Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg

Author:Deborah Eisenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-01-23T06:00:00+00:00

He did in fact lie in his room for an hour or so, letting images of the girl play over his nerves. Her exquisite throat, the curve of her cheek … the clear, poreless skin, so close in color to the brows, the lashes, the light, long hair … her startling greenish blue eyes. She was clever about clothes, obviously—that mother surely hadn’t chosen the dress, simple, and stylishly long, stopping just at narrow shins. On her feet she wore elegant straw sandals.

When the buzzing of the girl in his head grew unbearable, he would convert it into thoughts of the astonishing Russian sleigh bed he had come across in an antique store that he would pass by again on his way to the farmhouse tomorrow. Things, things—at his age! But it seemed that age only increased his appetite to acquire.

The shop was one of several in the area he returned to often, ostensibly to pick up an item for one client or another. These places sometimes came into possession of surprisingly good pieces—occasionally an object that perhaps would have been consigned to a museum had it not, fortunately, fallen into ignorant hands, to be rescued then by him.

He had bought the most fetching little Madonna at one of them on his last trip. He noted the bed at the time, but the Madonna had simply absorbed all his attention, until he got her settled into the right spot. Only then did he begin to remember the bed—its fluent maple curves, its allusion to careless pleasure … This time he would buy it for certain. Assuming it was still there! Oh, why hadn’t he called weeks ago, when he realized how badly he wanted it?

But the problem remained: Where to put it—Rome? Paris? Both places were small, and he already had remarkable beds in each …

He could move one of them out here, to the farmhouse. But that was the point. He always meant to be emptying the place out so he could sell it. And yet, each time he saw it … Those summers, when he was ten, eleven, twelve … Those were happy years, insofar as years could be said to be happy. Years filled with sensations so potent they seemed like clues to a riddle.

The place wouldn’t bring much of anything, once the money was divided between himself and his surviving brother. It was a nuisance; it would simply eat cash if it were to be kept from falling to bits. His brother, and his own sons, one in Istanbul, one in London, showed no particular interest in it. Only he, only he was enslaved by the memory of the sun on the leaves around the door, the way the fruit tasted in the morning …

It was dark when you entered. As you opened the shutters, grand, churchly prisms turned everything in their path to phantoms. The cool aroma of the waxed stone floors blended with the smell of sun-warmed herbs. First the big room, then the

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