The Centipede Summary

The Centipede Summary

When Eddie saw his sister, Delia, beating his dog with a stick, he felt hate heave like a caged, angry beast in his chest. Out in the sun, the hair of his sister glinted like metal and, in her brown dress, she looked like a sheathed dagger. Biryuk hugged the earth and screamed but he could not bound forward nor cry out to his sister. She had a weak heart and she must not be surprised. So he held himself, his throat swelled, and he felt hate rear and plunge in its cage of ribs.
Eddie was thirteen when he was took hunting by his father. He saw and first got Biryuk that moment when he was firing the covey of brown pigeons they encountered in the forest. The father told Eddie that he could use his shotgun. “Wait for the birds to rise and then fire,” the father whispered. “You forgot to spit.” He also added. He told Eddie that hunters always spat for luck before firing. “Can’t we just throw a stone?” Eddie asked his father. “It’s taking us along time” “No. You’ve to wait.” The father responded. Suddenly, a small dog yelping shrilly came tearing across the brooding plain of grass and small trees. Eddie fired, his body shaking. The covey of pigeons dispersed in the wind. He saw three birds, trying to stay afloat but then they fell on the ground. The shot did not scare the dog. He circled around them until Eddie snapped his fingers and then it came to him. Eddie went to the bush to get the bird. The dog ambled after him and found the birds for Eddie. The birds were bloody but the dog scraped the blood with his tongue. He asked his father if he could keep the dog with him. The father did not allow him at first because the dog might have an owner. But Eddie promised to return the dog once the owner sought for it. Biryuk and Eddie became fast friends. Every afternoon after school they went to the field to chase quails.

Biryuk scampered off and Eddie’s sister flung the stick at him. Then she turned about and she saw Eddie.
“Eddie, come here,” she commanded. He approached with apprehension. Slowly, almost carefully, she reached over and twisted his ear.
“I don‘t want to see that dog again in the house,” she said coldly. “That dog destroyed my slippers again. I‘ll tell Berto to kill that dog if I see it around again.” She clutched one side of his face with her hot, moist hand and shoved Eddie, roughly. He tumbled to the ground. But he did not cry or protest. He had passed that phase.
Delia was the meanest creature he knew. She was eight when Eddie was born, the day their mother died. Although they lived in the same house, it’s as if they were miles apart. Delia always looked at Eddie with increasing annoyance and contempt. One of his first solid memories was of standing before a grass hut. The dirty floor was covered with banana stalks. There was a small box that was filled with crushed and disassembled flowers in a corner. A doll was cradled in the box. It was his sister’s playhouse. She already told Eddie to keep out of it, but since she was not there, Eddie went in. the doll looked heavy. He picked it up. It had hard, unflexing limbs. He tried to bend one of the legs and it snapped. He stared with horror at the broken leg of the doll. Then he saw his sister coming. Furious and screaming, she snatched the doll and seized one of the saplings that held up the hut and hit Eddie again and again until the flesh of his back and thighs sang with pain. Then suddenly his sister moaned; she stiffened, the sapling fell from her hand and quietly, she sank to the ground. He ran to the house yelling for his Father.
She came back from the hospital in the city, pale, quiet, mean and drained.
Nothing he did ever please her. Delia destroyed intentionally anything Eddie liked. At first, he took it a step of adjustment; He did not mind every harsh move and hatred she showed towards Eddie, but later on he realized that it had become a habit with her. He did not say anything when Delia told Berto to kill his monkey because it snickered at her one morning, while she was brushing her teeth. He did not say anything when she told their Father that she did not like his pigeon house because it stank and he had to give away his pigeons and Berto had to chop the house into kindling wood. Eddie learned how to hold himself because he knew they had to keep her calm and quiet. But when she dumped his butterflies into a waste can and burned them in the backyard, he realized that Delia was spiting him.
Eddie’s butterflies never snickered at her sister and they did not smell. He kept them in an unused cabinet in the living room and unless she opened the drawers, they were out of her sight. And she knew too that his butterfly collection had grown with him. But one afternoon, when Eddie arrived home from school, he found the butterflies in a can, burned in their cotton beds like deckle. Eddie wept and their Father had to call his sister for an explanation. She stood straight and calm before their Father but Eddie’s tear-logged eyes saw only her harsh and arrogant silhouette. She looked at him curiously but she did not say anything and the Father began gently to question her. She listened politely and when the Father had stopped talking, she said without concern: “They were attracting ants.”
Eddie ran and looked after Biryuk, screaming his name. He had probably fled to the brambles. He found him under a low bush, he called him but Biryuk only whimpered. One of his eyes was bleeding. The stick of Delia had stabbed the eye of Eddie’s dog. He was motionless. He felt the burning hatred in his chest; his muscles tensed and the hate rushed into his brain. Eddie screamed furiously; Biryuk was frightened but he did not run after him.
On his way back to their house, Eddie saw Berto in the shade of the tree. He was splitting the wood he had stacked last year. Berto called him. He had something for Eddie. Its red body twitching and moving. He had seen a centipede on a wood and he nearly touched it with his hands. “What do you think you would feel?” Berto asked but Eddie did not answer. He squatted to look at the reptile. Eddie volunteered that he could carry it dead. Berto agreed, and told him that he did not kill the centipede because he knew that Eddie would like it but this time, the centipede is much bigger compared to last year. Eddie made sure that the centipede was already dead before wrapping it into a handkerchief.

Delia was sitting in her throne, facing the window while she was embroidering a piece of cloth. Delia, not knowing the presence of his little brother, went near her, threw the centipede on her lap.
His sister shrieked and the strip of white sheet flew off. She shot up from her chair, turned around and she saw him but she collapsed again to her chair clutching her breast, doubled up with pain. The centipede had fallen to the floor. “You did it,” she gasped. “You tried to kill me. You‘ve health… life… you tried…” Her voice dragged off into a pain-stricken moan. I was engulfed by a sudden feeling of pity and guilt. “But it‘s dead!” Eddie cried kneeling before her. “It‘s dead! Look! Look!” He snatched up the centipede and crushed its head between his fingers. “It‘s dead!” His sister did not move. He held the centipede before her like a hunter displaying the tail of a deer, save that the centipede felt thorny in my hand.