Auto Da Fé

As he was passing by the cathedral, warm, uncanny sounds reached his ears. He would have sung in the same key, had his voice, like his mood, been at his command. Suddenly a spot of dirt fell on him. Curious and startled, he looked up at the buttresses. Pigeons preened themselves and cooed, none was to blame for the dirt. For twenty years he had not heard these sounds; every day on his morning walk he passed this spot. Yet cooing was well known to him out of books. ‘Quite so!’ he said softly, and nodded as he always did when he found reality bearing out the printed original.

And then:

1. Desolation Angels Because whether you murder or not, that’s the trouble, it makes no difference in the maddening void which doesn’t care...
2. Marcovaldo The heavy man pointed the tip of his cane towards the rows of lights that were coming on, down below....
3. Kleinzeit Excuse me, said the moon. I’ll just put the kettle on. Kleinzeit nodded. The day knocked three times at his...
4. Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer Post addressed to Jonathan Fitch came through my letter-box, and that was who I was. I had a National Insurance...
5. La Bonne Chanson The morning sun serenely warms and gilds The rye and corn still damp in dewy fields, The sky has kept...
6. The Third Policeman ‘See that you regularize your irregularity instantaneously,’ he called as his good-bye, ‘and set right your irrectitude and put the...