great story that freaked the HELL out of me. Enjoy!

[rich]

I tend to like these kind of stories. you may also like  if u haven't read
him is Robert Aickman. the story you posted reminds me a bit of Aickman's
Never Visit Venice. I think you'll enjoy that one, too
he only wrote 48 short stories but man are they sublime

rich

On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 3:49 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> https://theeveningrednessinthewest.wordpress.com/category/a-
> woman-seldom-found/
>
>
> William Sansom (1912-1976), was an English short story writer,
> novelist, travel writer, and author of children’s books. Sansom’s
> short stories are characterized by his minutely detailed descriptions
> and depictions of people confronting extremities of experience. Eudora
> Welty said that "the flesh of William Sansom’s stories is their
> uninterrupted contour of sensory impressions. The bone is reflective
> contemplation." In his short story “A Woman Seldom Found,” a
> disillusioned young man holidaying in Rome meets a mysterious and
> beautiful woman and begins to believe that there is such a thing as
> “the perfect encounter.”
>
>
>
> a woman seldom found
> by william sansom
>
>
>
> ONCE a young man was on a visit to Rome.
>
>
>
> It was his first visit; he came from the country but he was neither on
> the one hand so young nor on the other so simple as to imagine that a
> great and beautiful capital should hold out finer promises than
> anywhere else. He already knew that life was largely illusion, that
> though wonderful things could happen, nevertheless as many
> disappointments came in compensation: and he knew, too, that life
> could offer a quality even worse — the probability that nothing would
> happen at all. This was always more possible in a great city intent on
> its own business.
>
>
>
> Thinking in this way, he stood on the Spanish steps and surveyed the
> momentous panorama stretched before him. He listened to the swelling
> hum of the evening traffic and watched as the lights went up against
> Rome’s golden dusk. Shining automobiles slunk past the fountains and
> turned urgently into the bright Via Condotti, neon-red signs stabbed
> the shadows with invitation; the yellow windows of buses were packed
> with faces intent on going somewhere — everyone in the city seemed
> intent on the evening’s purpose. He alone had nothing to do.
>
>
>
> He felt himself the only person alone of everyone in the city. But
> searching for adventure never brought it — rather kept it away. Such a
> mood promises nothing. So the young man turned back up the steps,
> passed the lovely church, and went on up the cobbled hill towards his
> hotel. Wine bars and food shops jostled with growing movement in those
> narrow streets. But out on the broad pavement of the Vittorio Veneto,
> under the trees mounting to the Borghese Gardens, the high world of
> Rome would be filling the most elegant cafes in Europe to enjoy with
> aperitifs the twilight. That would be the loneliest of all! So the
> young man kept to the quieter, older streets on his solitary errand
> home.
>
>
>
> In one such street, a pavementless alley between old yellow houses, a
> street that in Rome might suddenly blossom into a secret piazza of
> fountain and baroque church, a grave secluded treasure-place — he
> noticed that he was alone but for the single figure of a woman walking
> down the hill toward him.
>
>
>
> As she drew nearer, he saw that she was dressed with taste, that in
> her carriage was a soft Latin fire, that she walked for respect. He
> face was veiled, but it was impossible to imagine that she would not
> be beautiful. Isolated thus with her, passing so near to her, and she
> symbolizing the adventure of which the evening was so empty — a
> greater melancholy gripped him. He felt wretched as the gutter, small,
> sunk, pitiful. So that he rounded his shoulders and lowered his eyes –
> but not before casting one furtive glance into hers.
>
>
>
> He was so shocked at what he saw that he paused, he stared, shocked,
> into her face. He had made no mistake. She was smiling. Also — she too
> had hesitated. He thought instantly: ‘Whore?’ But no — it was not that
> kind of smile, though as well it was not without affection.
>
> And then amazingly she spoke.
>
>
>
> "I — I know I shouldn’t ask you… but it is such a beautiful evening —
> and perhaps you are alone, as alone as I am…"
>
>
>
> She was very beautiful. He could not speak. But a growing elation gave
