Povídky by Nancy Hawker

Author:Nancy Hawker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846591624
Publisher: Saqi

KATEŘINA RUDČENKOVÁ

The Forest

My childhood was filled with sounds that came from behind the thin walls of my room covered with birch-tree forest wallpaper. I lived in a birch forest. At night I looked at the ceiling crisscrossed with moving streaks of light from cars passing in the street below my window. I listened to those sounds and tried to imagine their monstrous meanings and the actions they accompanied. I listened to the stories with which my mother entertained her guests when Father no longer lived with us, when there were often parties in our home with her colleagues from work, loud music, dancing, laughter – activities I guessed at from their voices.

In my dream Mother became seriously ill and her whole body had to be amputated so that only her head remained. I was put in charge of the head, and somebody advised me that I should read to it from Werich, which I find infinitely dull.

Father on my left, Mother on my right. Divided, incomprehensibly, irreconcilably, and between them in my head lies a road on which I stand alone.

‘Take a seat.’ Where? At the table with newspapers? Mother is guilty. Or Father. How many times did she die in my dreams? Once I flattened her with a bulldozer. And still she survived. ‘Give my regards to your mum!’ ‘Why?’ Mother is guilty, not Father, because she was the stronger one. In my memory I try in vain to find some explanation from him: his words, a good-bye – nothing of the kind. And so, from now on, I am forever going to feel ashamed about what I do.

‘Arguing again?’ I am standing in the doorway, the child witness of their conflicts, who, in their view, understands nothing, and who is therefore never consulted about anything.

How to settle their dispute, how to reconcile those voices which I was not capable of reconciling? I just wanted them to be quiet, to stop antagonising each other. I wanted both of them to be here.

How do you decide which part of you remains at home and which follows him to others, where he becomes grafted, indistinguishable from the original branch, while to me he appears entirely inappropriate, incomprehensible, perverse?

Destructive dreams about Mother, erotic dreams about Father. We walk down Kamenická, our street, which in my childhood led either to the park on the left or to Auntie Věra’s in Dejvice on the right.

We stop on the pavement by the launderette, one of the few places that has survived throughout my life without changing, with the terrible roar of machines and the melancholy scent of wet washing.

He leans with his back against a car and I squeeze his member under my bent knee and rub it until he spurts on the windscreen between the wipers. Our action is scandalous, the police appear from somewhere, I run into the doorway of an apartment building, one of them catches me and presses a pair of handcuffs between my teeth. And him? Where has he disappeared to?

The infatuation of a child.

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.