Birchwood by John Banville

Author:John Banville
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, Country life - Ireland, Fiction, Literary, Ireland, Country life, General, History
ISBN: 9780307279125
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-01-15T22:36:11.646037+00:00

THE SNOW MELTED, the earth quickened. Spring came early. In March there was a brief mock summer, strange balmy days, still and close. I would have preferred the toothed winds of other years. Mama steadily journeyed on into the deeps of her new world. There was about her sickness something whimsical and mischievous, a secretive knowing air, almost as if she were humouring us. She laughed softly under her breath, and smiled hazily, mysteriously past us, clawing a paper napkin asunder under the table, the damp torn pieces falling to the floor like shreds of her own anguish. Some days she would go raging through the house, an uncanny replica of Granny Godkin, others she was a sobbing caricature of her gentle self. There was no denying her madness, and yet, in our hearts, we did try, with desperate nonchalance, to gainsay it. But none of us was really sane, I am convinced of that, none of the Godkins or their kin. Aunt Martha, during our increasingly rare tutorials, was given to sudden silences, unwarranted starts of fright, and often, with eyes narrowed and mouth working tensely, she would question me on my activities on certain and, for me, forgotten days. My indifferent answers provoked in her an excited hum of suspicion, but of what she suspected me I did not know. She fought interminable battles now with Papa over the mysterious terms of his will. Her son too cultivated new peculiarities, skulking in the garden among the bushes, on the stairs at dusk, preoccupied and distant, glancing at me covertly from under his pale brows. I began to wonder if they were all sharing a secret from which I was excluded, and my thoughts turned again and again to my lost sister, of whose existence I was now convinced, but in a detached, unreal way, I cannot explain.

On the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel my father laid an unsteady hand on my shoulder and steered me into the library for a little chat, as he called it. He bade me sit on an upright chair in front of his desk while with ponderous solemnity he locked the door and pocketed the key. Then he sat down opposite me with his fists clenched before him, grimaced over a stifled sour belch, and gave me briefly one of his awful icy grins. He was half shot already.

‘Well Gabriel?’ he began heartily. ‘I suppose you know what we're here to talk about? I've dropped enough hints, eh? No? O…O well now.’ His eyes slid away from mine and gazed dully past me toward the window. It was a restless bright day, full of wind and misty light. The sight of the flushed spring garden seemed to annoy him. He unclenched his fists and drummed his fingers on the green blotter, regarding me with one eyebrow raised and one eyetooth bared. For Papa, the ideal of a son never fused with my reality. On those rare occasions when he could not avoid

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