Tidings. William Wharton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in me just doesn’t want to close in on the reality of what’s happening. I hate to think of myself as a coward but I guess I am. Lor seems to be taking all this so much more easily than I; I’m sure she’s suffering, it’s more than I can bear, just watching her. It would be so much better if she’d bring it out, talk about things with me. That’s more the way she usually is. I’m the one who’s usually evasive, who can’t bite the bullet, or whatever you’re supposed to do.

      I pry open the lid on the varnish can. The thick, virtually clear varnish is like concentrated glass. I’ll be spreading it, making the surfaces seem permanently wet, as if it were all new, not old and crumbling.

      I sweep and clear out the area by our beds and the wash table. I begin brushing away. The varnish sinks into the dull, dry, roughened wood and brings out the warm colors, the natural grain. My soul glows again; I stroke with the length of the boards, long even sweeps.

      I’ll only be doing a portion of the floor at a time. This is a fast-drying varnish; I might finish in one day.

      As I carefully brush varnish into the corners, I realize varnishing is much like my personal ethic and aesthetic. It’s a way of taking what’s there, or seems to be there, and making it more visible. I don’t know how this fits into the Camus theme of ‘cherish your illusions’, but somehow I feel it does, in an American sort of way. I’m protecting the surface of things, preserving; at the same time making things look better than they really are. That can’t be all bad, can it?

      I work my way around the room in bliss. I varnish the ragged dish cupboard I built a dozen years ago from wood salvaged while tearing down an old shed beside the mill. I varnish our bread holder, the barometer, the millstone boom. Long ago it was used to lift and move the millstones, and is now supporting a suspended five-light chandelier.

      I do the mantel over our fireplace. I varnish the huge table we built across the original millstones, still in place. I varnish our food cabinet; the door to the upper grange and, of course, all the floor; putting down planks so we can go from one part of the room to the other. I’m varnishing one of the supporting beams when Ben taps me on the shoulder.

      ‘Hey, Dad, look here, you forgot the firewood.’

      That does it. The knot in my psyche is loosened up a little; also I’ve run out of varnish. We’ll have one half-shiny beam for Christmas.

      Now, the mill smells like one of the ateliers around our place in Paris, where they fake original Louis Quinze and Louis Seize furniture.

      After we eat lunch we give Ben his airplane. He’s thrilled. Together, we get it constructed by three o’clock. He says he wants his birthday dinner at Madame Le Page’s, the local restaurant up on the hill, but his dessert must be a real mother-baked cake down here in the mill. His preference for the main dish, if it’s possible, is pintade, French guinea hen. Lor goes across to Madame Le Moine’s to phone and see if it’s possible. She comes back smiling, humming, singing and skipping so I don’t even ask.

      ‘They’re also going to have french fries and jambon du Morvan for him. Madame Le Page is so considerate.’

      Ben and I are up on Maggie’s hill adjusting angles of wings, turning ailerons and finger-winding the rubber-band-driven propeller, when Monsieur Boudine comes along the path up to us.

      Actually, at that moment, I’m on a ladder trying to detach Ben’s airplane carefully from the high branches of an oak tree. As a result of bitter experience we always have a ladder and long stick up there with us. The stick has a forked V on the end of it to push gently up under the airplane and dislodge it. Trying to shake a fragile model plane out of a tree or pull it down through the branches can have disastrous effects.

      In summer, we design and build our own, both gliders and power-driven. We’ve experimented with motor-driven planes, free-flight and U-control, but the noise, the smell of the gasoline, the thrust and speed of the machines weren’t what we wanted; our planes must be as much like birds as possible.

      I’m up on our ladder with the stick, nudging the plane loose when Monsieur Boudine arrives. Ben is afraid of heights, so the really high hang-ups are usually for me. Finally I get just the right leverage and the plane comes fluttering down. Ben starts to run after it.

      ‘Wait a minute, Ben; let me down off this ladder first.’

      Ben’s been holding the foot of our ladder so it won’t slip from the tree crotch where it’s wedged. I’m not too crazy about heights myself. I jump the last two rungs, walk over and shake hands with Monsieur Boudine.

      I’m always uncomfortable with this man. Loretta is afraid of him and I understand why. There’s something wild there, something untamed, a slyness, secretiveness like a hunting animal. Loretta told me once he’s the archetype of what all women fear in all men, a genealogical throwback to a maleness which can’t be conditioned to society.

      His family lives in the next village. He’s fathered nine children; seven girls and two sons. One of the sons, a really likable boy, would, every summer, give Ben and other children of the village, rides in an old-fashioned donkey cart. His name was Thierry but he was killed six months ago in a motorcycle accident.

      When I first contacted Monsieur Boudine about our Christmas tree, I tried commiserating with him. The worst thing in the world I can think of is outliving any of our children. It’s ten times worse than what’s probably about to happen to us now.

      Monsieur Boudine lifted his hat, a weather-beaten old-time brown felt hat with a light part where there was once a silk band. He wears it brim down, all the way round, so you can scarcely see his soft, deep-sunken, yellow-brown eyes. It’s as if he’s perpetually protecting himself from either the sun or a rainstorm.

      He ran his hand over his full head of wavy gray hair and shook his head once, the way Pom Pom, his donkey, would shake off a single fly in his eye. Sometimes I think Monsieur Boudine’s feeble-minded, a fecund throwback of some kind. Lor might be right, she usually is. This head shake was his only response.

      Mike claims Monsieur Boudine’s the original nature boy, knows every bush, tree, root, mushroom along all the paths through all the woods in the area. He spends entire days tromping alone through deserted countryside.

      At this point, I can see Monsieur Boudine might know his plants, but he doesn’t have much idea what a Christmas tree’s all about. He’s dragging behind him a two-foot-high spindly pine spine that wouldn’t make a proper table ornament. He’s all smiles, for him. Most times his face is set in a passive, resistant mope, like a mule. He and Pom Pom are a natural pair.

      I take the Christmas tree branch and try to act enthusiastic; Ben has turned away in total disgust. I try to give him some money but he declines because Pom Pom uses our fields. Uses is right. He ate the only sweet corn crop I’ve ever been able to grow and nibbled to bare sticks three young apple trees, two peach trees, an apricot and a cherry tree.

      I take his olive branch of a tip to a pine tree. After all it is Christmas. But my mind is racing. Where can I get a genuine eight-to-ten-foot Christmas tree at this last moment? Can I con poor Ben on his birthday eve into a treenapping? It doesn’t seem fair, also he’s deathly afraid of the dark.

      But, can I present a bush, a branch, a twig, as Christmas tree to our two daughters after transporting them six thousand miles, away from California and Arizona sunshine, their parties, their friends, their comfort and ease; dragging them unwillingly into this cold, winter-dark, lonesome valley in a stone-hard, wood-heavy, primitive mill СКАЧАТЬ