Sunday, 11 February 2024

The Birds and Other Stories - Monte Veritá

RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!


The narrator of this story has known Victor since they went to university together. Victor is a regular climber, and then Victor introduces him to Anna, the woman he wants to marry him. The narrator thinks that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and he feels drawn to her. What the narrator is surprised that Anna doesn't climb. Yet, a year later when Anna and Vitor are married, Victor tells him that they have been climbing, and Anna has been terrific.

A year later an acquaintance tells the narrator that Victor is in a nursing home because his wife has left him. The narrator visits him, and Victor tells him that he and Anna went to Monte Veritá, and the people in the village warned him about letting Anna climb. Then when Victor woke up, he found Anna gone, and he went after her in the mountain. His host tells him that the sacerdotesse there must have caught her like other women from the village, and a little girl tells him about almost staying with them. Victor doesn't believe him, and then he goes after Anna, and he finds some building with no doors there on the top of the mountain. The building has shutters behind which he can see eyes. Victor stays there all night, and then Anna appers in the distance, telling him to leave and find someone else because that is his place.

Victor tells his friend that he is not ready to leave Anna, and he intends to go to Monte Veritá every year. And that is what happens. Twenty years pass, and the narrator finds himself in the area of Monte Veritá, and he finds Victor very sick. In a nearby town he was told that a woman has disappeared and believed to have been trapped by the sacerdotesse. The local men are getting ready to go against those in Monte Veritá. Victor tells him to go and warn Anna, and he goes there and Anna appears before him and shows him her place. What he discovers is that Anna has leprosy and will die shortly. So she tells him not to worry about those men he wanted to warn him about. So he leaves and when he reaches the village, Victor is dead.

The narrator of this story tells us the story as he is an old man and is trying to come to terms with what happened. This is my least favourite story of the ones in the book. 

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Mansfield Park 2(Chapters 3 - 16)

 SPOILERS!!!