Solar Bones. Mike McCormack

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СКАЧАТЬ each of us in turn to different types of disbelief and frustration because

      have you seen the head on him

      the beard and the hair

      that Methuselah look he’s cultivating

      is it Methuselah or Mad Max

      you can hardly see his face now when he comes on screen, just two eyes stuck in a bush

      he reminds me of your father with that hair

      Jesus, don’t go saying that

      I don’t think he’s shaved since he crossed the equator

      it’s more scarecrow than Old Testament prophet, if that’s what he’s going for

      he say’s it’s hard work, that whole Waltzing Matilda thing, no time for personal grooming or

      hard work my arse, the only photos he’s posted are of himself and the lads around a campfire in a woollen hat, skulling cans of Four X so

      he had to go the other side of the world to do that and

      but I think he’s moving on to some other job shortly, they’ve picked all the fruit in the greater Brisbane area and now they’re thinking of doing some time on a dairy farm and

      what does he know about dairy farming when

      as ever, when Darragh was the subject we fell easily to our separate roles – Agnes, the contentious older sister who looked on his antics with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, Mairead, the doting mother who saw something to be proud of in the blithe way he had set aside his studies to take to the road and myself, the father whose patience was sorely tested and who found himself in a constant state of grating irritation with him – a topic of conversation enlivening and productive of so many different themes and moods that to be reminded

      later, as we drove home, by Mairead of how completely overthrown I had been earlier in the evening reduced me instantly to a shamed helplessness which she probed in that way of hers, warning me there may have been every chance I had reacted more aggressively than I thought so that it was now advisable that I should bethink myself and come to a clearer assessment of what had happened because

      you were frightened

      how do mean

      you were, I was worried you might lash out at someone

      when have I ever lashed out at anyone

      I know, that’s what worried me

      Mairead said, with the darkness passing in a wet glare on the windscreen as we made our way along the narrow secondary roads connecting the sleepy villages of our homeward journey, me in the passenger seat, unused to someone else behind the wheel of my own car, so finding it doubly hard to cope with Mairead’s questions but eventually admitting

      yes I was

      hoping that the subject would be buried quickly once and for all

      I was frightened, both for me and for her, are you saying I overreacted

      no, but I was surprised you reacted as you did – what was it exactly that got you so upset

      there was blood

      yes, it’s different to oils, a big swerve away from her previous work, but I still find it odd that you could be so shocked by it

      I would have thought it would be shocking not to be shocked by it – when did we become so blasé about such things – and she was so poorly as a child

      she wasn’t poorly, she was a bit anemic, low in iron so she had to take a supplement which stained her teeth – did you notice how she had them polished tonight, it gave her that shine –

      I wasn’t looking at her teeth – all that blood – I had an image of her sitting on the side of a bed with a syringe in her arm, that’s the picture that came to me

      for god’s sake Marcus, you’ve no worries about her

      I’m her father, it’s my job to worry, do you know how she harvested it

      harvested it – you’d swear we were talking about one of her organs

      you have a better word

      no, but if she said she was careful then I believe her – look, you need have no worries about a woman who wears a coat like that, they are not likely to put themselves in harm’s way

      that’s nonsense

      no it’s not, so now

      I worried that some new sensitivity to shock and fear had opened up in me, some defect or weakness that might expose me to some unanticipated shame with which I would have no ability to cope, something that would have to be met with definite refutation if the grinding anguish which now churned inside me were to be prevented from growing into something more corrosive and

      not to worry, Mairead continued, it was only blood, it could have been a lot worse

      how could it have been worse

      you could have walked into the gallery and found her standing naked

      why would she be naked

      oh you know, some of these performance artists are pretty out there, she could have been cuddling a pig

      a pig

      yes, or naked and peeing into a

      ok Mairead, I get the picture

      I groaned as she

      drove on through the wet night, passing through those small towns and villages which slept with their empty streets under a sodium shroud, moving on into the narrow bog roads that were unlit but that had a precarious sense of being raised over the sea of heather and scutch grass stretching out on both sides, driving on through the ragged moonlight in which we seemed to be the only car on the road, Mairead taking it easy because

      I’ve never driven these roads at night

      she said, her gaze focused as she kept a steady speed into the bends and sudden turns which

      you never realise how narrow they are till you have to drive them at night, so narrow and twisty

      there’s no rush, just take your time

      I thought you engineers would have straightened all these roads during the boom years

      we were told we had better things for doing with our money – most of the boom money went into bypassing or linking major urban centres – there wasn’t a whole lot spent on bog roads, certainly not a few miles of blue road like this

      blue road

      yes

      what does blue road mean

      blue road means that it is not green road

      blue СКАЧАТЬ