Min Khan Soe San - Short Stories of World Heroes and Ghosts (1)

the film

A Little Place off the Edgware Road Graham Greene

The summer rain was falling lightly. In the raindrops, Craven walked past the statue of Achilles. The streetlights had just come on. Cars lined the road leading to the White Gate. He could see the alert faces, ready to take in everything he saw on his journey.

Craven pulled his raincoat collar tighter and walked on, feeling bitter inside. Today had been a terrible day for him.

As he walked along the park path, I felt a pang in my heart. If you want love, you have to have money, right? This guy, Nga Mwe, only has a strong heart. To get love, you need a nice suit. You need a car. You need a house somewhere. Or a nice hotel. You need to wrap it in tissue paper like a cellophane.

He was constantly aware of the rope-like thing under his raincoat. And the torn sleeves.

He carried his physical ego around like a huge object he hated. (It had been a comforting experience in the British Museum reading room.) But now this body had brought him home.

His only feeling was boredom. He was tired of remembering the ugly, ugly events on the park benches. People were talking about how the body had died too soon, but for Craven, that was not a problem to worry about. Not at all.

His body still held life. He walked through the golden raindrops to the podium in the park. He passed a tall man in black carrying a banner.

"The bodies that have died will rise again."

He remembered a dream. It was a dream from which he had woken up three times. In it he was alone in a great dark pit beneath the earth's surface. Beneath the earth were graves, one after another. From the perspective of the dead, the whole earth was a beehive.

In every dream, he realized one terrifying fact: that the corpse's body was not rotting. There were no worms. It was not falling apart and falling apart.

Beneath the earth, the world was like a huge garbage dump. A huge pile of flesh, blood-soaked, and twisted corpses, all waiting to be resurrected. When he woke up, lying on his bed, he had a vivid memory of hearing great news of happiness after the entire body had been destroyed.

He slowly walked down the alley. Two pairs of purple-haired people had come out onto the street. They were very weak, long, slender creatures. Their bodies, clad in tight trousers, looked like worms. He hated those creatures. And he hated himself for that hatred. Because he knew it was just his jealousy.

Everyone among them had a better body than him. He was... His stomach was rumbling from indigestion. He felt sure his mouth was stinking. But that... Who was he supposed to tell?

Sometimes... he would look around, look around, and hide, suspicious of his body. It was one of his worst secrets. Don't ask him if he had faith in the idea of ​​resurrecting this body he wanted to forget. Sometimes he would pray at night. (A little bit of religious faith seemed to lurk in his chest like a worm in a hard fruit.)

His prayer...

"May the body of your disciple never be resurrected, O God."

He knew all the little streets along Edway Road very well. When he felt like it, he would walk along them aimlessly. He would squint at his reflection in the shop windows until he was tired.

So he immediately noticed the posters hanging outside the disused and abandoned theater on Culpeper Street. This was not a routine thing. Every now and then, the old theater would be rented out for a night by the Takle Bank Theater Company. Or, they would rent it out to show old, battered movies.

The theater was built in 1920. It was located about a mile outside the busy area where many theaters were located, so it was not a good place to draw a large audience, so it was probably built by someone who thought that the space could be purchased cheaply, so the cost would be covered. However... no play was ever successful. Later, the entire theater was left with rat holes and spider webs. It was no longer a theater, just a place for amateur musicians to entertain themselves, or for children to watch.

Craven stopped and read the poster. But even in 1939, there were still optimists. It would have been a very stupid optimist to think that a silent movie would make money from this kind of film. What a "first for old-time movie lovers." Oh, there's no way there's going to be a second one.

Well... the seats were cheap. He was tired from walking. He wanted to take shelter from the rain. It was worth about a shilling. He bought a ticket and entered the dark theater.

In the lifeless darkness, the sound of the piano was flat and dull. He sat down on a bench by the road. He was immediately aware that there was no one around him.

Yes, there is no second presentation. On the screen, an old woman dressed in royal robes is rubbing her hands together with a look of deep sadness. Then... she walks over to the edge of the sofa and sits down. There, she sits like a sheepdog, staring into the distance through her messy black hair. One by one, the figure disappears due to the flickering blur of the film. Since it is a silent film, the subtitles start playing.

"Pompelia, betrayed by her lover Augustus,