The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

Author:Paul Auster [Auster, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101562604
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1991-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

6

There was no road from the house to the meadow, so Murks drove the jeep straight through the woods. He was apparently an old hand at it, and he charged along at a frenetic pace—maneuvering around the trees with abrupt, hairpin turns, bouncing recklessly over stones and exposed roots, yelling at Nashe and Pozzi to duck clear of hanging branches. The jeep made a tremendous racket, and birds and squirrels scattered as they approached, bolting helter-skelter through the leaf-covered darkness. After Murks had roared along in this way for fifteen minutes or so, the sky suddenly brightened, and they found themselves on a grassy verge studded with low-lying bushes and thin shoots. The meadow was just ahead of them. The first thing Nashe noticed was the trailer—a pale green structure propped up on several rows of cinder blocks—and then, all the way at the other end of the field, he saw the remains of Lord Muldoon’s castle. Contrary to what Murks had told them, the stones did not form a mountain so much as a series of mountains—a dozen haphazard piles jutting up from the ground at different angles and elevations, a chaos of towering rubble strewn about like a set of children’s blocks. The meadow itself was much larger than Nashe had expected. Surrounded by woods on all four sides, it seemed to cover an area roughly equivalent to three or four football fields: it was an immense territory of short, stubbled grass, as flat and silent as the bottom of a lake. Nashe turned around and looked for the house, but it was no longer visible. He had imagined that Flower and Stone would be standing at a window watching them through a telescope or a pair of binoculars, but the woods were mercifully in the way. Just knowing that he would be hidden from them was something to be thankful for, and in those first moments after climbing from the jeep, he began to sense that he had already won back a measure of his freedom. Yes, the meadow was a desolate place; but there was also a certain forlorn beauty to it, an air of remoteness and calm that could almost be called soothing. Not knowing what else to think, Nashe tried to take heart from that.

The trailer turned out to be not half bad. It was hot and dusty inside, but the dimensions were spacious enough for two people to live there in reasonable comfort: a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and two small bedrooms. The electricity worked, the toilet flushed, and water ran into the sink when Murks turned the faucet. The furnishings were sparse, and what there was had a dull and impersonal look to it, but it was no worse than what you found in your average cheap motel. There were towels in the bathroom, the kitchen was stocked with cookware and eating utensils, there was bedding on the beds. Nashe felt relieved, but Pozzi didn’t say much of anything, walking through the tour as though his mind were somewhere else.

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