Caribou Island
- Автор: Vann David
- Год: 2011
- Язык: испанский
- Год: Harper
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Caribou Island». Краткое содержание книги:
But this island is not right for Irene. They are building without plans or advice, and when winter comes early, the overwhelming isolation of the prehistoric wilderness threatens their bond to the core. Caught in the emotional maelstrom is their adult daughter, Rhoda, who is wrestling with the hopes and disappointments of her own life. Devoted to her parents, she watches helplessly as they drift further apart.
Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest, Caribou Island captures the drama and pathos of a husband and wife whose bitter love, failed dreams, and tragic past push them to the edge of destruction. A portrait of desolation, violence, and the darkness of the soul, it is an explosive and unforgettable novel from a writer of limitless possibility.
Rossland had been similar. A river rather than ocean, but these same wide mountain bases, thick forest, snow-covered peaks. The same heavy sky, the same cold breeze even in summer, gusting, her skin always goose-bumped. Irene closed her eyes and tried to remember, tried to stand there, tried to turn flat images into a place she could walk through again, because she had spent forty-five years trying to forget. She had wanted to erase, and that seemed a terrible loss now. Irene wasn’t sure what had shifted, but something had. She wanted to remember her mother, wanted to remember her father, wanted to remember the time when they lived together.
The sound of Icelandic, not flat like English. A kind of music, longer vowels, each sound a clarity, a shape, a liquid, or a shot of breath. In that tongue, the world could become animated. More fearsome, more lovely, never empty. A tongue unchanged for a thousand years, a way back to that time. This was what Gary liked. Her connection to the ancient past, Icelandic spoken now almost the same as Old English spoken then. In this way, she had never been real to him, only an idea.
But she didn’t want to think about Gary. She wanted to find her parents, and they remained shadows. If she could hear them speak. How was it possible to forget every word, to not be able to hear the voices she’d heard every day of her childhood?
Irene tried to remember the kitchen, sitting at her own small table. Yellow, painted wood. Rough-grained. Her mother at the sink, wearing a dress, though she couldn’t remember any pattern, any color, and she could almost hear the water running, and she knew her mother would have been speaking. No face, no voice, her father even more distant. And so all she had left were ideas. There was another woman, she knew, though she didn’t know how she knew. When was the moment she learned? And did she understand that idea, that her father was leaving them? Could any of that have made sense? The adult world a thing of mystery and weight, she remembered that much. A despair as immovable as a mountain. Her parents making their decisions, determining her fate, and now they’d gone even farther away, into myth. Stories transformed, impossible to know what was true. Another woman, and her mother hanged herself, and her father left forever and she never saw him again. But what story to make any sense of this?
They came down out of the mountains and drove along the water, Turnagain Arm, a long fjord, sheer rock on either side, white-tipped. Following the path of some ancient glacier that might have filled this valley and bay, though Irene didn’t know whether that was true. The water was like a river, in standing waves six feet high, the “bore tide” so extreme it actually had a sound, a low roar. In winter, the ice choked here and broke, deep rivers and ravines carved through piles of blocks the size of cars and even houses. No one out on this water.
She wondered whether Iceland was like this. She’d never been. Still had relatives, but none who had ever seen her. They’d be strangers, and she’d no longer be able to speak. Until ten, she’d spoken only Icelandic at home, English at school, but then that language died for her.
She had lost the stories, also, children’s tales. Her memory now was only of figures in landscape. She had lost their movement and words, their purpose. A figure in the forest, the sense of that forest, frightening, or a figure on the sea, some kind of small boat, an ancient ship. A stone house, but she couldn’t be sure even of this. It could have been a wooden house with a stone hearth.
And songs. There had been those, too. Hopelessly lost.
But she did have things she knew. Her mother had experienced some awful pain in her head and asked for silence. What she didn’t know was the source. Was it grief, at her husband’s leaving? Did it last a very short time, only at the end, or did it go on for years? Was it only medical, something like what Irene had now? And was there such a thing as only medical? Once something took over your life, didn’t it become who you were, even if it was only a physical thing?
Irene closed her eyes and tried to exhale the pain, let it slip lower. Was she inventing all of this about her mother? Had her mother really ever complained of a pain in her head? Irene had no image, no moment of her mother rubbing at her forehead, no proof. And she didn’t trust the tricks of her own mind. Whatever she wanted to remember, she would begin to remember, until she wouldn’t know what was real. She had a memory of her father, for instance. They rode a sled together, a wooden sled with metal runners. They walked up a giant hill of snow, her father carrying the sled, and they were laughing. When they reached the top, her father lay facedown, his hands on a steering bar. Irene lay down on top of him, her body small and light, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her father let out a whoop and they started moving. Irene yelled in fear and delight, and they flew at incredible speed down that slope. But then there were different versions of the ending. In one, they flipped and slid and rolled and landed in a pile together, laughing. In another, they went so fast Irene’s body became airborne, and she struggled to hold on to her father’s neck. In another, they flipped and hit hard and she cried. No one of these endings was more real than the next, and so it seemed the entire thing was made up. Most likely, there had never been a sled at all. She had no other memories of it. The entire scene too idyllic, a winter scene. An attempt to have a memory with her father.
He was young when she last saw him, in his early thirties. Blond hair, not the usual dark hair of an Icelander. A small face, burned by the sun. A forester, leaving each day with his axe. Almost a figure out of one of the children’s stories, and this was what she feared. That she had invented every part of him. Did he really leave every day with his axe? Did he wear a green scarf wrapped around his neck?
She did remember his arms and his hands. Strong forearms, tanned and veined. His hands rough, callused. She could see them on the dark wooden table at meals. She knew that was real, a memory. It was when she tried to see his face or hear his voice that she became lost.
Do you remember your parents? she asked Gary.
What? Gary seemed startled.
Sorry. I’m trying to remember my parents when I was a kid. Their faces, their voices. Do you remember yours?
Yeah, of course.
What do you remember?
Well a lot of things.
Give me one.
Geez, Irene. I don’t know just offhand.
Just remember one for me.
Yeah, Dad, Rhoda said from the back seat, smashed sideways into the king cab. I’m curious, too. You never talk about anything from your childhood.
It’s like the Inquisition, Gary said. I’m just thinking about our appointment and where we’ll stay tonight. But fine. A childhood memory. Something from Lakeport. How about a hunting memory?
No guns, Irene said. You’re too stuck on guns. All the stuff you shot when you were a kid. Give us something else.
Yeah, Rhoda said.
Geez. All I can think of right now is hunting or fishing.
Give us something in the kitchen, Rhoda said.
Gary puffed his cheeks. All right, he finally said. It’s not one particular time. I just remember my dad sitting at the table by the window, looking out at the lake, pouring cream of mushroom soup from a pot onto his pancakes. And I remember him making colored pancakes for me. Blue and green and whatever I asked for.
What did he say? Irene asked.
What?
What did your father say to you when he was making the pancakes or pouring the soup over them?
I don’t know.
That’s what I’m asking, Irene said. I want one moment when you remember exactly what he said, or what your mom said, and how their faces looked at that moment.
Why are you asking this, Mom?