The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon

Author:Annabel Lyon [Lyon, Annabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-96256-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

“And this is real Persian silk,” the widow says. “Touch, go on. All these beautiful things are for enjoying. Sight is the least of the senses, I often think. We have tongues and toes and fingertips for a reason, no?”

She’s already had me step out of my sandals so I can walk barefoot across a deep sheepskin rug. Now she’s showing me a painted rose-silk curtain that falls from ceiling to floor. She coaxes it into my hands so I can feel the coolness of it; the tiny imperfections in the skin of my fingertips catch on the sheer surface. She takes the fabric back to rub against her cheek, then twirls her whole body in it. She makes me try. I feel the sheer cool all down the length of me, everything looking pink.

The house of Glycera smells of quince and spice. We settle into a private room, one wall open to a flower garden, for our weaving. She has a large cloth half done, and a new frame for me.

“Where are your daughters?” I ask.

She offers me a basket with many spools of coloured threads. I choose a blue. “I thought, for today, just you and me.” She takes orange for herself and we begin. “How are you feeling?” she asks without looking up from her work.

It’s the doorway I’ve been waiting for, the reason for my visit today. I tell her about Myrmex, and Thaulos, and the little owl, followed by the perfume bottle shaped like an almond, and the gold wire bracelet, and the new vase with the wrestlers on it—the one without the chip.

Glycera sets down her thread and looks at me. “You should have come to me three days ago.” Cooler than I had expected, hoped.

“How do I find Myrmex?”

She does smile then, gently. “Sweetheart, you don’t. He and that money are gone. Why do you not tell your father’s man in Athens? Could he not pay?”

“He’d make me go live with him,” I say. I realize how stupid an objection that sounds. “He doesn’t like me. He thinks I talk too much. I’d have to spend all day indoors and eat with the women.”

“That’s all?” Glycera turns back to her weaving.

“He’d choose my books.”

“And that’s so important to you?”

I have to think about that. When did I last read a book?

“I think it is,” she says. “I think it’s very important to you.”

“Is it?” I say. My face hurts, suddenly, from the effort of not crying.

“I can read, you know.” She selects another thread, a rust. “My husband taught me. He liked me to read to him. And sing, and dance. And—talk, really. He loved to talk. We would have wonderful arguments about all sorts of things. Politics and ideas and art. You’d be surprised how many men prize an intelligent woman.”

“Theophrastos doesn’t.”

“Then he’s a boor.” She sets her work down a second time and repeats the gesture from the party, lifting my chin with a single finger. “Your brows need tweezing.”

She lies me down on a couch and sits beside me.

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.