Blind Assassin Read Free

vengeance, because of the unholy practices carried on in the city. Evil must be cleansed with blood, they say. On that day the blood ran like water, so afterwards it must have been very clean.
    Every herdsman or merchant who passes adds a stone to the heap. It’s an old custom—you do it in remembrance of the dead, your own dead—but since no one knows who the dead under the pile of stones really were, they all leave their stones on the off chance. They’ll get around it by telling you that what happened there must have been the will of their god, and thus by leaving a stone they are honouring this will.
    There’s also a story that claims the city wasn’t really destroyed at all. Instead, through a charm known only to the King, the city and its inhabitants were whisked away and replaced by phantoms of themselves, and it was only these phantoms that were burnt and slaughtered. The real city was shrunk very small and placed in a cave beneath the great heap of stones. Everything that was once there is there still, including the palaces and the gardens filled with trees and flowers; including the people, no bigger than ants, but going about their lives as before—wearing their tiny clothes, giving their tiny banquets, telling their tiny stories, singing their tiny songs.
    The King knows what’s happened and it gives him nightmares, but the rest of them don’t know. They don’t know they’ve become so small. They don’t know they’re supposed to be dead. They don’t even know they’ve been saved. To them the ceiling of rock looks like a sky: light comes in through a pinhole between the stones, and they think it’s the sun.
    The leaves of the apple tree rustle. She looks up at the sky, then at her watch. I’m cold, she says. I’m also late. Could you dispose of the evidence? She gathers eggshells, twists up wax paper.
    No hurry, surely? It’s not cold here.
    There’s a breeze coming through from the water, she says. The wind must have changed. She leans forward, moving to stand up.
    Don’t go yet, he says, too quickly.
    I have to. They’ll be looking for me. If I’m overdue, they’ll want to know where I’ve been.
    She smoothes her skirt down, wraps her arms around herself, turns away, the small green apples watching her like eyes.
The Globe and Mail, June 4, 1947
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    Griffen Found in Sailboat
    SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
    After an unexplained absence of several days, the body of industrialist Richard E. Griffen, forty-seven, said to have been favoured for the Progressive Conservative candidacy in the Toronto riding of St. David’s, was discovered near his summer residence of “Avilion” in Port Ticonderoga, where he was vacationing. Mr. Griffen was found in his sailboat, theWater Nixie, which was tied up at his private jetty on the Jogues River. He had apparently suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Police report that no foul play is suspected.
    Mr. Griffen had a distinguished career as the head of a commercial empire that embraced many areas including textiles, garments and light manufacturing, and was commended for his efforts in supplying Allied troops with uniform parts and weapons components during the war. He was a frequent guest at the influential gatherings held at the Pugwash home of industrialist Cyrus Eaton and a leading figure of both the Empire Club and the Granite Club. He was a keen golfer and a well-known figure at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. The Prime Minister, reached by telephone at his private estate of “Kingsmere,” commented, “Mr. Griffen was one of this country’s most able men. His loss will be deeply felt.”
    Mr. Griffen was the brother-in-law of the late Laura Chase, who made her posthumous début as a novelist this spring, and is survived by his sister Mrs. Winifred (Griffen) Prior, the noted socialite, and by his wife, Mrs. Iris (Chase) Griffen, as well as by his ten-year-old daughter Aimee. The funeral will be held in Toronto at the Church of St. Simon the