Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Author:Sarah Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780062856418
Publisher: HarperCollins

Part 2

Karel Pražan

c/o John Bunyan House

Bedford

Dear Thea,

As you see, I am in England. It’s cold, but not like the good clean Czech cold. It is simply wet, as if the whole place has been crying about something for weeks. For days I’ve been here in this room with pink wallpaper you can wipe clean, and pink curtains with a ruffle. Each morning the landlady makes toast like squares of white wool made slightly warm, which we eat with very thin sausages. I regret to tell you the English are not, to my mind at any rate, pleasing to the eye. The women have thick legs with bad circulation that makes the skin turn blue, and all the men at every age wear jeans and anoraks. Certainly I think you must be the best of your kind, as I have always known.

My learned friend: I write to ask that you forgive me. I have been mad. I should like to blame Melmoth but we both know a man can’t be sent mad by a children’s story. Were you afraid I believed she was real, and was coming for me? Maybe I thought so sometimes. I was often drunk—I was always upset. My friend died, Thea! And worst of all, you have gone. They say love is not love, that alters when it alteration finds. Much as it pains me to tell you that your English poets are wrong, how can this be true? Love must change if its object changes. You don’t stand under a tree in winter when the branches are black and admire its green leaves and its shade. No, I don’t love you as I did because you’re not as you were. What I must know now is whether you will let me learn to love the Thea that remains. Don’t think I haven’t thought of you every day. Are you taking your tablets? Write down your medicine in the notebook I kept, and all the times you take it. You are stronger than you think. You could dress yourself if you believed you could do it. Is Helen caring for you? She is cold I know but good at heart, or knows her duties, which is perhaps even a better thing.

So let me tell you what I did, and what I have been doing, and what I mean to do. When I left you I was confused and sick. What did we drink, Thea—how many bottles? Sometimes it seems to me someone was there—someone in black at the table pouring the wine and whispering terrible things to me while you slept in your chair—but of course it was only my thirst and all the Melmoth stories. I put things in my bag and got in a cab, and said to the driver: “I want to go to England.” I had England all muddled up with how you once were, as if you might be waiting for me at arrivals with your collar turned up, and that smile which I’m certain is different from all your other smiles when it’s only meant for 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.