He was the first of my ghosts.
When the time was right he would run away – and be part of the story.
Margot was a handsome woman in her late fifties. She could lift barrels without help and had legs so sturdy, she never felt the need to sit down. It was rumored she even slept on her feet, but she had given birth to thirteen children, so clearly she must have lain down sometimes.
How horribly dull. I could never have been a biographer. Don’t you think one can tell the truth much better with a story?” “Not in the stories you have told the world so far.
It was odd to think that only a few years ago she had been Helena Greville. It seemed a lot longer. When she thought about that girl now it was as if she was thinking about someone she used to know, and know quite well, but would never see again. Helena Greville was gone for good.
Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you?
When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. And during this time, these days when I read all day and half the night, when I slept under a counterpane strewn with books, when my sleep was black and dreamless and passed in a flash and I woke to read again – the lost joys of reading returned to me.
When there is no light to see by, any drunk can walk in a straight line!
No hay una vieja casa que no tenga sus historias; no existe una vieja casa que no tenga sus fantasmas.
Six months ago a miraculous story had burst wildly and messily into the Swan; today it was neatened, pressed, and put away without a crease in it.
My father noticed the direction of my reading. He came home from fairs and sales with books he thought might be interesting for me. Shabby little books, in manuscript mostly, yellowed pages tied with ribbon or string, sometimes hand-bound. I devoured them. Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.
Upstairs I peered into the bathroom mirror. It was for reassurance, to see what I looked like as a grown-up girl. Head tilted to the left, then to the right, I studied my reflection from all angles, willing myself to see someone different. But it was only me looking back at my myself.
I had wanted this, and now that it was here, I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d expected that I would expand to fit the experience automatically, that I would get my first glimpse of the person that I was destined to be. I’d expected the world to give up its child-like and familiar appearance to show me its secret, adult side. Instead, cloaked in my new independence, I felt younger than ever. Was there something wrong with me? Would I ever find out how to grow up?
Of course one always hopes for something special when one reads an author one hasn’t read before.
And during this time, those days when I read all day and half the night, when I slept under a counterpane strewn with books, when my sleep was black and dreamless and passed in a flash and I woke to read again – the lost joys of reading returned to me.
A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else’s story. Take me, for instance. To look at me now, you would think my birth must have been something special, wouldn’t you? Accompanied by strange portents, and attended by witches and fairy godmothers. But no. Not a bit of it. In fact, when I was born I was no more than a sub-plot.
Things were happening that were beyond her comprehension. More and more often these days, and for longer and longer periods, she had the sense that something had gone wrong with the world. More than once she seemed to wake up in her head and find that whole hours had passed by without leaving a trace in her memory. Things that clearly made sense to other people didn’t always make sense to her.
It felt as if everything had come to an end. I had only one wish: to sit like John, immobile, staring into space and doing nothing. Yet time did not stop. I could still feel my heartbeat measuring out the seconds. I could feel hunger growing in my stomach, and thirst in my throat. I was so sad I thought I would die, yet instead I was scandalously and absurdly alive – so alive I swear I could feel my hair and fingernails growing.
I was so preoccupied by the story I was hearing, writing, that I had no wish for anything else. My own life – such as it was – had dwindled to nothing. My daytime thoughts and my nighttime dreams were peopled by figures not from my world.
She had been able to bear not knowing a thing when she could be sure that God knew, but now...
Behind it a pile of old rags with a hat on top organized itself into a man, albeit a scruffy one, and struggled to its feet.