Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd

Author:Peter Ackroyd [Ackroyd, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385538626
Google: 6TC0AAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00F1W0QYC
Publisher: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Published: 2014-03-04T08:00:00+00:00

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That’s the way to do it

SAM HANWAY had become Asher Ruppta’s “odd-job boy,” as Ruppta called him, expected to perform various tasks from visiting the bank to sorting out the diverse files created by the business. He spent much of the time with Julie Armitage in a small back office, where every morning he would find an offering of food on his desk—a ginger biscuit, a packet of nuts, a sausage roll, a pork pie, a bar of Bounty. He felt like a pet rabbit. Soon Julie would be stroking him.

He was often asked to collect the rent from Asher Ruppta’s various properties. Julie Armitage used to commiserate with him, for what she considered to be an unenviable task, but in fact Sam felt no awkwardness or embarrassment as he went from door to door with his rent book. He looked forward to the opportunity of talking to people, of learning about their problems, of hearing their complaints. He took an almost aesthetic interest in speculating about the truthfulness of those whom he interviewed. He would speak to them in a slow and steady voice; he was infinitely patient with them, but he was determined. He could wear down the most spirited or most volatile of the tenants with his politeness. He had an air of remoteness about him, also, as if he were not quite sure what he was doing in any particular place. He looked as if he might ascend into the sky at any moment. His eyes were pale, lending his face an air of placidity and calmness.

He also liked talking to Asher Ruppta: Ruppta would sometimes break off from business and, stretched out in his chair with his hands behind his head, he would tell Sam about his childhood on the island of the Celebes Sea. He would tell him stories of creatures of shifting shape that lived in swamps or marshes, of ghost birds that could be heard but never seen, of spirits that waited for the living in the shadow of barns or old buildings. His face then seemed to Sam to be set in a more cruel and ferocious look than the pliancy and passivity of his customary expression. On Ruppta’s island each dwelling had its own familiar soul, to whom offerings were made at dawn.

One evening Ruppta told Sam the story of the boy who became a tree. It began when his palms started to itch; he scratched and scratched, but the itching would not stop. Then the tips of his fingers began to tingle, and he began to tap them relentlessly on the crude wooden table in his small house. He woke one morning to find two fingers of his right hand covered in warts or growths, so strong and tough that they looked as if they were made of horn. He could not cut them with a knife, and when he tried to tear them away from his flesh the pain stopped him. After two or three weeks, the fingers of both hands were covered with these strange growths.

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