Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido

Author:Barbara Trapido
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Each morning over those first few days, as Jack surfaces to a hundred bird calls and to that slice of bright subtropical sky, his first half-awake thoughts are all of Dakar. Then he remembers where he is and he thanks God for the studio. It’s really quite weird to be back here, but he has always loved a few beautiful spaces. He recalls, to his puzzlement, that his landlady had referred to the studio as ‘the garden cottage’. A ‘garden cottage’, as he has already discovered, is a term much in local use for an upgraded one-time servants’ billet. For Jack a cottage is a literary concept, having to do with northern Europe; a picturesque, timber-beamed minihouse, as depicted in those illustrated fairy stories that he long ago read with Josh; a low rustic dwelling, dwarfed by a charming topknot of thatch; wild eglantine and beanstalks clawing at tiny leaded windows. And a witch lurking within, bent double over a cauldron.

Witches in hovels he does know about from his own too personal experience and it’s thanks to his hag-like grandmother, who had dominion over him in ‘the native reserve’; the horror time that carved three years out of what, until then, he had assumed was his rightful childhood at the Silvers’ suburban house. They were years that changed him for ever; years that taught him the ugliness of want and the indignity of ever disclosing emotional need. The hag is probably long dead. Ditto his mother, who abandoned him there at the age of six. He does not know for sure, of course, and frankly he cares less. Good riddance to them both. Gertrude, who dumped him, and the witch, who shook her broom at him; a broom with which she would rearrange the dust of the hovel’s wretched mud floor. Do not think of it, Jack Maseko aka Jacques Moreau. Do not go there.

Jack loathes the imperfections that poverty brings; its power to bend the spine, roughen the hands, blacken and loosen the teeth, make for rheumy eyes and pinched, lopsided cheeks. He loathes its power to compel co-existence with cockroaches and bugs; with mosquito bites and stomach cramps and intestinal worms; its power to bring on birth defects: club feet, untreated squints, blindness and withered legs. But here and now, his studio – this lovely space – is no cottage. The studio is a haven of artful, filtered light. The studio is both perfect and perfectly monochrome. Well, that’s except for the cool greenish tinge to the bathroom’s translucent glass fittings.

Standing, as it does, at the end of a fabulous garden, hidden from the main house by a hedge of tall bamboo, the studio has bougainvillea and a passion fruit vine clambering up a plastered wall that borders his terrace. Azaleas grow on his terrace in large clay tubs and those flowers that he remembers as red-hot pokers. Jack appreciates the privacy and the dimensions of the studio, because in the past he has either lived in cramped back rooms or he has shared.

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.