Nora by Nuala O'Connor

Author:Nuala O'Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Portrait

Trieste

1913

JIM TEACHES NOW AT THE COMMERCIAL SCHOOL AND ENTERTAINS private pupils in the afternoon in our new flat on Via Donato Bramante. We bought some furniture in the Danish style, and the family portraits that Pappie sent Jim—once again certain sure he was dying—dot the walls. What’s even better is that Grant Richards will publish Dubliners and the American, Mr. Pound, has arranged for the novel Jim’s been writing for years and years, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to be serialized in a magazine, beginning on Jim’s birthday. Our fortunes have soared for sure.

I’m trying to fix two rends in Lucia’s best linen frock—Eileen says that Livia Schmitz proclaimed herself appalled when she mentioned that I discard the children’s worn clothing, so I mean Eileen to take word back to the lofty Signora Schmitz that I, too, can be economical, even in good times. Wealthy people have a way of behaving that’s alien to me.

“I’ll show Livia Longhair that I’m as good as her and she has no right to pass comment,” I mutter.

Jim is across from me, smoking slowly and gazing at the paintings of his grandparents that watch over us all. His grandfather, after whom Jim was named, looks like Pappie—he has the same startled eyes and I always think it looks as if he might jump from the canvas and tell us a fanciful yarn in which he himself plays a clever, comical turn.

“Nora,” Jim says, “we need a picture of you.”

“Aren’t there likenesses aplenty of me?” I say, waving with my sewing needle at the frames along the mantelpiece.

“No, not a photograph. We need a painting, a portrait. In honor of Portrait.” He mumbles this, half to himself, then stubs his cigarette and leaps from his chair.

“Where’re you going, Jim?”

“I know just the chap for this.” He throws on coat and hat. “A Venetian I met in a piccola bettola near San Giusto.”

“It would serve you better, my man, not to darken the doors of taverns little or big.” I bite the thread and examine my work; there’s a lumpy scar on the frock now but it will do. “Do you mean to go to that bettola to find this artist?”

“No, he told me where his studio is, in a clattery place near the Porto Vecchio.”

“Jim, there’s a student coming at four, mind you’re back in time.”

He comes and kisses my head. “Fret not, my darling seamstress.”

Off he goes and I’m left with my stitching, the pleasurable tick-tock of the clock, and the occasional bird announcing its awakening from winter sleep. Sometimes being alone is the best thing to happen in my day.

CLOTILDE COMES TO VIA BRAMANTE TO SIT WITH ME AND WE bend our heads to our sewing like two old nonne on a July balcony. We’re not as close as we once were, but there are years of affection between us that can’t be erased by a silly row over money and Stannie and what is between brothers, truly.

“Jim brought

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.