The Hunters by Claire Messud

Author:Claire Messud [Messud, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The Hunters

Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.

—BAUDELAIRE

At one time not so very long ago, for reasons that would not be worth explaining, I found myself temporarily installed in a flat on the outer reaches of London's Maida Vale. The area would more honestly have been called Kilburn, but the estate agent doubtless feared that the exorbitant rent, calculated precisely to attract foreigners such as myself to her properties (on the misguided but dearly held principle that you get what you pay for), was frankly irreconcilable with the word "Kilburn," which evoked to the even superficially informed visitor teetering toothless Irishmen and snarling pit bull terriers looming against a backdrop of garish discount shops, fly-kissed butchers' displays and cratered pavement.

This stereotypical view was not, entirely, unfounded, and had the estate agent so much as whispered the word "Kilburn" to me, I would doubtless have found the fluttering polyester scarves and soaped windows of the nearby High Road less quaint and more menacing than, in the event, I did. But when she showed me the flat—she was a shy girl of twenty-two or -three, with a perfectly groomed plait and a rash of red spots about her chin, which vulnerability somehow, seemingly (and falsely, as of course it transpired) rendered her incapable of dissimulation—I believed her when she said it was in Maida Vale and, having no idea where Kilburn was in relation to that Elysian field, or vale, indeed, and, it has to be said, misled by the sunlight glittering through the trees and by the newly painted portico, I failed even to bat an eye when we passed in front of the rather sordid establishment draped in green velvet called The New Kilburn Tandoori.

I admit it: I was foolish. I was taken in by the high rent. I had been looking for some days and was losing patience with my drab, ill-smelling and overpriced Paddington hotel. Besides which, the real estate agent told me—and this was her only out-and-out lie, but a significant one, which I hold against her and on account of which I wish upon her an eternal rash of spots—that the canal of Little Venice, that delicious and serene attraction which is sufficiently untouristed for each tourist to consider that he has discovered it for himself, and which was my primary reason for seeking a flat in Maida Vale rather than in Hampstead or Chelsea or in centrally located but oft-overlooked and quietly mournful Pimlico—she told me that the canal was but a few short blocks away. She may not have said "short." She certainly said "a few blocks." And it was only after signing the lease that I would discover I had to walk a good twenty arm-swinging minutes on the steamy pavement (it was summer, with my toes and fingers swelling and the diesel-drenched air blackening my mucus membranes), along the klaxon-riddled, drill-thrummed upper reaches of the Edgware Road (from just above, as we are frank, the moment where it becomes the Kilburn High Road) to reach the canal.

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.