The Snow Queen A Novel (Michael Cunningham) by Michael Cunningham

Author:Michael Cunningham
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780374710347
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2014-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

A NIGHT

None of them had imagined that the canister would be hard to open. It looks like a quart-size paint can, made of brushed aluminum, but unlike a paint can, its lid is clearly meant to be screwed off. No one had suggested trying it out before they got onto the ferry.

Tyler, Barrett, and Liz huddle together at the stern, leaning against the traffic-cone-orange iron railing (the harsh orange that signals emergency); huddled together in part because it’s windier and colder than they’d expected it to be, out in the harbor at night, even in April, but mainly because they don’t want to attract the attention of the blue-uniformed crew members (are they called crew members?), who are surely not looking out to see if anyone is illegally scattering ashes off the boat, but would just as surely intervene if they caught three passengers in the act.

Tyler struggles, as unobtrusively as possible, with the intractable lid.

Spread around them is the black, light-speckled toss of the harbor, with the ferry’s wake—gray-white, alive as smoke—furling out below. It is the most trafficked body of water imaginable. Barges lumber along, dark and silent, enormous, hectored by smaller boats, buzzing little lit-up toys. The ferry has just passed the turreted, slumbering silhouette of Ellis Island, and is approaching the Statue of Liberty, bright verdigris, remote, offering her little light to the charcoal-colored sky.

“Fuck,” Tyler says. “Fuckity fuck fuck.”

Barrett puts a calming hand on his shoulder. This is not mere inconvenience. It renders the ceremony—what there is of ceremony—comic, which is not what any of them had in mind.

Liz says, “Let me try.”

She had at first declined to come, insisted it should be Tyler and Barrett alone (they couldn’t possibly have brought a crowd), but Tyler and Barrett talked her into it. Liz loved Beth, Liz knew Beth before Tyler and Barrett did. And, more important, if difficult to explain—it seemed there should be a woman present.

Tyler is reluctant to give up the canister. Liz, who is particularly irritated by this particular man-fixation, reaches out impatiently. For a moment, they tussle over it, but Tyler, in the hope of remaining as uncomic as possible, lets it go.

“Mm,” Liz says, twisting the lid. “Yeah, it doesn’t want to unscrew, does it?”

“No,” Tyler says. “It doesn’t.” This is not the time for any remark along the lines of, What do you think I am, an idiot? Yeah, right, it doesn’t want to unscrew.

Liz reaches into her bag. “I have a knife,” she says.

Liz would of course have a knife. She’d have the very knife she produces, a Swiss Army Knife, with a dozen different blades, a nail file, scissors, and who knows what else.

“Goddess of utility,” Barrett says.

Liz extracts the nail file, slips it under the canister’s lid.

“Careful,” Tyler says.

At first, the nail file just scrapes ineffectively against the lid’s lipless rim. Then, a little more pressure, and …

It releases. Liz unscrews it slightly, doesn’t open it. She hands it back to Tyler.

He accepts it reluctantly. Barrett keeps his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

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.