A cold rain was falling, mixed with snow. Then they looked at each other without speaking. They looked out a window fearfully at the ivy vine. She and Behrman went into the other room. Sue pulled the shade down to cover the window. Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. "Some day I will paint a masterpiece, and we shall all go away." "This is not any place in which one so good as Miss Johnsy shall lie sick," yelled Behrman.
"She is very sick and weak," said Sue, "and the disease has left her mind full of strange ideas." "Are there people in the world with the foolishness to die because leaves drop off a vine? Why do you let that silly business come in her brain?" Sue told him about Johnsy and how she feared that her friend would float away like a leaf. In one area was a blank canvas that had been waiting twenty-five years for the first line of paint. He was a fierce, little, old man who protected the two young women in the studio apartment above him.
He earned a little money by serving as a model to artists who could not pay for a professional model. For years, he had always been planning to paint a work of art, but had never yet begun it. Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor of the apartment building. "I must call Mister Behrman up to be my model for my drawing of an old miner. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." "Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes and lying white and still as a fallen statue. "Johnsy, dear," said Sue, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by tomorrow." I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. And, let me go back to my drawing, so I can sell it to the magazine and buy food and wine for us." Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said – he said the chances were ten to one! Try to eat some soup now. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine. "Oh, I never heard of such a thing," said Sue. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. The cold breath of autumn had stricken leaves from the plant until its branches, almost bare, hung on the bricks. An old ivy vine, going bad at the roots, climbed half way up the wall. What was there to count? There was only an empty yard and the blank side of the house seven meters away. "Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven" and then "ten" and "nine " and then "eight" and "seven," almost together. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward. Sue heard a low sound, several times repeated.
Young artists must work their way to "Art" by making pictures for magazine stories. She began making a pen and ink drawing for a story in a magazine. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. Johnsy lay with her face toward the window. Then she went to Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. "But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages at her funeral, I take away fifty percent from the curative power of medicines."Īfter the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried. "I will do all that science can do," said the doctor. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor there is nothing of the kind." "Bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for example?"
"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples in Italy some day," said Sue. Your friend has made up her mind that she is not going to get well. "And that chance is for her to want to live.
"She has one chance in - let us say ten," he said. One morning, a doctor examined Johnsy and took her temperature. She could see the side of the brick house next to her building. This disease, pneumonia, killed many people. In November, a cold, unseen stranger came to visit the city. Two young women named Sue and Johnsy shared a studio apartment at the top of a three-story building. Many artists lived in the Greenwich Village area of New York. Our story today is called "The Last Leaf." It was written by O. Now, the VOA Special English program AMERICAN STORIES.