Читать книгу ALCHEMIES OF THE HEART - David Dorian - Страница 14
ОглавлениеA Return to Hades
Three days later, I visited her again. The chest congestion had subsided during the following week. The shards of glass that perforated my alveoli had lost their keenness.
The holidays were upon us. My wife and I became swept in the orgy of shopping that marks the weeks that preceded Christmas, yet in spite of the running around, I didn’t cough.
The holiday anxiety was taking its toll on my wife. The visit of her family, the arrival of her father complicated the stress. The travel logistics of all the members were an ordeal I endured this time around without duress. My wife was an Episcopalian, and the holidays were an opportunity to summon all the usual family suspects from all the corners of the empire for a series of lavish dinners, which she executed out of duty instead of adherence to a faith she had abandoned years ago.
Images of Mantuo Luo illuminated me from the inside. Knowing I would visit her soon made the stressful season more tolerable. It was her gaze—aloof, remote, fully detached, yet engaging—that had pierced me. I had been stunned, subjugated, disarmed by the stare. In that last encounter, her cool, imperious gaze had seeded my memory. It had germinated sprouting branches in the soil of the self.
