Joyful by Robert Hillman

Author:Robert Hillman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC000000
ISBN: 9781921961632
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2014-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

part five

Leon, Emmanuel,

Jennifer

chapter 17

William Wordsworth

‘I DREAMED of your death!’ wrote Emmanuel Delli.

Ah, the benison of sleep! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! But seriously, Dr Mark. How can you bear to live with yourself? I would like to know. I really would. When you wake in the morning, do you think: ‘Why do I not dream that I’m dead? Why does Manny have all the fun?’ Oh but it is not just my dream, Dr Mark! So many enjoy the same dream! Even your family! Even poor little Klara, Dr Mark! She writes to me each day! ‘Uncle Manny,’ she says, ‘come in the night and cut Papa’s throat, I beg you!’ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Best wishes, Dr Mark! Not really.

I remain, forever, Emmanuel Delli.

Delli read through what he’d written with his usual pleasure and approval—this was his hundredth message to Mark Averescu, about that—pressed SEND, then leaned back in his chair while he contemplated his next message.

The window of the spare bedroom overlooked a lawn bordered by crimson fuchsias, a laurel hedge, a grove of lemon trees and a herb patch dominated by an ancient rosemary bush grown almost as tall as a tree. In the centre of the lawn stood a rotary clothesline that whined and clanked as it revolved. A full week’s washing was pegged on the line, Delli’s wife Daanya being a conscientious observer of water restrictions. All of the pleated white boxer shorts favoured by the professor and purchased in lots of a dozen from Corrigans in London were grouped neatly along an outer strand of the line. His socks, plain black and long enough to wear folded just beneath the knee, also from Corrigans, were hung on two inside strands. His singlets, shirts and handkerchiefs occupied a further quarter of the clothesline. Daanya’s own underwear, scarves, blouses, dresses, socks and pantyhose were kept strictly to the far side of the clothesline, at the professor’s insistence.

‘I return, with sadness,’ wrote Delli in a message addressed to the Indigo Examiner,

to my familiar theme of these past three years: the reckless attire of the girls and young women of our shire. On Monday afternoon of this week, I was walking in the memorial park with my wife when we came across three girls lounging on the grass in their school uniforms—I would put their age at fourteen or fifteen. The skirts of all three girls were so disarrayed as to reveal their undergarments, providing an incitement to any male of the town who happened to be in their proximity. These three girls seemed completely unaware of the state of their attire, or is it possible that they were all too aware and were rather pleased with themselves? May I offer, once more, a warning to parents who have been overwhelmed by the salacious propaganda of our media? Your daughters are at considerable risk.

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