#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

“Yesterday,” said the bartender, “I dreamed that a gift would be presented  to a man of good fortune.”

That is the proclamation that Safwan heard at the bar before departing for home. Only he never found his home. Drunk and confused he stood before an empty lot that was once his house and his family. He was taken in by the police for being drunk and disorderly before being pitied and sent back to his address. This time, there was a house there, but still not his.

There is a crazy series of events that are confusing to both the drunken Safwan and to the reader. It appears that he had made an unwitting deal, a deal of a lifetime, to exchange his family, home, and his life for what was in a suitcase: “In this suitcase is all that a happy man needs in this world.”

I wonder what it is?

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#339 The No-Talent Kid- Kurt Vonnegut

#339 The No-Talent Kid- Kurt Vonnegut

Mr. George M. Helmholtz lived in a world of music, and even the throbbing of his headache came to him musically, if painfully, as the "deep-throated boom of a bass drum seven feet in diameter.”

The Lincoln High School band had won every single band competition the last ten years until last year, when the Johnstown High School Band had stunned the judges with their amazing over-sized bass drum.  The loss haunts Helmholtz as he tries to prepare this year's band for the next competition.

Enter Walter Plummer, the least talented kid in the school: “No one else. He realized, no matter how untalented, could fill the last chair of the organization as well has Plummer had.”

When Plummer was able to procure an even larger drum, he tried to make a deal with Helmholtz for a place of honor in the band. The agreement they struck, as would this story, would make O. Henry proud.

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30