Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay

Author:Elizabeth Hay [Hay, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

13

AWAKE AT DAWN, she went to her bedroom window and stood watching as darkness gave up the ghost. Briefly, the snow was a blue petal lit from within. Then more like a pearl.

She was remembering her dream. She had forgotten the name of the play she was in and nobody would tell her what it was. She approached one person after another and without exception they turned their backs on her.

Which actress was it?—to whom Beckett admitted that the germ of the play came from wondering what would be the most dreadful thing that could happen to a person, and it would be sinking into the ground alive, the sun glaring down, no shade at all, no possibility of sleep because a bell rings you awake whenever you drop off, “And all you’ve got is a little parcel of things to see you through life. And I thought who would cope with that and go down singing, only a woman.”

She had heard his voice just the once, in that documentary about his life. A soft, hesitant, crumbling voice, malleable and warm, without a hint of harshness or dryness. But he didn’t fold that voice into his plays. Instead, he chose to drive his characters up against a razor fence. She had read extracts of his letters in the biography she’d been lugging around for the last two months—and he was a great comforter, nobody kinder, nobody more eloquent in his kindness. But he wouldn’t allow himself the liberties of kindness and comfort in his plays, because he was dead set on less and less. Subtracting, losing, impoverishing, not knowing. Embracing what he called the poetic void. But more makes for less too, she thought. More panic. More snow. The deeper they are, the less there is of anything else.

The snow had the glimmer of eggshells now—that kind of light. The field sloped down on the left to apple trees and a split-rail fence.

As a young man, he ran over the family dog. They were alike in that lamentable way. She too had backed up over a beloved pet and never forgiven herself. Poor Pog, buried over there near the apple trees.

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