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.
So she helped, a big tent, enough room for the two of them and all their clothing and gear.
What about the food? Irene asked. How do we keep it away from bears?
No bears out here, Gary said. It’s an island.
Bears do swim.
Yeah, but not just to come visiting. It’s a long way from shore.
Only a couple hundred yards on the close side, right?
Something like that. Let’s just put the food in the tent for now. Help me with the cooler. So they put their food next to their sleeping bags.
Now the other tent, Gary said. They looked for level ground, feeling their way through the undergrowth. Large patches of club moss, spongy and soft, lady ferns, shield ferns, an area with more shade.
Seems okay here, Gary said. We’re not sleeping in this one, so it can be a little bumpy.
Irene helped unroll another tarp and tent, helped drive in stakes and spread the rain fly. If only the cabin could be this easy. She and Gary loaded tools and supplies, everything except the wood, into the tent, then stood back and looked at their little camp.
Not bad, Gary said. Outhouse is next.
Irene looked at the lake, so calm today, the mountains reflected. Peaks clear, upper snow patches outlining ridges, the edge of the Harding Icefield. Sunny and warm, maybe seventy degrees. She’d taken her jacket off. The kind of day when all could seem possible.
It shouldn’t be far from the cabin, Gary was saying. We’ll need to use it through the winter.
Let’s just build it on the back of the cabin, Irene said. So we don’t have to go outside at all.
Irene.
What? Every time I have to use the bathroom, I have to wade through a bunch of snow?
The snow’s not too bad here.
Is it the kind that’s not cold and wet?
Irene.
Irene yourself. Build the damn thing on the back of the cabin, just sticking out from the wall. Put a door on it.
We’ll smell the outhouse all winter.
Then so be it. If we’re going to live like shit, we should smell shit.
Gary turned away from her. The kind of moment he was looking for, she knew. Enough fights about this ridiculous cabin and he could justify leaving. Put her in an impossible situation and then say the marriage was impossible. The beauty of it was that he could lie so well to himself he’d still think he was the good guy. He’d actually believe he’d done everything he could.
Look, she said. You can build it ten feet away, with a short hallway connecting. Put a door on both ends. Maybe that way we won’t smell it.
Gary considered. He walked along the back wall of the cabin, turned in place several times, pacing things out. Okay, he said finally. I can do something like that. But we have to move the supply tent to make room.
Crisis averted, and if it was this easy, she wondered whether she could refuse the entire cabin right now. Just say no to the whole idea and go home. But she knew that was not possible. Because the cabin was not about the cabin.
They pulled all the tools and supplies out of the second tent, found another spot farther back, put it up and loaded again. The afternoon passing, Gary looking at his watch.
It’s getting late, he said, and we haven’t even started the outhouse yet. Punishment, indirect. Letting her know the consequences.
Yeah, Irene said. Bummer it’s not June.
Gary tight-lipped after that. Grabbing the shovel to chop a pathway through the growth, a narrow aisle to a larger square for the outhouse, about four feet by four feet. His T-shirt darkening from sweat.
Irene finally pulled the cooler from their tent, sat down on it to watch him work. Digging to China, tearing a hole in the earth to let her know how he felt. No different from a little boy. She should grab him and make him take the tit, rock him until he fell asleep.
It aggravated Irene that she’d had to take care of this man for thirty years. The weight of his complaints and impatience, his failures, and in return, his vacancy. Why had any of that seemed okay?
Irene couldn’t watch him anymore. She got up and walked into the trees. All shaded here, cooler, the trunks close, every tree with rakes of slim dead branches, thin curved fingers, leftovers, perhaps, from when they were much younger. Snapping against her as she broke through, all the green and new growth much higher. Spruce and birch, trees you could tire of after enough years in Alaska. The occasional cottonwood with its rougher bark, a few aspen.
Narrow pathways like alleys opened up, and she followed these, game trails. Small patches of moss and fern, the forest quiet. Irene a hunter or hunted, either way the same feeling, the same awareness of the forest, the same waiting for sound or movement, the same awareness of breath. It was time to hunt again, to bring her bow out here. But she was accompanied now by this new thing, this new betrayal of body, something she couldn’t fight, couldn’t track, could never see because it didn’t exist. Irene climbed higher, hitting plateaus and slopes all hidden by forest, until she had reached a hump with no higher to go, still surrounded, still no view, a panorama that was there but blocked on every side.
24
Sunday, and Rhoda and Jim both had the day off, so they slept late, had sex, napped again, then just lay there. Jim with his eyes closed, Rhoda with her head propped on his chest, looking at the view. Slow rollers coming up the inlet, a clear and sunny day. Slim black spruce in the flats before the beach, standing individually. They’d always seemed like people to Rhoda, vagabonds heading toward the sea, each walking alone. She could imagine a lower branch as a hand, holding a small suitcase.
The trees look like people, Rhoda said.
What? Jim asked.
The spruce out there, like people, a little bit shaggy, like the Whos of Whoville.
Huh, he said.
You’re not looking.
Okay, he said, and propped his head with a pillow. Rhoda readjusted lower on his chest. The trees out there? he asked.
Yeah.
I guess I can see that. Small ones for the kids, bigger ones for the adults. They’re about the right height.
And where are they going? she asked.
Sounds like a loaded question.
Hm, Rhoda said. It wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking of that.
Sorry, he said.
My parents are so weird. Promise me we’ll never be like them.
That’s easy.
Rhoda laughed. They are freaks.
You’re the one who said it.
When do I meet your parents?
I don’t know, Jim said. They moved to Arizona.
That’s all you ever say about them.
Well I don’t go down there, and they don’t come up here.
That’s sad.
No it’s not. It’s an accidental relationship, unchosen. I never would have chosen them as friends. I don’t even like them.
That’s really sad.
Not for me. I don’t care at all.
Hm, Rhoda said. She didn’t like this side of Jim, cold and unconnected to anyone. It didn’t sound true, and it certainly didn’t fit her vision of having kids and cozy family scenes. Accidental and unchosen.
Am I accidental and unchosen? she finally asked.
Rhoda, he said.
Really. Is it just because I’m here, and available?
No. I love you. You know that.
Rhoda propped up and looked into his eyes. Really? she asked. Can you promise me that?
Absolutely, he said, and pulled her close for a kiss.
Okay, she said, and settled back against his chest. Some of his chest hair was turning gray. A change just in the last year since they’d been living together. And his stomach going soft, a little mound. A thickening at his sides. Eleven years older than her.
I’m worried about my mom, she said.