Advanced Reading
Read and listen to the story and answer the questions, section by section. Don't forget to use the dictionary to check words you don't know.
By Ray Bradbury
Part One
What do you find out about the characters George And Alice Smith from this first section?
George and Alice Smith detrained at Biarritz one summer noon and in an hour had run through their hotel on to the beach into the ocean and back out to bake upon the sand.
To see George Smith sprawled burning there, you'd think him only a tourist flown fresh and soon to be transported home. But here was a man who loved art more than life itself.
"George?" His wife loomed over him. "I know what you've been thinking. I can read your lips."
He lay perfectly still, waiting.
"And?"
"Picasso," she said.
He winced. Some day she would learn to pronounce that name.
"Please," she said. "Relax. I know you heard the rumour this morning, but you should see your eyes - your tic is back. All right, Picasso's here, down the coast a few miles away, visiting friends in some small fishing town. But you must forget it or our vacation's ruined."
"I wish I'd never heard the rumour," he said honestly.
"If only," she said, "you liked other painters."
Others? Yes, there were others. He could breakfast most congenially on Caravaggio still-lifes of autumn pears and midnight plums. For lunch: those fire-squirting, thick-wormed Van Gogh sunflowers. But the great feast? The paintings he saved his palate for? Who else but the creator of Girl Before a Mirror and Guernica?
Part Two
What is George's dream?
x
"I keep thinking," he said aloud, "if we saved our money..."
"We'll never have five thousand dollars."
"I know," he said quietly. "But it's nice thinking we might bring it off some day. Wouldn't it be great to just step up to him, say 'Pablo, here's five thousand! Give us the sea, the sand, that sky, or any old thing you want, we'll be happy...."
After a moment, his wife touched his arm.
"I think you'd better go in the water now," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I'd better do just that."
During the afternoon George Smith came out and went into the ocean with the vast spilling motions of now warm, now cool people who at last, with the sun's decline, their bodies all lobster colours and colours of broiled squab and guinea hen, trudged for their wedding-cake hotels.
The beach lay deserted for endless mile on mile save for two people. One was George Smith, towel over shoulder. Far along the shore another shorter, square-cut man walked alone in the tranquil weather. He was deeper tanned, his close-shaven head dyed almost mahogany by the sun, and his eyes were clear and bright as water in his face.
So the shoreline stage was set, and in a few minutes the two men would meet.
Part Three
What does the stranger start doing, and how does George react?
x
The stranger stood alone. Glancing about, he saw his aloneness, saw the waters of the lovely bay, saw the sun sliding down the late colours of the day, and then half-turning spied a small wooden object on the sand. It was no more than the slender stick from a lime ice-cream delicacy long since melted away. Smiling he picked the stick up. With another glance around to re-insure his solitude, the man stooped again and holding the stick gently with light sweeps of his hand began to do the one thing in all the world he knew best how to do.
He began to draw incredible figures along the sand. He sketched one figure and then moved over and still looking down, completely focused on his work now, drew a second and a third figure, and after that a fourth and a fifth and a sixth.
George Smith, printing the shoreline with his feet, gazed here, gazed there, and then saw the man ahead. George Smith, drawing nearer, saw that the man, deeply tanned, was bending down. Nearer yet, and it was obvious what the man was up to. George Smith chuckled. Of course, of course... along on the beach this man - how old? Sixty-five? Seventy? - was scribbling and doodling away. How the sand flew! How the wild portraits flung themselves out there on the shore!
How…
George Smith took one more step and stopped, very still.
The stranger was drawing and drawing and did not seem to sense that anyone stood immediately behind him and the world of his drawings in the sand.
Part Four
What is the artist's attitude to George? and George's to the artist?
x
George Smith looked down at the sand. And, after a long while, looking, he began to tremble.
For there on the flat shore were pictures of Grecian lions and Mediterranean goats and maidens and children dancing. And the sand, in the dying light, was the colour of copper on which was now slashed a message that any man in any time might read and savour down the years.
The artist stopped.
George Smith drew back and stood away.
The artist glanced up, surprised to find someone so near.
Then he simply stood there, looking from George Smith to his own creations flung like idle footprints down the way. He smiled at last and shrugged as if to say. Look what I've done; see what a child? You will forgive me, won't you? One day or another we are all fools... you, too, perhaps? So allow an old fool this, eh? Good! Good!
But George Smith could only look at the little man with the sun-dark skin and the clear sharp eyes, and say the man's name once, in a whisper, to himself.
They stood thus for perhaps another five seconds, George Smith staring at the sand-frieze, and the artist watching George Smith with amused curiosity.
George Smith opened his mouth, closed it, put out his hand, took it back. He stepped towards the picture, stepped away. Then he moved along the line of figures, like a man viewing a precious series of marbles cast up from some ancient ruin on the shore. His eyes did not blink, his hand wanted to touch but did not dare to touch. He wanted to run but did not run.
Part Five
What is George's dilemma? What options does he consider?
x
He looked suddenly at the hotel. Run, yes! Run! What? Grab a shovel, dig, excavate, save a chunk of this all too crumbling sand? Find a repair-man, race him back here with plaster-of-paris to cast a mould of some small fragile part of these? No, no. Silly, silly. Or...? His eyes flicked to his hotel window. The camera! Run, get it, get back, and hurry along the shore, clicking, changing film, clicking until...
George Smith whirled to face the sun. It burned faintly on his face, his eyes were two small fires from it. The sun was half underwater and, as he watched, it sank the rest of the way in a matter of seconds.
The artist had drawn nearer and now was gazing into George Smith's face with great friendliness as if he were guessing every thought. Now he was nodding his head in a little bow.
Now the ice-cream stick had fallen casually from his fingers.
Now he was saying good night, good night. Now he was gone, walking back down the beach towards the south.
George Smith stood looking after him. After a full minute, he did the only thing he could possibly do. He started at the beginning of the fantastic frieze and he walked slowly along the shore. And when he came to the end of the animals and men he turned round and started back in the other direction, just staring down as if he had lost something and did not quite know where to find it. He kept on doing this until there was no more light in the sky, or on the sand, to see by.
Part Six
Why do you think George doesn't tell his wife about his experience?
x
He sat down at the supper table.
"You're late," said his wife. "I just had to come down alone. I'm ravenous."
"That's all right," he said.
"Anything interesting happen on your walk?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"You look funny; George, you didn't swim out too far, did you, and almost drown? I can tell by your face. You did swim out too far, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Well," she said, watching him closely. "Don't ever do that again. Now - what'll you have?"
He picked up the menu and started to read it and stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong?" asked his wife.
He turned his head and shut his eyes for a moment.
"Listen."
She listened.
"I don't hear anything," she said.
"Don't you?"
"No. What is it?"
"Just the tide," he said, after a while, sitting there, his eyes still shut. "Just the tide, coming in."
Adapted from New English File, our most popular advanced course book
More options
Ray Bradbury, the author of this short story, was a famous science fiction writer.
More options
Ray Bradbury, the author of this short story, was a famous science fiction writer.
- Listen and read and interview with him
- Read another story of his short stories, The Last Night of the World
- Find out more about his life in Wikipedia