Cages
…. People began to arrive for mass. Elderly ladies in dark coats came and shook umbrellas in the doorway. Men put out cigarettes and took off their hats. A woman arrived, carrying a heavy, square cage which bounced against her hip. In the cage, dressed in a clown's outfit, was a small monkey which toppled over rhythmically and bared its teeth when the woman stopped to push pieces of fruit through the bars. The woman said something to it that Joseph could not hear properly, though it sounded stern, and she covered the cage with her white headscarf and went inside the church, tidying her hair away from her face …..
by Andrew Michael Hurley