The crippled man in William Trevor’s story lives on a pension. He lives on a farm with his “cousin” Martina, an interesting character who wants the house painted.
But the story is about two stateless brothers who come to paint the house and are sidelined by days of rain. Because they have no legal protections and can’t complain if they are mistreated or cheated, they watch every move their employer makes. They look for meaning in every gesture and review every conversation as if they had a transcript. They read between the lines.
Survival was their immediate purposes, their hope that there might somewhere be a life that was more than they yet knew.
I have known people like that in this country. I think Trevor captured them in one sentence.
• Source: William Trevor, Selected Stories; New York: Viking, 2010. “The Crippled Man” is on pp. 10-33. The quotation is on p. 17.
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