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.
You’re shivering, Irene said. Your teeth are chattering like they’re going to splinter. What did you do out there?
Went for a swim, he said, and fumbled at the buttons on his jeans, trying to get his wet clothing off.
Went for a swim.
Yep. I need help with my pants. Can’t get the buttons. Hurry, please.
That’s great. But she crawled over and helped. Her hands hot on his skin. You’re freezing, she said. Don’t think of trying to get in my bag with me.
Thanks, he said.
Thank yourself. You’ve been doing stupid shit like this for too long.
Out of his jeans and boots and socks, Gary found a towel to dry off, found his thermal underwear, top first, then bottoms, got into his bag. Found his stocking cap. The mummy part of his bag over his head, he pulled the drawstring. He’d be okay now.
Here’s what I have to tell you, Irene said.
Let’s skip it.
No. Your idea that you’ve deserved more than you’ve gotten, that’s the problem.
I don’t need a lecture. I’m aware of my failings.
No you’re not. None of your life has measured up. You think you were destined for more. You think you were worth more.
I know who I am.
No you don’t.
Fuck you.
Not that easy. You think you deserved someone better than me.
Maybe I did.
Irene hit him then, a hard punch that glanced off his forearm. He went into a tuck in his sleeping bag and she kept hitting him, not saying anything, just hard punches over and over to his body. Didn’t punch his face. Still holding back. Why hold back? he asked. Why not punch me in the face?
Because I love you, you fucker. And then she was weeping.
Gary turned over to face the other way. Let her weep. Maybe she would leave. And he knew that was wrong, but he just didn’t feel whatever he’d need to feel to counter it. Maybe he was missing some basic human faculty, whatever it is that connects people to each other. But what he wanted was to be left alone. And was that really a crime?
When Gary woke in the morning, Irene was gone. He was stuffed up, having to breathe through his mouth, throat sore. His head hurt. So he turned over and tried to go back to sleep.
He could hear hammering, the wind died down, the tent no longer berserk. Irene working on the cabin, but he wondered what she was doing. She could be breaking it apart, not building at all.
This got him up, the idea that she might be destroying the cabin. He pulled on a dry set of clothes, his bib overalls and an old dry pair of boots, his wet raincoat. Unzipped the tent and stepped into a land gone white. The snow not deep, maybe an inch or two, but breathtaking the way it transformed. Distance and depth defined, the upward-facing leaves white, the stems beneath in shadow. Even the spruce, the collective effect of the topside of each needle and topside only made white. The world outlined and remade entirely, the light itself changed. Yesterday might as well have been six months ago.
Wow, Gary said. This is beautiful.
Irene paused in her hammering, looked around, hooded in green raingear. Yes it is, she said. But she didn’t look at Gary. Went back to hammering.
Gary stepped over to the cabin, walked in the back door, fully cut out and braced. On the forward wall, the space for the window, not quite square. Layers of log above it, the last layer at eight feet. Irene standing on an aluminum stepstool, driving in the last nails.
Thanks, Gary said. Looks like we’re ready for a roof.
Yeah, she said. What’s the plan?
I was going to do it with logs, Gary said. But I don’t see how that’s going to work. It’ll just leak.
No response from Irene. Being careful, he could tell. Had a lot to say but was holding back, which was fine by him. She finished a nail, five blows. The wind sifting through the trees, much lighter than before.
So I think I’ll buy some sheeting in town. Not the look I wanted, but we’re late, and we need a roof. Wind’s dying down, so we should be able to get to shore, maybe tomorrow or the next day.
I like that plan, she said.
We need to put it at an angle, Gary said, for the snow to slide off. We’ll make the back wall higher and get some two-by-eights for roof joists to run from the back wall to the front. That should hold it, I think.
Irene stepped down from the stool, looked out the hole for the front window, standing there with her shoulders slumped, holding the hammer. Sounds good, she finally said. That’ll work.
She still wouldn’t look at him, and Gary felt almost like he should make an effort here, say something to close the distance, to make peace. Maybe apologize for last night, for saying he deserved someone better than her. But she was the one who had attacked him, and he didn’t feel like making the effort right now. He felt chilled. He thought for some reason of Ariadne and the passage in Catullus where in her bride’s heart revolves a maze of sorrow, maybe because of the way Irene’s shoulders were slumped. He couldn’t see her face, but she looked like all was lost, staring out into the snow. He couldn’t remember the Latin. Ariadne was watching Theseus take off in his ship, abandoning her, just as Aeneas would do to Dido and Gary himself had been thinking for years, perhaps decades now, of doing to Irene. And maybe now was finally the time to let their marriage die. It might be better for both of them. A thing ill-conceived from the start, something that had made both their lives smaller. Hard to know what was true. Part of him wanted to apologize, wrap his arms around her, tell her she was all he had in this world, but that was only habit, not a thing you could trust.
I’ll go cut the logs, he said.
31
Rhoda found Mark at the go-cart track. He and his friends always went on the first day of snow so they could spin circles and crash into each other. Fishing was over, and they had nothing to do now except drugs and stupid shit like this. Rhoda clung to the chain-link fence and yelled to get his attention, but of course there was no way he could hear her. The putting of a dozen engines. Mark wearing a camo jacket and a Russian hat with earflaps. His friend Jason wearing a pink Hello Kitty jacket just to be an ass.
The course was rimmed by stacks of old tires, then fence, then the broken-down motor homes of half a dozen fishermen who lived here year-round, Mark’s buddies. The kind of depressing hell Rhoda wanted no part of anymore. The kind of place where she had spent all of junior high and high school, smoking pot and having sex at the edge of gravel lots. She wanted to forget any of that had ever happened.
She grabbed a piece of gravel and threw it at Mark as he flew around the corner. It bounced off the front of his cart. He skidded to a stop, then saw it was her, grinned, flipped her off, and hit the accelerator. Tok, wearing a Red Baron scarf, slammed from behind, threw Mark’s cart sideways into the barrier. Tollef, Tok’s brother, came around fast and rammed Mark again, Mark whiplashing against his seatbelt. He was yelling and stomping the accelerator, trying to get out of there, made it maybe twenty feet before Hello Kitty whipped by and leaned over to cuff him on the back of the neck. But then Mark made it clear and was chasing them down.
Rhoda walked through a gap in the fence to the small set of bleachers, the only spectator. She’d had sex with Jason once on these bleachers, disgusting to think of now. That had been in the snow, too, though much colder, middle of winter. It hadn’t become her life; that was the important thing.