As she stood up to feel if the dress-basket was firm she caught sight of herself in the mirror, quite white, with big round eyes. She untied her "motor veil" and unbuttoned her green cape. "But it's all over now," she said to the mirror fa…

"Ah, no, please," he pleaded. "Don't go just for a moment," and he caught up one of her gloves from the table and clutched at it as if that would hold her. "I see so few people to talk to nowadays, that I have turned into a sort of barbari…

“Are you asleep?” asked Moon. “No,” said Sun. “Are you?” “No,” said Moon. （Katherine Mansfield “Bliss and Other Stories”より“Sun and Moon”） こういうくだりを読むと、マンスフィールドってやっぱり子どもを描く天才やなと思う。 例によって眠りが…

Moon took ages. When she had her socks put on she pretended to fall back on the bed and waved her legs at Nurse as she always did, and every time Nurse tried to make her curls with a finger and a wet brush she turned round and asked Nurse …

"The trouble with our young writing men is that they are still too romantic. You can't put out to sea without being seasick and wanting a basin. Well, why won't they have the courage of those basins?" （Katherine Mansfield “Bliss and Other…

ALTHOUGH Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still …

Nobody has ever done it as I shall do it because none of the others have lived my experiences. I’m rich—I’m rich. （Katherine Mansfield “Bliss and Other Stories”より“Je ne parle pas français”） 7時45分起床。トーストとコーヒーの朝食。9時に…

Madame is thin and dark, too, with white cheeks and white hands. In certain lights she looks quite transparent, shining out of her black shawl with an extraordinary effect. When she is not serving she sits on a stool with her face turned, …

Only last night when he was reading the paper her false self had stood beside him and leaned against his shoulder on purpose. Hadn’t she put her hand over his, pointing out something so that he should see how white her hand was beside his …

“Do you feel it, too,” said Linda, and she spoke to her mother with the special voice that women use at night to each other as though they spoke in their sleep or from some hollow cave —“Don’t you feel that it is coming towards us?” （Kath…

There was an old stump beside the door of the fowl-house. Pat grabbed the duck by the legs, laid it flat across the stump, and almost at the same moment down came the little tomahawk and the duck’s head flew off the stump. Up the blood spu…

Pip was tall for his age, with lank black hair and a white face, but Rags was very small and so thin that when he was undressed his shoulder blades stuck out like two little wings. （Katherine Mansfield “Bliss and Other Stories”より“Prelud…

She played and sang half to herself, for she was watching herself playing and singing. The firelight gleamed on her shoes, on the ruddy belly of the guitar, and on her white fingers. . . . “If I were outside the window and looked in and sa…

The lamp was lighted on the nursery table. Mrs.Fairfield was cutting and spreading bread and butter. The three little girls sat up to table wearing large bibs embroidered with their names. They wiped their mouths as their father came in re…

Then she did not hear them any more. What a glare there was in the room. She hated blinds pulled up to the top at any time, but in the morning it was intolerable. She turned over to the wall and idly, with one finger, she traced a poppy on…

Later she heard her children playing in the garden. Lottie's stolid, compact little voice cried: "Ke–zia. Isa–bel." She was always getting lost or losing people only to find them again, to her great surprise, round the next tree or the nex…

"How long do you think it will take to get straight–couple of weeks–eh?" he chaffed. "Good heavens, no," said Beryl airily. "The worst is over already. The servant girl and I have simply slaved all day, and ever since mother came she has w…

"Where are we now?" Every few minutes one of the children asked him the question. "Why, this is Hawk Street, or Charlotte Crescent." "Of course it is," Lottie pricked up her ears at the last name; she always felt that Charlotte Crescent be…

In the servant girl’s room there was a stay-button stuck in a crack of the floor, and in another crack some beads and a long needle. She knew there was nothing in her grand mother’s room; she had watched her pack. She went over to the wind…

「American Scholar」誌にパールマンは「短篇作家の自由」（二〇一三年十一月）と題するエッセイを書いているので、印象的な文章を抜粋しておく。 「短篇の結末では、縺れた糸を撚り合わせるという長篇に必要なことをしなくてもいいのです。得体の知れなさこ…