PLOT

The Glass Snail is an interactive story where you can chose the chapters you want to read, the beginnings and the endings (chosen previously by the author).

When we begin to read the story we encounter the First Crossroads where you can choose between two chapters: Mrs Hatshepsut or Mr. David Senenmut, Arquitect.

I decided to read first Mrs Hatshepsut’s chapter. This woman works in lingerie’s store, every morning she wakes up with a feeling of loneliness and passes her life stealing one thing, giving away another person. The protagonist is a kind of kleptomaniac, and she does this because she feels lonely. She steels things to people and then put them in another person’s pocket. One day she stole a lighter to a mysterious man which have an imprint: MOSES III and an inscription: If you strike me three times, your wish will be granted. She put in the man’s pocket a pocket mirror and then she went to work at the store. A man came into her shop and she again will steal something. This time is a little gold box. Again she introduces another thing in the man’s pocket: the lighter. The man ordered the girl to try on a nightdress he wanted to buy for his wife because they have the same size. Then she appears with the nightdress and he looks at her astonished. He is not going to buy the nightdress to his wife because this nightdress will make him to think about the girl in the lingerie’s store. When the man lefts the store, she opens the little box: “Inside the box lay something magical, the purpose of which she could not at once guess. It was a beautiful glass snail filled with silver powder, sealed with pink wax, with a wick in the center. It looked like a festive candle. Miss Hatshepsut wanted to light it but suddenly remembered she was wearing a nightdress, she was sitting in a store, and she did not have a lighter.”

Automatically, the chapter that now appears is Mr. David Senenmut, Architect. The story begins telling that Senenmut’s wife takes a snail glass that she had bought the day before (as a present for her ex-husband) and manipulates it: “So instead of a dedication the ex–Mrs. Senenmut carefully extracted the wax seal and threw the pink powder from the snail’s shell into the washbasin, and in its place she poured a deadly silver sand from a small bottle on which was written: “High explosive. Inflammable.” Afterwards, she painstakingly replaced the wax seal with the wick in the center.” She clearly has the intention of killing him. She puts the present into the table and lefts her apartment (knowing that afterwards her husband was going to make a visit to the apartment). Mr. Senenmut no longer lived in the apartment and he had to rent a separated apartment, but he still continued visiting his ex-wife house. “He was permitted to visit whenever he wanted on condition the former Mrs. Senenmut was not there at the time. He could watch television, help himself to a drink, but he was not allowed to take anything out of the apartment. That was the agreement.” As usual, he goes to his wife’s apartment when she is not in and he sees the golden box “He could not resist the temptation. He picked it up as if committing a theft, and indeed, he was stealing it. Then he went down into the street.”

He visits a bar and thinks about things he can steal. Then he sees lingerie’s store and a pile of nightdresses and thinks about stealing one. He asks the girl a nightdress size 8, which is his woman’s size. Then he asks the girl if she can try on the nightdress because she is the same size than her wife. She goes into a cubicle and during this time Mr. Senenmut rolled up one of the size 6 nightdresses and stuffed it in his pocket, leaving on the counter an empty box. He comes back home and his ex-wife has left him a message: “I know you came round. And I know what you did. You took something again. The little gold box with the bow. Don’t worry. I haven’t told the police. For the moment. This time you only took the present I’d bought for you for Christmas . . .”

He then realises that he doesn’t have the box and in his pocket there was a man’s lighter that he hadn’t seen before (the girl in the lingerie’s store had put it in his pocket and had stolen him the box).

After this we go into a new chapter called The Daughter Who Might Have Been Called Neferure. Mr. Senenmut has passed the night in a near hotel. He came back to the shop and told the woman this: “I’ve come to apologize, Miss. Yesterday, I played a trick on you and that isn’t nice. I don’t have a wife and I didn’t want to buy a nightdress. I just wanted to see you in the nightdress. You looked so lovely in it that I couldn’t sleep all night. I could hardly wait for the shops to open so I could buy you an identical one as a present.” He asks her if he had left a golden box in the store the day before and she answered no. He asked her, “Did you have a daughter once? A long time ago? Years and years ago?” “Ah, you mean four thousand years ago? Perhaps I did. But I don’t have one now. And that’s why I spend my Christmasses alone. Would you like to come to my place for Christmas Eve and look after her for me?” “Look after who?” “Why, the daughter I don’t have. Here’s my address.” When he lefts the girl’s house he said that he knew the name of her daughter: it was called Neferure.

Now we go into the Second Crossroads. We have the option to choose between two chapters, the final chapter in this case. One will bring you to a tragic ending and the other one to a happy ending.

The Christmas Candle is the tragic ending. It starts with Mrs. Hatshepsut that is getting dressed and preparing a supper for her husband. “She carefully unwrapped the gold paper and took out the glass snail. She did not like the silvery powder filling the shell. So she gently lifted the wax seal and poured the contents down the washbasin. Then she washed the shell, dried it, and refilled it with some of her own perfumed blue bath powder. After this she replaced the wax seal with the small wick. Now the snail could be once again used as a decorative candle, and it glittered beautifully from its blue abdomen.” She had manipulated the content of the glass snail and is waiting for him. They gave each other Christmas’ presents: the glass snail for him and a lighter for her. “Lovely!” exclaimed Miss Hatshepsut, handing him the lighter. “You light the glass snail while I bring supper.”

Senenmut took the lighter and read the inscription aloud: “If you strike me three times, your wish will be granted.” When he does this three times the apartment explode and all that remains are their names and they can be found in the history of Egipt.

Now the author provides a link to the Historical Background where it is explained the story of the powerful pharaohs of the 18^th dynasty.

The alternative ending, is called The Lighter. Here is narrated the Christmas evening that Mr. Senenmut spent with the girl in the lingerie’s store. He brings her a present and a bottle of wine. His present to her is the glass snail filled with blue powder and her present to him is a lighter. “She put her arms round David Senenmut, the architect, and gave him a kiss.” “You light the glass snail while I bring supper.”

The first and the second time he struck the lighter it worked, but the third time it didn’t work.

“It’s no use!” said architect Senenmut to Miss Hatshepsut. “It’s not going to grant my wish.” “Oh, yes it is, believe me,” she said and kissed her architect David Senenmut as no one had ever kissed him before.”

At last, they found in the floor the instructions on how to work the lighter:

“WARNING! DANGER! Keep away from fire.
This is not a lighter. It is a special weapon.
It is filled with dynamite and will explode
after it is struck for the third consecutive time.”

They at the end stay together and thanks to the malfunction of the lighter they survived.

http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/glasssnail/index.htm

Published by Word Circuits, August 2003

[Second Paper] – [Introduction] – [Biography] – [Space] – [Conclusion]

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Sara de Julián Ponce
Universitat de València Press
sadeju@alumni.uv.es