The South by Colm Toibin

Author:Colm Toibin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

AUTUMN

She chopped up the boiled egg on a saucer for Isona. The child sat at the table in her nightdress and took a cup of milk in her hands. It was morning. Miguel was standing at the window with his back to her. “The snow is coming back. It won’t be long.” She spoke in English. “Qué dius?” he said. He turned and looked at her suspiciously.

She repeated her words in Catalan. He glanced back at the window and then at her. He didn’t speak but turned to the sink and began to stack the dirty dishes neatly. He filled the saucepan with water and put it on the gas. She went and stood at the front door.

It was as though a fire had scorched the valley. Everything was coloured shades of red, or gold, or brown, or rust. She left the child with Miguel, and walked down the road to Tirvia with some paints and paper. She kept her eyes on the valley and watched the way each colour and hint of a colour glittered as it caught the sun. She went back to the house for two chairs—one to sit on, one for the palette and paint.

It was easy to paint. Easier than anything else she could have done. The wood was ready for the winter and there were still a few weeks before the snow. There was nothing else to do except paint.

She needed ten colours: ten shades of rust, red, gold, yellow. And out of each shade she needed to make ten more. Each stroke of the brush had to carry a different colour, each stroke had to be a different size, with a different texture.

All morning the sense of decay impinged as though it were a colour. The paper was good to work on; it was easy to gauge the effect that the paint would have against the white. Also, the paper absorbed nothing, every mark she made stood out and she could test each new shade. But it wasn’t enough; she wanted to work on a bigger scale on canvas. She would have to ask Miguel to stretch the canvas for her.

Miguel spent all day with Isona, going to sleep with her in the afternoons, taking her into the wood on his shoulders. When Isona fell or cried, it was Miguel she wanted; or when she woke in the night. She was getting used to being with her father.

Katherine went back to the house and searched in the store until she found some large pieces of wood, a spade and a mallet. She took them back to the hillside and tried to force stakes into the ground to use as an easel. When she discovered that the ground was too hard she went back to the house.

In the kitchen she poured a glass of wine and brought it out on to the balcony. She lit a cigarette and sat down to watch the valley as the sharp light of the afternoon began to fade. She would need the biggest canvas she had ever used for the painting she had in mind.

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