Читать книгу Suzanne - Anais Barbeau-Lavalette - Страница 33

January 30, noon. You are eight years old.

While Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany, your mother gives birth to her seventh child.

Apparently Achilles managed to thrust his penis into her, and now she is screaming to expel a newborn.

You are pacing back and forth in the living room.

Claudia pants. Giving birth is the only time she makes noise. That may be why Achilles still wants to give her children. Because that’s how he knows she’s alive. That she sweats, that she smells, that she screams.

Afterward, she will go quiet again.

You place your fingertips on the piano. You’re not allowed to. It hurts her.

But you like the forbidden.

You press down on a key, and a note reverberates through the house, impertinent.

A beat. Claudia is moaning in the bedroom.

You press down on another key. Then another.

You know that she can’t get up. You would like to play her a symphony. You press your whole hands on the piano keyboard; you grab notes by the fistful, you leave none of them in peace. They belong to you for a moment, and you embrace them.

You press your arms, and then your stomach, against the keys, then you sit your bare thighs on the cold keyboard; you want to warm it up, you want to warm yourself up. You climb onto the piano. You crawl along the keys, and you feel like a giant.

From the bedroom, crying: It’s a boy.

From the bedroom, yelling: Claudia says she’s going to kill you.