SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 8, 2021] “The Night of the Comet”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
Somehow it feels cheating that Manguel is the translator of this story (although it does suggest that he really likes the story).
Not much happens on the night of the comet. There is talk about the comet before its arrival (a man plunged to his death to avoid its arrival).
Everyone talked about it. Some people said they’d seen it (like a scarf made of light).
The newspapers predicted fabulous things–it would pass so close to earth! It would be the size of a small melon. It would cover seventy percent of the visible sky.
This last statement was most confusing. Will all of the sky be comet? How long will it stay like that? Someone corrected that it must be the length of the sky, not the width.
As it approached people talked about the best place to see it. And the best way to see it (not straight on).
What will it be like? We’ll never know.
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