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her eyes like dancers on a stage, obedient to her command.
    She had made the decision early one morning, waking out of a vague dream and urgent with the need to begin. Her granddaughter the red-haired girl was sleeping in the bed beside her and she shook her roughly awake.
    â€œI need to get ready,” she said, as if that was explanationenough. “Fetch me the white shift from the chest, the one with the lace around the sleeves and neck. I wore it on the night of my marriage and I haven’t worn it since. Get it now and hurry!”
    The red-haired girl lived alone with her grandmother and she was accustomed to doing what she was told. She went obediently to the chest on bare feet and struggled with the weight of the lid.
    â€œBe quick!” said the old woman, rising to a sitting position with her naked flesh heaped on itself in soft folds and creases. “Dress me!” and she held her arms above her head while the girl stood beside her and pulled on the shift, careful not to damage the fragile cloth.
    â€œHow do I look?” said the old woman.
    â€œYou look lovely,” said the girl, stroking the mottled patterns of damp and mold on the white linen, feeling the intricacy of lace between her fingers.
    â€œYou must do my hair,” said the old woman. “And you can see if I have many lice. I felt them moving about all last night, muddling my thoughts. Perhaps there are more of them now that the weather has turned warm.”
    The girl fetched a comb and a bowl of water. She climbed onto the bed and squatting beside her grandmother she began combing and parting, combing and parting, disentangling the pale sleepy bodies from their nesting places and setting them to sail like little boats in the water, their legs waving feebly.
    â€œYou can catch them with a piece of bread spread withbird lime,” said the old woman. “You leave it out on the pillow at night. And a rag dipped in honey is good for flies but the honey drips. How many have we got?”
    â€œTen” said the girl, counting the floating bodies to the highest number she knew.
    â€œSo are we ready then?” said the old woman, her gray hair spreading like steam around her tired face and across her shoulders.
    â€œYes,” said the girl, absentmindedly holding one of her grandmother’s hands in her own, examining the thin skin stretched over the pulsing blue veins. “Where do you want to begin?” she asked, turning the limp hand over and looking at the mass of lines on the palm.
    â€œAs a young girl,” said the old woman rather smugly, “with your red hair and your face, only it was mine then.”
    â€œWere you young for a long time?” asked the girl.
    â€œYes,” said her grandmother, “for a very long time.” And as she spoke the solemn procession of her childhood walked through the room. There were people she knew and people who were strangers but whose faces had lodged themselves in her mind. There were also animals, birds, and even fish which had impressed her in some way or another. Noises and smells drifted through her head while the darkness of the night and the brightness of the day repeated itself over and over again as the years slipped from one into the next.
    She watched them all marching past her bed and when something in particular caught hold of her attention she made it pause so that she could look at it more closely.
    There was a painting of Saint Christopher on the end wall of the church in the village where she had lived when she was a child. She gazed now with infinite leisure at the tight curls on his head, the waves and fishes swirling around his big pink legs, the Christ child clinging so tenaciously to his neck. She could feel the movement of his body as he strode forward, the sunlight on his hair, the warmth of his skin, the booming resonance of his voice that could chase away every fear.
    When Saint Christopher had gone the acrobats arrived. They