Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

The first snow started that afternoon as they climbed Parliament Hill. Though they had left her bed only an hour earlier, it was past four and the light was fading. They walked side by side. There was almost nobody else abroad, and even the path ahead was vanishing as they went on. Despite the cold, his hands felt warm and his blood was easy. They reached the top and halted, standing together. London lay before them, but disappearing now, house by house, quarter by quarter, as the city wrapped itself deeper in its shroud. A fresh flurry bent in from the north, heavier still, and she let go of his hand to pull up her hood so that all he could see as he turned to her was her face framed, and the snow alighting in the escaping wisps of her fair hair, half melting, running clear down her cheek to her lips, which beckoned as though the very pair to his own. And gradually it seemed to Gabriel that once again the world itself was fading—that time and space themselves were in retreat, and that there was only he and she standing there alone in the holiness of the snowfall.

Later, when they came to a place where the path was muddy and there was no way around, even though she insisted that there was no need, he bent and lifted her onto his back because he wanted to carry her across. He held her legs in his arms and he felt her warm breathing by his ear, her body against his; and if he could have halted everything, if he could have commanded the world to cease its turning and all creation to end, he would not have hesitated. Without a moment’s pause, he would have stopped the beating of every other creature’s heart—all in the name of his selfish certainty that he would never again know a moment as pure and replete with happiness and love as that instant.

My dear Isabella,

I write with a proposal. Why don’t you come here for Christmas? You don’t have to answer straightaway. But do have a think about it. I need hardly sell you Paris as a “destination.” (Aren’t they awful, these words the journalists come up with? I assume it’s they. It usually is.) Do you remember the Île St. Louis—the place where we used to have those ice creams? It’s just upstream from Notre Dame. I can’t remember the last time we were all here together. I think it must have been when you and G were much younger. Twelve, ten? I daresay you’ve been here many times since then, though—probably know the city inside out. In any case, everywhere is nearby, and you must feel free to bring whomsoever you choose so that you can do as you please. There’s plenty of room. And I’m very lucky: it’s a beautiful apartment—the original buildings date from the 1400s, though there have been one or two rebuilds since then. You should see the place for yourself: the front windows face the Seine, and the guest bedroom (yours whenever) looks out over the courtyard. It’s really no great leap of the imagination to see the horses drawing in and the servants bustling about and all of that. Perhaps I am spending too much time indoors—I cannot get out without help at the moment—but you know what I mean, I think.

No word from you for a while… Perhaps you are away or busy at your job. I confess, ever since your last, I have been looking forward to hearing from you. How is New York? I find it hard even to imagine your life there. I’ve started to think I might never see the place… I’d love to have your impressions—though I suppose they are more than that now. How long have you been there—four years, five? America needs a fundamental rethinking, I would say. They all seemed so much happier over there in the sixties and seventies. Maybe it’s just the folk that make the news bulletins these days, but suddenly the country seems so terribly adolescent again. It’s as if they’re going backward. (This was a favorite idea of YKW, of course…) The new Americans all seem so embattled and apprehensive and overwrought all the time. Whatever it is that they feel they have to assert, defend, uphold, it doesn’t appear to be doing them any good. I’m going on, I know.

Frustratingly, my recovery is much slower than I had first hoped. It seems to go in stages. Quick spurts and then nothing tangible for a week or two. I still can’t really walk properly, though my speech is almost fully recovered, thank god. I can’t describe the sheer irritation that comes with not being able to do at all that which only a few weeks back one could do without thinking.

Anyway, I don’t know what your plans are, and you may well have something lined up for Christmas by this stage. If so, New Year’s? It would be lovely to see you. I know you will be cross, but my circumstances are different now, and I feel that I can claim the invalid’s privilege of directness. I am happy to pay for your flights (and those of your friend), and if you really do not wish to stay here (and I would quite understand), there is a fine hotel just around the corner; I’m sure I could arrange for you to stay there.

As you see, I have managed to write a fair amount without addressing a single one of your questions about Masha, our lives together, or anything else! I’m sorry, but I don’t think I yet have the energy to write all that down in an e-mail. It seems so cold, apart from anything else. But I would dearly like to talk to you again—about that, about everything. So do please have a think about my offer, and maybe I will see you for Christmas!

The following Saturday, the sky was like the underbelly of a sick gray seal. They were out searching for he did not know what—a desk, new covers for the futon that matched the old, stripy tea towels, a fashionable garlic press? He could not remember. Camden Market was as thoroughly wet and cold as he had ever known it. Damp saturated the bones and the winter rain fell—unremitting, unenthusiastic, unwholesome. The old brickwork of the arches above the bigger stores seemed to be cold-sweating out two hundred years’ worth of fever and toxins; the awnings of the smaller stores sagged and threatened calamity; the hot-food booths were lost in steam, and it was impossible to see any of their offerings through the glass counters for all the pinguid condensation.

Somehow time had managed to crawl as far as three-twenty, and Gabriel was now crammed up at one end of a damp bench, thigh to thigh with a family of tourists from Salford. Doggedly, he was forking his way through a medley of multicolored Chinese food, all the favorites thrown in together—sweet and sour, black bean, oyster mushrooms, nonprawn prawn, reconstituted chicken, debeefed beef. Imagining that he was an astronaut helped: then it tasted kind of interesting, and he felt oddly grateful, appreciative of human science.

It seemed as if it had been three-twenty for ages; as if the whole day had subsided at three-twenty and now lay in a slag heap of wet dust, rubble, and contorted masonry. It felt as if old Father Time himself—exhausted, depressed, sick to the back teeth of the endless tick-follows-tock of it all—had simply downed tools (at long last) and strode offsite, bound for the recruitment agent’s office—I want to switch dimensions, chief, I’m through with the fourth; it’s not a job, it’s bloody slavery, that’s what it is. It’s about time I traded up. Something out of the range of these ignorant bastards, please. I hear the ninth is cushdie.

The last other time Gabriel could remember was seven-seventeen, when he had been woken by Lina’s alarm clock. She liked to set it three minutes before she wanted to get up. And about three hours before he did.

The outer edge of the nearest plastic awning did not quite cover his table, and an uneven veil of runoff water was dripping onto the heads of the poor tourist children opposite as they waited for their oblivious parents to finish ramming spring rolls into themselves. Lina had disappeared.