The Pagan House. David Flusfeder

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       4

      Edgar awoke in light. Foreign dusty smells, his penis gripped hard in his hand, the taste of night and linen in his mouth. He encouraged this moment of utter unfamiliarity to stretch, with him growing inside it—and that first, good, moment was succeeded by one even better, when he remembered where he was, a new-found place.

      At home, he would hear traffic in the main road, the groaning of water-pipes, the drone of his mother’s radio on those days that Jeffrey wasn’t staying over, all the rumble of a London morning. Here, in Vail, there was birdsong outside and frogs croaking, and a rustle of leaves, all of which were delightful at first and then unnerving. The dawn light pouring through the glass walls and ceiling of the sleeping porch made the room seem shipboard, the sky turned to sea. He stayed in bed, stretching, yawning, waiting for the voices and clatters of a usual day or the reassuring sound of his mother, until hunger drove him out in search of food.

      Edgar, starving for carbohydrates and fruit juice, in his new chinos and T-shirt, stepped out on to the landing. He had expected the business of the morning to be transacted all around him but he seemed to be the only one up. There had been voices; now he heard only the creak of the corridor floor under his feet, the squeak of the stairs. On the ground floor he could walk more freely and soon was joined by an imaginary companion, a mincing European, maybe Italian or French, could even be Spanish, who wore flamboyantly long white sleeves with lace ruffs and carried a clipboard and assiduously noted down all of Edgar’s instructions.

      ‘I think we’ll need to move the kitchen from here to here,’ Edgar said commandingly. ‘And the bathroom, of course.’ He felt a slight pang for both rooms, which had done him no harm, but he must be ruthless, make his stamp of ownership plain. ‘And I think we’ll lower that ceiling and raise that one, and maybe that floor ought to become that wall, and do you think two indoor swimming-pools are too much …?’

      He paused, tilted his head, cocked his ear, allowed space for his flouncy architect-designer to offer his highly cultivated, overpaid, artistically considered response, which lordly Edgar merely brushed aside—

      ‘… or not enough at all?! I want four swimming-pools thank you very much. Ha! And I want a snooker room they-ah, and a games room they-ah, and my father will be in his study, there …’ and here Edgar lowered his voice, squeezed his chin flat to his chest and waddled as if he were the fattest man in the world into his grandmother’s living room, narrowly avoiding the early-morning boy-trap of a wire magazine rack, ‘… and here, and here-ah, what are we going to do? Hmn? What are we going to do with you? What in the world are we going to do with you? What in the whole—’ Edgar shot a nervous look around before continuing ‘—fucking world are we going to do with you? What do you think, Alfonso? What’s your considered opinion now, my friend? Answer me Alfonso. Answer me, right now! Oh God, I’m so bored with your ideas, is that what they teach you at the Sorbonne? You’re fired. That’s right. Fired. I shall draw up the plans myself. Goodbye.’

      The rejected architect-cum--designer threw himself on his ex-employer’s mercy. He was losing all dignity: he cajoled, threatened, pleaded, he wept. He poured down curses on Edgar, then repented, blessed him, his family, his mother, who reminded him of his own, after which ensued a long impossible-to-follow story set in a hillside village, involving a donkey, two gypsies and the winter wind, and Edgar had had quite enough. This display, quite frankly, sickened him.

      ‘Enough! Alfonso! Please. Remember you are a man.’

      Edgar made his heart hard and turned his face away and went back to the kitchen, and the broken Alfonso crawled after him, still weeping, his suede jeans smeared with dirt from the floor, his black curls tumbling, his white bullfighter’s shirt ripped.

      Edgar poured himself a glass of chocolate milk from the refrigerator and downed it in one thirsty morning gulp and poured himself a second, which he measured against his fingers and sipped slowly from, contemplating his day.

      ‘Edward.’

      ‘Good СКАЧАТЬ