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.But Joel had talked, and in talking eased away his worries, and Zoo told tales, tall funny sad, and now and again their voices had met and made a song, a summer kitchen ballad.From the first he'd noticed in the house complex sounds, sounds on the edge of silence, settling sighs of stone and board, as though the old rooms inhaled-exhaled constant wind, and he'd heard Randolph say: "We're sinking, you know, sank four inches last year." It was drowning in the earth, this house, and they, all of them, were submerging with it: Joel, moving through the chamber, imagined moles tracing silver tunnels down eclipsed halls, lank pink sliding through earth-packed rooms, lilac bleeding out the sockets of a skull: Go away, he said, climbing toward a lamp which threw nervous light over the stairsteps.Go Away, he said, for his imagination was too tricky and terrible.But was it possible for a whole house to disappear? Yes, he'd heard of such things.All Mr Mystery had to do was snap his fingers, and whatever wasthere went whisk.And human beings, too.They could go right off the face of the earth.That was what had happened to his father; he was gone, not in a sad respectable way like his mother, but just gone, and Joel had no reason to suppose he would ever find him.So why did they pretend? Why didn't they say right out, "There is no Mr Sansom, you have no father," and send him away.Ellen was always talking of the decent Christian thing to do; he'd wondered what she meant, and now he knew: to speak truth was a decent Christian thing.He took steps slowly, awake but dreaming, and in the dream he saw the Cloud Hotel, saw its leaning molding rooms, its wind-cracked windows hung with draperies of blackwidow web, and realized suddenly this was not a hotel; indeed, had never been: this was the place folks came when they went off the face of the earth, when they died but were not dead.And he thought of the ballroom Little Sunshine had described: there nightfall covered the walls like tapestry, and the dry skeletons of bouquet leaves littering the wavy floor powdered under his dreamed footstep: he walked in the dark in the dust of thorns listening for a name, his own, but even here no father claimed him.The shadow of a grand piano spotted the vaulted ceiling like a luna moth wing, and at the keyboard, her eyes soaked white with moonlight, her wig of cold white curls askew, sat the Lady: was this the ghost of Mrs Jimmy Bob Cloud? Mrs Cloud, who'd cremated herself in a St.Louis boarding house? Was that the answer?It struck his knee, and all that happened happened quickly: a brief blur of light flashed as a door banged in the hall above, and then he felt something hit him, go past, go bumping down the steps, and it was suddenly as though all his bones had unjoined, as though all the vital parts of him had unraveled like the springs of a sprung watch.A little red ball, it was rolling and knocking on the chamber floor, and he thought of Idabel: he wished he were as brave as Idabel; he wished he had a brother, sister, somebody; he wished he were dead.Randolph bent over the top banister; his hands were folded into the sleeves of a kimono; his eyes were flat and glazed, drunk-looking, and if he saw Joel he made no sign.Presently, his kimono rustling, he crossed the hall and opened a door where the eccentric light of candles floated on his face.He did not go inside, but stood there moving his hands in a queer way; then, turning, he started down the stairs and when finally he came against Joel he only said: "Bring a glass of water, please." Without a second word he went back up and into the room, and Joel, unable to move, waited on the stairs a long while: there were voices in the walls, settling sighs of stone and board, sounds on the edge of silence."Come in." Amy's voice echoed through the house, and Joel, waiting on the threshold, felt his heart separate."Careful there, my dear," said Randolph, lolling at the foot of a canopied bed, "don't spill the water."But he could not keep his hand from shaking, or focus his eyes properly: Amy and Randolph, though some distance apart, were fused like Siamese twins: they seemed a kind of freak animal, half-man half-woman.There were candles, a dozen or so, and the heat of the night made them lean limp and crooked.A limestone fireplace gleamed in their shine, and a menagerie of crystal chimes, set in motion by Joel's entrance, tinkled on the mantel like brookwater.The air was strong with the smell of asthma cigarettes, used linen, and whiskey breath.Amy's starched face was in coinlike profile against a closed window where insects thumped with a watch-beat's regularity: intent upon embroidering a sampler, she rocked back and forth in a little sewing chair, her needle, held in the gloved hand, stabbing lilac cloth rhythmically.She looked like a kind of wax machine, a life-sized doll, and the concentration of her work was unnatural: she was like a person pretending to read, though the book is upside down.And Randolph, cleaning his nails with a goose-quill, was as stylized in his attitude as she: Joel felt as though they interpreted his presence here as somehow indecent, but it was impossible to withdraw, impossible to advance [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]