I recently read this ("Death and the Maiden"), as it was in "The Machineries of Joy" which I just purchased, and I saw the story in here and remembered that Nard has mentioned this several times in various postings as either "a" favorite story, or "the" favorite story. So I had to read it.

I really enjoyed it, also. The language is great. Very lyrical in parts.

The story basically is about an old woman who has lived in this house out beyond the woods away from the village. The old woman has not strayed from the house for about 90 years. She refused to leave because she feared that if she left the house or opened the door, she would be taken by death -- whom she saw in every person who came to see her. She was holed up there so long, the people in town began to speculate that she would outlive them all. That even the germs in the house would have given up on infecting her and left.

Suddenly, a mysterious stranger appears outside the house and seems to speak with her telephathically. The fact that the communication is not traditionally based, and that he casts no shadow lets you know it's a supernatural kind of event. (Like in movies, when the clouds are shown moving very rapidly, you know something supernatural is going to happen.)

He places a bottle of elixir on her porch and steps back because she will not come out.

She refused to take it, accusing him of wanting to kill her:

"It's poison."
"No." . . .
"It'll kill me, that's what you want!"
"It will raise you from the dead."
"I'm not dead!"
The young man smiled at the house.
"Aren't you?" he said."

She has been so afraid of death, she is essentially dead already. This is one of Bradbury's themes he addresses in much of his work. Life must be lived enthusiastically. This is certainly Bradbury's motto. When we refuse to do things because we allow ourselves to live in fear, we are -- to a certain extent -- dead already.

The deal he offers her is that the elixir will make her 18 again for 24 hours, and he will take her out and wine and dine her and make love with her when it's over.

"You'll run rather than walk, dance rather than run. We'll watch the stars wheel over the sky and bring the sun up, flaming. We'll string footprints along the lake shore at dawn. We'll eat the biggest breakfast in mankind's history and lie on the sand like two chicken pies warming at noon. Then, late in the day, a five pound box of bonbons on our laps, we'll laugh back on the train, covered with the conductor's ticket-punch confetti, blue, green, orange, like we were married, and walk through town seeing nobody, no one, and wander back through the sweet dusk-smelling wood into your house."

Her initial reaction is to say, it is already over before it began. He tells her to think about it. And she does.

"Clarinda, why did you hide in that house, long ago?"
"I don't remember. Yes, I do. I was afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Strange, Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid."

She recognizes him as on old boyfriend (or acquaintance) and reflects:

"And there in the house he could feel her letting her memories pour through her mind as sand pours through an hourglass, heaping itself at last into nothing but dust and ashes. He could hear the emptiness of those memories burning the sides of her mind as they fell down and down and make a higher and higher mound of sand. All that desert, he thought, and not one oasis."

In the end, she decides . . .

Well, why ruin it?

The adaptation of "Death and the Maiden" that was part of the recent (April) three-play presentation at The Court Theatre in LA was just marvelous. Tears all over the place, for the story, and the actress, Cherry Davis, who stated that her two greatest thrills were being selected by Tennessee Williams to play the role of Violet in his "Small Craft Warnings" and being chosen to become Old Mam in Ray Bradbury's "Death and the Maiden". I am so fortunate to live in So. Cal. and thus to attend the little theatre presentations put on by Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company.. Kudos to the Director Charles Rome Smith for bringing the familiar so much to life.

I am SO sorry I missed this play, '''Death and the Maiden'''...about my most favorite of Ray's stories. Oh, please please...someone tell me if you ever hear of this play being performed again on stage!!!

'''The Tombling Day'''...was also similar to '''Death and the Maiden'''... Which made me think of how many of Ray's stories can be linked in one way or another to make 2 or 3 or 4 part stories, carrrying the same or similar themes...as if it is one Giant story.

''And the Sailor Home from the Sea'''..along with '''The Scythe'''...both have somewhat similar, strange story lines...

isnt this sort of the same theme is when Colonel Freeleigh died in "Dandelion Wine?" he argued with his nurse when she caught him calling up Mexico City and raising his blood pressure. his argument was "why bother staying alive when your not living?" or something like that. jusr to bring it up.