Our story today is called "The Cask of Amontillado." It was written by Edgar Allan Poe. Here is Larry West with the story.

(MUSIC)
Storyteller:
Fortunato and I both were members of very old and important Italian
families. We used to play together when we were children.
Fortunato
was bigger, richer and more handsome than I was. And he enjoyed making
me look like a fool. He hurt my feelings a thousand times during the
years of my childhood. I never showed my anger, however. So, he thought
we were good friends. But I promised myself that one day I would punish
Fortunato for his insults to me.
Many years passed. Fortunato
married a rich and beautiful woman who gave him sons. Deep in my heart I
hated him, but I never said or did anything that showed him how I
really felt. When I smiled at him, he thought it was because we were
friends.
He did not know it was the thought of his death that made me smile.
Everyone
in our town respected Fortunato. Some men were afraid of him because he
was so rich and powerful. He had a weak spot, however. He thought he
was an excellent judge of wine. I also was an expert on wine. I spent a
lot of money buying rare and costly wines. I stored the wines in the
dark rooms under my familys palace.
Our palace was one of the
oldest buildings in the town. The Montresor family had lived in it for
hundreds of years. We had buried our dead in the rooms under the palace.
These tombs were quiet, dark places that no one but myself ever
visited.
Late one evening during carnival season, I happened to
meet Fortunato on the street. He was going home alone from a party.
Fortunato was beautiful in his silk suit made of many colors: yellow,
green, purple and red. On his head he wore an orange cap, covered with
little silver bells. I could see he had been drinking too much wine. He
threw his arms around me. He said he was glad to see me.
I said I was glad to see him, too because I had a little problem.

"What is it?" he asked, putting his large hand on my shoulder.
"My
dear Fortunato," I said, "Im afraid I have been very stupid. The man
who sells me wine said he had a rare barrel of Amontillado wine. I
believed him and I bought it from him. But now, I am not so sure that
the wine is really Amontillado."

"What!" he said, "A cask of Amontillado at this time of year. An entire barrel? Impossible!"
"Yes,
I was very stupid. I paid the wine man the full price he wanted without
asking you to taste the wine first. But I couldnt find you and I was
afraid he would sell the cask of Amontillado to someone else. So I
bought it."
"A cask of Amontillado!" Fortunato repeated. "Where is it?"
I
pretended I didnt hear his question. Instead I told him I was going to
visit our friend Lucresi. "He will be able to tell me if the wine is
really Amontillado," I said.
Fortunato laughed in my face. "Lucresi cannot tell Amontillado from vinegar."

I smiled to myself and said "But some people say that he is as good a judge of wine as you are."

Fortunato grabbed my arm. "Take me to it," he said. "Ill taste the Amontillado for you."

"But
my friend," I protested, "it is late. The wine is in my wine cellar,
underneath the palace. Those rooms are very damp and cold and the walls
drip with water."

"I dont care," he said. "I am the only person who can tell you if your wine man has cheated you. Lucresi cannot!"
Fortunato
turned, and still holding me by the arm, pulled me down the street to
my home. The building was empty. My servants were enjoying carnival. I
knew they would be gone all night.
I took two large candles, lit
them and gave one to Fortunato. I started down the dark, twisting
stairway with Fortunato close behind me. At the bottom of the stairs,
the damp air wrapped itself around our bodies.

"Where are we?" Fortunato asked. "I thought you said the cask of Amontillado was in your wine cellar."
"It
is," I said. "The wine cellar is just beyond these tombs where the dead
of my family are kept. Surely, you are not afraid of walking through
the tombs.
He turned and looked into my eyes. "Tombs?" he said. He began to cough. The silver bells on his cap jingled.
"My poor friend," I said, "how long have you had that cough?"

"Its nothing," he said, but he couldnt stop coughing.

"Come,"
I said firmly, "we will go back upstairs. Your health is important.You
are rich, respected, admired, and loved. You have a wife and children.
Many people would miss you if you died. We will go back before you get
seriously ill. I can go to Lucresi for help with the wine."
"No!" he cried. "This cough is nothing. It will not kill me. I wont die from a cough."

"That
is true," I said, "but you must be careful." He took my arm and we
began to walk through the cold, dark rooms. We went deeper and deeper
into the cellar.

Finally, we arrived in a small room. Bones were
pushed high against one wall. A doorway in another wall opened to an
even smaller room, about one meter wide and two meters high. Its walls
were solid rock.
"Here we are," I said. "I hid the cask of
Amontillado in there." I pointed to the smaller room. Fortunato lifted
his candle and stepped into the tiny room. I immediately followed him.
He stood stupidly staring at two iron handcuffs chained to a wall of the
tiny room. I grabbed his arms and locked them into the metal handcuffs.
It took only a moment. He was too surprised to fight me.
I stepped outside the small room.
"Where is the Amontillado?" he cried.
"Ah
yes," I said, "the cask of Amontillado." I leaned over and began
pushing aside the pile of bones against the wall. Under the bones was a
basket of stone blocks, some cement and a small shovel. I had hidden the
materials there earlier. I began to fill the doorway of the tiny room
with stones and cement.
By the time I laid the first row of stones
Fortunato was no longer drunk. I heard him moaning inside the tiny room
for ten minutes. Then there was a long silence.

I finished the
second and third rows of stone blocks. As I began the fourth row, I
heard Fortunato begin to shake the chains that held him to the wall. He
was trying to pull them out of the granite wall.
I smiled to
myself and stopped working so that I could better enjoy listening to the
noise. After a few minutes, he stopped. I finished the fifth, the sixth
and the seventh rows of stones. The wall I was building in the doorway
was now almost up to my shoulders.

Suddenly, loud screams burst
from the throat of the chained man. For a moment I worried. What if
someone heard him? Then I placed my hand on the solid rock of the walls
and felt safe. I looked into the tiny room, where he was still
screaming. And I began to scream, too. My screams grew louder than his
and he stopped.
It was now almost midnight. I finished the eighth,
the ninth and the tenth rows. All that was left was a stone for the
last hole in the wall. I was about to push it in when I heard a low
laugh from behind the stones.

The laugh made the hair on my head stand up. Then Fortunato spoke, in a sad voice that no longer sounded like him.
He
said, "Well, you have played a good joke on me. We will laugh about it
soon over a glass of that Amontillado. But isnt it getting late. My wife
and my friends will be waiting for us. Let us go."
"Yes," I replied, "let us go."
I
waited for him to say something else. I heard only my own breathing.
"Fortunato!" I called. No answer. I called again. "Fortunato!" Still no
answer.
I hurried to put the last stone into the wall and put the
cement around it. Then I pushed the pile of bones in front of the new
wall I had built.
That was fifty years ago. For half a century now, no one has touched those bones. "May he rest in peace!"
Announcer:
You have just heard the story "The Cask of Amontillado. " It was
written by Edgar Allan Poe and adapted for Special English by Dona de
Sanctis. Your storyteller was Larry West. For VOA Special English, this
is Shep ONeal.