Thank you for visiting The Unguarded Asylum.
At present our web site is in intermediate stages of construction (last revision, 09-08-07). The full text of a previously published story, "Steinitz," is accessible via links from the excerpt below. Some poetry samples can be accessed via the "Poetry" link at left. An ongoing family history project, recently expanded to 8 pages, can be accessed from the sample images below or via the "Family History" link (be patient, some high-resolution graphics files may take time to load). The first two installments of a long story, "Lives of the Hidden Saints," an ongoing fiction project being made available in serial form, can be accessed via the "Story 2" link at left. Most recent addition: A photo gallery page, accessible via the "Gallery" link.
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Steinitz as seen through the eyes of his son: this strange, fierce dwarf who cleaves to his mother. He entertains the boy with his impressions of wild animals. He bends his stunted body in figures of stalking beasts, now growling like a tiger, now howling like a wolf. Sprouting antlers, he charges a rival buck. Finally, he is a rabbit, springing about the room in short hops. Hop, hop. Delighted, his son laughs. Hophophop. He hops over to the child, lifts and embraces him, but this is a much less successful bid for affection¾suddenly so close, his massive pale face and rough black beard startle the boy, who turns his head away and struggles to be let down. Steinitz sets him on the floor and addresses him with regretful seriousness.
"It is only natural for you to hate me," he says.
Later, his wife, Caroline, suggests a more palatable explanation for the boy's behavior.
"Perhaps he thought you were going to eat him. You frightened him by pouncing on him like that."
"But rabbits don't eat people."
"He doesn't know that."
"Yes, that's right," he says. A smile, the first she has seen in days, appears on his lips at the realization that his son's love may not be, after all, so remote from him. "He's a good boy. Maybe tomorrow I'll teach him to play chess."
"Sooner you should kill me," she says.
Ó Steven Levery
Last Summer of Innocence. (August 1956).
