The Limit by Rosalind Belben

Author:Rosalind Belben [Belben, Rosalind]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

TIME THAT IS TO BE OR COME HEREAFTER

2

Ilario returns to the cottage. A close relation has come to collect her clothes. The damp has got into them, she says accusingly. He made coffee. Together, silent friends, they look at Anna’s chest of drawers, wardrobe, and shoe cupboard. It is winter, outside the rain is falling, wildly he strips Anna’s sister quite naked in his mind. But she’s a bright young woman of forty, not at all the same. She smokes hard, showering ash. Lipstick on the filter. Her legs are clean and white. The skirt above sheer tights stretches over a rubbery bum. Anna wore, like animal hide, corsets. Until this moment among the suitcases Ilario has not completely realised the difference. His wife’s stale garments are those of an old woman. Huge silky bloomers, woolly vests or bodices, dozens of darned stockings. Shapeless inexplicit trousers made from strange unfashionable material. Viyella blouses, almost new. Hats, gloves, horny handbags, for three decades of weddings, christenings, funerals. Dresses bought to fit a bigger person, slack even on hangers. Shoes, without smell. Enormous curling brogues, molded by bunions, corns, crooked toes. With tiny pockets of mud stuck bone dry to the soles. Squashed because she walked badly. Stained slippers worn furless. Many many jerseys, mainly mauve, lavender, violet, purple. Tweedy coats. A lot of ancient macks, her beloved Burberrys. Sewing things, buttons in tins, picture hooks, safety pins. Hankies in scented sachets. Hairbrushes. The dressing table seems worst. Anna was mucky, she spilt. Dark pink powder puffs up in sudden nauseating clouds. Also she possessed seven empty pots of Ponds Cold Cream, and lips everlastingly sore, raw, lately bitten. Then jewellery, lumpy stones such as amber, garnet. Pomegranate. Ivory beads, her mother’s engagement ring, some valuable broken bits in a box. Ilario is dismayed, wishing it gone, magicked away. A whole jumble sale crosses the floor. Slowly his sister-in-law turns, touches, folds, piles. Curious. Don’t you want to keep this? she asks. I prefer memories. Mmm? We think her husband mad. Ilario, she repeated, pronouncing his name at arm’s length, distastefully mouthing it, Il-ah-rio. Poking in a fresh cigarette. Pity, I have no matches. My lighter’s bust. He supplies a small flame. Blunders, bumps her, mumbles sorry. Leaving her to it he wandered off. The place mine. In which I spent only a few days each year, Anna was alone or it was shut up, the stuff is hers in it, not mine, I own two sextants, our worldly goods are my wife’s, the past belongs to Anna, she hoarded, she cherished, therefore I share the past with the past, her family, otherwise I shall be unfree, objects can be remembered easily. Upstairs, boards creak. He finds a piece of line and ties a turk’s head on the kitchen broom. Clever, how clever! she exclaimed. Ilario smiled. The favourite relation could cuddle the poor man: she doesn’t dare. China, glass. You may take. Really, really. Your home breaks. But on board

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.