Читать книгу Suzanne - Anais Barbeau-Lavalette - Страница 27

Claudia is thirty-three years old and has five children.

Claudia is a distant cousin of Émile Nelligan.

Claudia has black eyes that arch downward. Waning moons.

Claudia has long fingers that have played Chopin.

Claudia has short nails with dirt under them from the potatoes she peels.

Claudia doesn’t sleep anymore.

Claudia knows that she has to have six more children to get the two hundred acres of dirt the government has promised.

Claudia thinks that she already has dirt under her fingernails and doesn’t want any more.

Claudia doesn’t talk anymore.

Claudia is being smothered by Nocturnes.

Claudia doesn’t know where to love her children because there is no room left.

Claudia is filled with emptiness.

Claudia is a desert.

Claudia wakes the oldest ones.

Asks them to help set up a pallet in the hallway.

Claudia will sleep next to the piano now.

Away from Achilles’s penis.