic world. Sometimes even a dying patient can make a full recovery if he still thinks optimistically. And your friend seems to have been very confident that he will not be cured. Is there something he's thinking?”
“She... she wants to paint the Bay of Naples.” Answer Sue.
“Painting? Geez! Is there nothing else he can think of? Men for example?”
“Leaki?” sue sahut with a voice like a fake harp melody. “Do men deserve to be in. but, no, doctor. He doesn't think of things like that.”
“It's a pity then,” said the doctor. “I will try my best and do all the things that can be done scientifically. However, once my patient started to count the number of people who would come to his funeral, I would reduce 50 percent of my medical healing power. If you can make him ask about the new style of jacket for winter, then his chance of recovery can be one in five.”
After the doctor left, Sue went into her painting room and cried sobbing that she made a tangle of her Japanese-made napkin. Then he walked with definite steps towards Johnsy's room whistling and carrying a painting board.
Johnsy was lying on his bed with his face facing the window. Sue stopped whistling. He thinks Johnsy is sleeping.
He drew up his boards and began painting for story illustrations in a magazine. Young artists must tread the path to art by painting pictures for magazine stories written by young writers who tread the path to literature.
As Sue was drawing a sketch of an Idaho cowboy wearing long leather pants and glasses, she heard soft voices. He immediately turned to the side of the bed.
Johnsy's eyes were wide open. He was staring at the window and counting—counting down.
“Twelve,” said, and briefly then “eleven”, then “ten”, “nine”, and “seven” and “eight”, almost simultaneously.
Sue followed the direction of her gaze. What is being counted? Up ahead there was only a gloomy empty courtyard, and the brick wall of a building twenty feet away. The old Ivy plant crept over half the brick wall. The roots are starting to rot. Autumn's cold breath dislodged the leaves from its trunk and made it look like a skeleton.
“What's up, baby?” Ask Sue.
“Six,” whispered Johnsy. “Now falling faster. Three days ago it was almost a hundred, and my head ached from counting it. But now it's easier. There's another one that fell. Now the rest five.”
“Five what, baby? Tell Sudie.”
“Daun on ivy plant. When the last leaf fell, I had to go too. I decided it three days ago. Didn't the doctor tell you?”
“Oh, I have never heard such nonsense,” scold Sue with an exaggerated sneering expression. “What is the relationship between the leaves of the ivy plant and your health? And didn't you like that plant so much, you bad boy. Don't think stupid things. Last time the doctor told me that your chance of recovery was—this is what he really said—ten to one! It's huge, isn't it? Come on, eat this broth soup, so Sudie can go back to painting, then sell it to the editor, buy wine for his sick son, and pork chop for himself.”
“You don't have to buy me wine,” said Johnsy. The view does not move from the window. “One more deciduous leaf. No, I'm not having an appetite. Now the rest of the four. I want to see the last leaf fall before nightfall. Then I'll go too.”
“Johnsy, baby,” Sue said as she bent her body near Johnsy, “do you promise me to close your eyes and not stare at the window until I finish painting? I have to submit the picture tomorrow. I need lighting, otherwise I have to draw the shadow as well.”
“Can't you draw in another room?” Ask Johnsy with a kettle.
“I want to be here with you,” Sue said. “After all, I don't want you to keep staring at that stupid ivy leaf.”
“Tell me as soon as you're done,” said Johnsy. He closed his eyes and lay down. Her pale skin made her look like a statue, “because I was dying to see the last leaf fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to take off everything that binds me, and fly docked, like those poor old leaves.”
“Try to sleep,” says Sue. “I have to call Behrman to be my model. I just went for a second. Don't move much until I get back.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor below them. He was already sixty. He has a curly beard in the style of Michael Angelo and an imp-like body. Behrman has absolutely no artistic ability. Four years already he had scratched his brush without any results. He always almost painted a masterpiece, but never started it. For years he painted nothing. But sometimes he scavenged the line on the billboard. His small income earned him by modeling for young artists in the colony who could not afford professional services. He drank too much gin, and still talked about the masterpiece he would make. The rest, he was just a fierce elderly man. He often scoffed at one's tenderness, and considered himself a special protector to the two young artists in the studio upstairs.
Sue meets the alcohol-smelling Behrman in her dimly lit nest downstairs. In the corner of the room there is a blank canvas that since twenty-five years ago has been ready to receive the first scratches of his masterpiece. He recounts Johnsy's circumstances, and how scared he would be if Johnsy, who was leafy, would fly away as his little hold on the world weakened.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes, shouted his annoyance at the foolish thought.