> him the power to smile. So that she continued, still hesitant, in no
> sense soliciting.
>
>
>
> "I thought… perhaps… we could take a walk, an aperitif…"
>
>
>
> At last the young man achieved himself.
>
>
>
> "Nothing, nothing would please me more. And the Veneto is only a
> minute up there."
>
>
>
> She smiled again.
>
>
>
> "My home is just here…"
>
>
>
> They walked in silence a few paces down the street, to a turning the
> young woman had already passed. This she indicated. They walked to
> where the first humble houses ended in a kind of recess. In the recess
> was set the wall of a garden, and behind it stood a large and elegant
> mansion. The woman, about whose face shone a curious pale glitter —
> something fused of the transparent pallor of fine skin, of grey but
> brilliant eyes, of dark eyebrows and hair of lucent black – inserted
> her key in the garden gate.
>
>
>
> They were greeted by a servant in velvet livery. In a large and
> exquisite salon, under chandeliers of fine glass and before a moist
> green courtyard where water played, they were served with frothy wine.
> They talked. The wine — iced in the warm Roman night — filled them
> with an inner warmth of exhilaration. But from time to time the young
> man looked at her curiously.
>
>
>
> With her glances, with many subtle inflections of teeth and eyes she
> was inducing an intimacy that suggested much. He felt he must be
> careful. At length he thought the best thing might be to thank her –
> somehow thus to root out whatever obligation might be in store. But
> here she interrupted him, first with a smile, then with a look of some
> sadness. She begged him to spare himself any perturbation; she knew it
> was strange, that in such a situation he might suspect some second
> purpose; but the simple truth remained that she was lonely and — this
> with a certain deference — something perhaps in him, perhaps that
> moment of dust in the street, had proved to her inescapably
> attractive. She had not been able to helpherself. The possibility of a
> perfect encounter — a dream that years of disillusion will never quite
> kill — decided him. His elation rose beyond control. He believed her.
> And thereafter the perfections compounded.
>
>
>
> At her invitation they dined. Servants brought food of great delicacy;
> shellfish, fat bird flesh, soft fruits. And afterward they sat on a
> sofa near the courtyard, where it was cool. Liqueurs were brought. The
> servants retired. A hush fell upon the house. They embraced. A little
> later, with no word, she took his arm and led them from the room. How
> deep a silence had fallen between them! The young man’s heart beat
> fearfully — it might be heard, he felt, echoing in the hall whose
> marble they now crossed, sensed through his arm to hers. But such
> excitement rose now from certainty. Certainty that at such a moment,
> on such a charmed evening — nothing could go wrong. There was no need
> to speak. Together they mounted the great staircase. In her bedroom,
> to the picture of her framed by the bed curtains and dimly naked in a
> silken shift, he poured out his love; a love that was to be eternal,
> to be always perfect, as fabulous as this their exquisite meeting.
> Softly she spoke the return of her love. Nothing would ever go amiss,
> nothing would ever come between them. And very gently she drew back
> the bedclothes for him.
>
>
>
> But suddenly, at the moment when at last he lay beside her, when his
> lips were almost upon her — he hesitated.
>
>
>
> Something was wrong. A flaw could be sensed. He listened, felt – and
> then saw the fault was his. Shaded, soft-shaded lights by the bed —
> but he had been so careless as to leave on the bright electric
> chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. He remembered the switch was
> by the door. For a fraction, then, he hesitated. She raised her
> eyelids — saw his glance at the chandelier, understood. Her eyes
> glittered. She murmured, "My beloved, don’t worry — don’t move …"
>
>
>
> And she reached out her hand. Her hand grew larger, her arm grew
> longer and longer, it stretched out through the bed-curtains, across
> the long carpet, huge and overshadowing the whole of the long room,
> until at last its giant fingers were at the door.
>
>
>
> With a terminal click, she switched out the light.
>
>
>
> —from The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories, ed. Michael
> Cox, Oxford University Press, 1997
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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