The Book of Rapture. Nikki Gemmell
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Название: The Book of Rapture
Автор: Nikki Gemmell
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные любовные романы
isbn: 9780007335718
isbn:
For the world has lost its youth, and the times begin to wax old.
Motl and you battened down the hatches on your country’s strife. Created your little bauble of enchantment far away from everything while you sat the new politics out. And the new life was good, varnished with love and light. Motl was the teacher. He was born to it, he should have done it from the start. He’d grab the kids by the shoulders and tell them to go to the window and look, look, you wallies, because there was never nothing there. A cloud like a rocking horse!’ ‘A one-legged seagull!’ A snail’s frilled foot!’ ‘Look at the sea inhaling and exhaling but it’s the tide and it’s governed by the moon.’ ‘Look at the stained-glass window of that grasshopper’s wing, that’s your art lesson.’ ‘Biology, the carpet beetle’s defensive curl’ ‘Don’t ask me one more time, What are we doing next? Work it out for yourself! Explore everything, debate, rip the world apart. I want thinkers. Children who question everything. Who have vigorous, audacious, independent thought!’ And eventually, they forgot to ask, What are we doing next?
Taking it in turns to dance with their cheeks to his belt buckle and their feet on the pedals of his shoes as you’d sing your favourite song line, ‘I will wrap you in kisses’, and demonstrate. And everyone rushing outside when dolphins leapt past and standing in a row and whooping at the lovely oblivious joy of them, and at night Motl and you lifting each child solemnly to the high canopy of stars and telling them not to worry because you’re all in the magic house now, it will look after you, you’re safe here, you’re safe.
And now, and now, you wear them like a coat. Their squirmy demanding heat. That can never be taken from you. You envy the air in the room they’re in, rubbing up close. The silence here is a presence, constantly watching, listening, taking note. You need to be released into the outrageously beautiful world. Can’t. Bear. This.
The sun and all light have forever fused themselves into my heart and upon my skin.
Out of the window a ferocious sunset falls away. The colour of blood in it. Lightning spits and flickers in the distance as if it’s a faulty fluorescent light. A tree right outside tosses its branches at the approaching storm like a horse spooked. ‘No panicking, all right.’ Soli. A tremor in her voice she can’t iron out. She checks her new watch. So, obediently, do her little brothers. They all received them on your final night. They say 1707. The kids don’t get it. What happened to the past day? They woke just after 4 p.m., on the bed, in a line, on their backs. They’ve never slept so late in their lives. And they’re still tired but it’s an unearthly tired as if some enormous rake is dragging them down and pulling them back into sleep.
They’re fighting it. Tidge: shaking his arms like an actor warming up. Mouse: jogging fast on the spot. Soli: biting her lip because she’s the eldest and is used to getting what she wants and no way is that sleep having her back. Because of the things that now happen in it. Because it can’t be trusted. Because of the terror that could envelop them if unconsciousness, once again, gets its chance.
We have got ready the fire whose smoke will enwrap them: and if they implore help, helped shall they be with water like molten brass which will scald their faces.
Motl and you wormed that fat little teapot of a house into all their hearts. You both dreaded a blunting when wonder would not cradle them but it never came, for the two of you pulled happiness around them like a wondrous cape. So much of it in this briny new life! You’d forgotten how to be a mother immersed in Project Indigo, but Salt Cottage taught you that a nanny makes you afraid of your kids and it’s so much richer to do it all yourself. They chisel out your deepest feelings, your wildest love and rage and frustration and euphoria, they haul you to the coalface of life. You could be distant, remote without them; but as a parent you were forced to participate. And to your shock you revelled in it. These were the shining hours; the kids burnished your life.
There were complaints, of course. About the new poorness. Crockery chipping and not being replaced, duvets stuffed with newspaper, baths topped up with saucepans from the stove. Complaints about windows encrusted with salt because there wasn’t a cleaning lady any more and about your cooking which you never did quite well enough (‘Not cereal for dinner again.’ ‘My repertoire is extremely limited, all right? I’m a scientist, not a cook. Give me a Bunsen burner and you’d really see something bubble up.’ Cue Motl, cowering under the table, ‘No, no, anything but that!’).
And gradually the whining stopped because each of you knew that Salt Cottage meant one thing above anything else — survival. You were safe here, you were safe. And it was enough.
He who is an alien to grace seeks and finds naught but disgrace and adversity: if thorny brambles grow, it is the requital of his sowing.
‘Hey, I remember something now.’ Mouse presses his knuckles to his temples. ‘It’s coming … from last night…’ He’s screwing up his eyes as if trying to squeeze memory out. You lean.
‘Okay I was lying in my bed. Trying to fall to sleep. Then Dad came in. He lay down next to me and put his hand over my mouth. There was a hanky on it. He was whispering, "Sssh, little man, sssh," but his voice was full… like, like there was crying in it. And I was breathing in but feeling funny and then Dad was holding me and clamping me tight and then he was sealing off my talking and then, and then, this is the really scary bit, it was like I was slipping into this sea of the inkiest, scariest black, like some body in a coffin being slid from a ship and then the dark was crowding over me and just before I was completely under Dad was curling around me and clinging on, tight, like I was some life buoy in this vast ocean of fear …’ Your little boy looks straight at his brother and sister. Frightened eyes. A blink. ‘Then no dreams. Nothing. Just this enormous blank …’
‘Like being dead.’ Tidge, quiet.
The brothers look at each other. Pins and needles take over their eyes. They’re both blinking like two ships sending out distress signals and the crying’s coming now, a great dumping wave of it; young, so young, too young for this.
Verily every soul has as a surety a guardian over it.
On a clear still night your neighbour, Ulla Ween, came around. A man of the book, flinty and devout. His house was a mile away. He was the only neighbour close. It was a Monday. He often popped in on a Monday for a meal; he lived by himself. He’d supervised your building work with heavy eyelids and weirdly bobbed hair and lips always wet. On this particular Monday Ulla Ween sat at your kitchen table and ate a meal as he always did then licked his plate clean which СКАЧАТЬ