Читать книгу Real Life - Adeline Dieudonné - Страница 10

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OUR GARDEN BACKED onto Little Gallows Wood and a small valley, all green and brown, its two slopes forming a large V with dead leaves piled up at the bottom. At the end of the valley, half-buried beneath the dead leaves, was Monica’s house. Sam and I often went to see her. She once told us that the V had been formed by a dragon’s claw, a very long time ago. The dragon had scraped out the valley after being driven mad with sorrow. Monica was good at telling stories. Her long gray hair danced across the flowers on her dress, and her bracelets jingled on her wrists.

“An awfully long time ago, not very far from here, on a mountain that is now gone, there lived a pair of gigantic dragons. These two dragons loved each other so much that at night they sang strange songs of intense beauty, as only dragons know how. But this scared the folk living down on the plain, and they could no longer sleep. One night, when the two lovers had dozed off after singing their hearts out, they came, those morons, tiptoeing along with their torches and pitchforks, and they killed the female. In his fury and grief, the male scorched the entire plain, killing everyone—men, women, and children. Then he ripped at the earth with his claws, scouring out these valleys. Since then, the vegetation has grown back, and people live here once more, but the claw marks remain.”

The surrounding woods and fields were littered with scars of varying depth.

The story frightened Sam.

Some nights he would come snuggle in my bed because he thought he’d heard the dragon song. I explained that it was just a story, that dragons didn’t really exist. That Monica had told it to us because she liked old tales, but that not everything was real. Yet deep down I had the shiver of a doubt. And I always dreaded that I would see my father return from one of his hunts with a female dragon head. But to reassure Sam, I played the older sister and whispered, “Stories exist to contain everything that frightens us. That way we can be sure those things won’t happen in real life.”

I liked going to sleep with his little head right under my nose so I could smell the scent of his hair. Sam was six years old, I was ten. Brothers and sisters are usually at each other’s throats, riven by jealousy, fighting, whining, crying. Not us. I loved Sam with the devotion of a mother. I guided him, and told him everything I knew; that was my mission as his big sister. It was the purest form of love that could exist. A love that expects nothing in return. Indestructible.

He was always laughing, with his tiny baby teeth. And each time, his laughter warmed me like a mini power plant. So I made him puppets from old socks, invented funny stories, and put on little shows just for him. I tickled him too, to hear him laugh. Sam’s laughter could heal any wound.

* * *

Monica’s house was half-swallowed by ivy. A pretty sight. Sometimes the sunlight falling through the branches resembled fingers caressing it. I never saw the sun’s fingers on my own house, or on the other houses in the neighborhood. We lived in a development called “The Demo.” Fifty gray detached houses lined up like tombstones. My father called it “the Demucky.”

Up until the 1960s, this was all wheat fields. In the early 1970s the development sprouted like a wart, in less than six months. It was a pilot project, at the cutting edge of prefabricated technology. The Demo. Demo of I don’t know what. Those who had built it must have had something to prove at the time. Maybe it actually reflected their aims back then. But twenty years later all that remained was the muck. The beauty, if there ever was any, had dissolved, washed away by the rain. The street formed a big square, with inner houses and outer houses. And then all around lay Little Gallows Wood.

Our house was one of the outer houses, on a corner. It was a little better than the others because it was the one that the architect of the Demo had designed for himself. But he didn’t live there long. It was larger and lighter, too, with wide patio doors. And a cellar. Seems silly, said like that, but a cellar is an important thing. It prevents groundwater rising up through the walls and rotting them. The houses of the Demo smelled of old damp swimming towels forgotten in a sports bag. Our house didn’t smell bad, but it did have the animal carcasses. I sometimes wondered if I wouldn’t have preferred a house that stank.

Our garden was also bigger than the others. On the lawn was an inflatable swimming pool, which looked like a fat lady who had fallen asleep in the sun. Come winter, my father would empty it and pack it away, leaving a wide circle of brown grass. And at the bottom of the garden, just before the wood, there was the goat pen: a bank covered in creeping rosemary. It contained three young nanny goats: Cookie, Josie, and Nutmeg. But soon there’d be five because Nutmeg was in kid.

My mother had had a billy goat brought over to service Nutmeg, and this had caused no end of trouble with my father. Something odd occurred with my mother when it came to her goats: a kind of maternal instinct would gush from deep within her, making her capable of standing up to my father. Whenever that happened, he always looked like a teacher outdone by their student. Mouth open, he vainly sought a comeback. He knew that every passing second depleted his authority a little more, like a wrecking ball taken to a building blighted by dry rot. His open mouth would twist a little, producing a kind of growl that smelled like a skunk’s burrow. At that moment, my mother would realize she had won. She would pay for it later, but for now that little victory was hers, although she didn’t appear to derive any particular joy from it, and simply returned to her amoebal activities.

* * *

Nutmeg was in kid and Sam and I were overexcited by the imminent birth. We watched for the slightest sign announcing the new kids’ arrival. He giggled as I explained how the little ones would be born:

“They will come out of her privates. It’ll look like she’s pooping, but instead of poop, two baby goats will come out.”

“But how did they get into her tummy?”

“They didn’t, she made them with the billy goat. They were very much in love.”

“But he was here for less than a day, they didn’t even know each other, they couldn’t have been in love.”

“Oh yes they could. It’s called love at first sight.”