This is the second draft of a short story that I wrote a while back. I am a bit displeased with the results, but I've invested too much for a total overhaul. How true with life!
The guests told Walter that they felt as if they had traveled to another country when they visited his home. Perhaps what they really felt, is that they had traveled with Pizarro himself to Cajamarca, and that they had witnessed a massacre. Only in Caramoor, it was not the Incans who were slaughtered; it was time and distance and culture and everything that could die did die. So nothing that survived in the halls of the mansion could ever die anymore, for pretty things like paintings and old swords and reliefs could live for a very long time, without context or soul. One man's suffering and another's genius were owned by Walter Rosen and hung up among the ruins in the rooms and corridors, like a fantastic museum of cauterized splendor.
Read "Caramoor" here. (
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