“Gosh!” his yell. “Does anyone in the world die foolishly just because a leaf fell from his bastard trunk? I've never heard of anything like that. No, I don't want to pose as your model. Why did you let such a foolish thought enter his mind? Ah, poor Miss Johnsy.”
“She is very dying and weak,” Sue said, “and fever makes her mind crazy and full of crazy imagination. All right, Mr. Behrman, if you don't want to pose for me, it's okay. But I guess you're a mean, chatty old man, and a lot of whims.”
“Basic women!” shouts Behrman. “Who said I don't want to pose? Come on, I'm coming with you. For half an hour I tried to say that I was ready to pose. It's just that this isn't the right place. Someday I'll paint a masterpiece, and we'll all go.”
Johnsy was asleep when they went upstairs. Sue lowered her window curtain, and told Behrman to go into the other room. There, they stared at the ivy plant outside the window anxiously. Then they stared at each other without speaking. The rain mixed with very cold snow fell rapidly. Behrman, who was wearing his red-colored blue T-shirt, sat down and began to pose.
When Sue woke up the next morning from her sleep of only an hour, she saw Johnsy with her eyes wide open staring bored at the window curtain.
“Thank you curtain. I want to see,” her orders in a whisper.
But strangely, after heavy rain and strong winds all night, there is still one leaf of ivy plant attached to the brick wall. That's the last ivy leaf. The color is still dark green near the branch. The leaves gallantly hang twenty feet from the surface.
“That's the last leaf,” said Johnsy. “I don't think there will be any more surviving during the overnight storm. It should have fallen today, and I should have died too.”
“Honey, dear!” sahut Sue while putting her tired-looking face on the pillow, “think me, if you don't want to think about yourself. What can I do without you?”
Johnsy did not answer. The most profound loneliness in the world is when a soul is ready to set out on its mysterious journey. That desire will get more and more into him when one by one his bond on friendship and the world begins to loosen.
Time passed, and even after dusk, they could still see the ivy leaves hanging on its stem attached to the wall. And then, again came the north wind, along with the roaring rain on the windows and seeping on the walls of their rooms.
When the day was bright enough, Johnsy impatiently ordered Sue to lift her curtain.
The ivy leaves are still hanging there.
Johnsy lay there long enough to look at him. And then he called out to Sue who was stirring her chicken broth on the gas stove.
“I've been bad, Sudie,” said Johnsy. “Something made that last leaf hang in there to show me how cruel I was. To want death is a sin. Please bring me a bowl of broth soup now, and milk with a little wine, and...no, get me a mirror first, and stack a pillow around me, I want to sit while watching you cook.”
And an hour later he said, “Sudie, one day I wish I could paint the Bay of Naples.”
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue followed him out as the doctor was about to leave.
“The chance is big,” said the doctor as he shook Sue's thin hand. “With good care, he will be cured. And now I have to deal with my patients downstairs. His name is Behrman—if it's not one he's an artist. Pneumonia too. He's an old man, his pain is acute. There was no hope for him, but he went to the hospital today to get better treatment.”
The next day the doctor told Sue, “The condition is no longer dangerous. Now give him enough nutrition and care—that's it.”
That afternoon Sue went into Johnsy's room. He was lying down and knitting the bright blue scarf cheerfully. Sue put one hand on Johnsy's shoulder.
“There's something I want to tell you, baby,”. “Mr Behrman died of pneumonia in hospital today. He fell ill for two days. The janitor found her lying helplessly in the first morning in her room. His shoes and clothes were soaked and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he was during the rainstorm that night. Then they found the lanterns still on, the stairs that had been moved from their original position, the brushes scattered, and the palette that had been mixed in green and yellow, and—look out the window, baby, baby, look at that last ivy leaf. Are you not surprised when the leaves never sway in the slightest when the wind blows? Ah, honey, that's the masterpiece Behrman—he painted it the night the last leaf fell.”
[finished]
...****************...
Echemes
Once again I remember that the story in this novel and the next novel is the same but in this novel it is up 5× a day so understand and in the next novel also included from the copy of this novel and
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
EXPIRE
Widow don't be angry
don't forget to follow me too because you have read this novel :)
and make your novel addicts keep the author excited by giving Tips Rate 5 star Vote comments like papay
***VOTE
COMMENS
LIKE***
