The Honeyman Festival by Marian Engel

Author:Marian Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2014-08-07T19:24:11+00:00

IN THE DARK, Til began to cough. She had a funny deep Jean Arthur voice; she had coughed in it when she was born. Minn levered herself up, all vigilance. The coughing stopped.

Minn opened the door. The noise of the party flooded inside: fat laughter, and names called, shoes clumping on the uncarpeted wooden stairs. It sounded friendlier than before. The bathroom was empty. She took the diapers to the bathroom, washed her hands, looked in the mirror at her raddled, midnight face. She could try to sleep on the twins’ floor, she could go downstairs again. She went downstairs.

In the living-room, the crowd seemed to have changed. The boiled-shirt set had replaced the beautiful young people. The women were larger, and the men’s only flamboyance was in their cufflinks. Shorter hair and lantern jaws, arms moving indecorously. Big eaters and drinkers, these. Faces all vaguely familiar, but none . . . yes, Oliver.

“Hi! So when’s the big event?”

“In June, if you can believe it.”

“Jane doesn’t. She’s got Nanny primed to leap in.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t . . .”

“Oh, let them, let them. When’s Norman coming back?”

“I don’t know. They keep extending his tour.”

“He’s sending good stuff in.”

“I hear you’re weaving.”

“After a day at the office I get an itch to do something with my hands.” He held them up. They were odd hands, long fingered, but bulbous at the fingertips. She wished she knew the sense from the nonsense about hands. People were always saying artistic hands, musical hands. What did they mean by it?

“Can you read hands?”

“I’m behind, I haven’t even got onto astrology yet. Who’re all the people?”

“If I’m staring at you soulfully it’s because you’re the only one I know.”

“Oh well, new worlds to conquer.” He was beginning to try to extract himself from her company. He was very polite, but uncomfortable. A little man with big glasses, nervous, darting. Stupid to ask him about his tapestries, he’d know Jane had been talking, he’d be embarrassed. She thought of sending him to get her a drink, thought, I don’t need another one, wondered what to say next, and was rescued by a large man who gripped Oliver’s shoulder and said, “Attaboy, Ollie, tell me about the lien.” He excused himself.

She found herself staring at the back of a pair of arms much marred by cellulite. A worried face turned towards her, a wide mouth opened and said, “Do you love your husband?”

“What? Me? Of course I do.”

A big woman, very tall. Forty-five, fifty. Patroness type. A little shaggy for the Art Gallery Committee. Maybe on the edge of the Museum. Money somewhere. Good family. But something that does not . . .

“We don’t usually come to these things, but Bill was longing to see Avignon again in this — Ponte Vecchio, is it? I can’t say I thought much of the story, did you? It all seemed so pointless, chasing that one young girl around. And then they invited us here. I like the house but I can’t say I envy the poor woman who lives here.

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