Читать книгу Dear Prudence - David Trinidad - Страница 25

THREE BEDROOMS

3 CHALCOT SQUARE

“The bedroom is like a bright arbor of roses,”

you wrote to your mother in America, enclosing

a sample of the wallpaper, which you’d picked

out yourself, and especially liked:

clusters of rose blooms, deep and pale pink

on white. Because of Ted’s size,

you ordered an extra-large bed—5 by 6½ feet—

“most of my sheets don’t tuck

in at the side as the mattress is thick.”

Ted painted the floorboards (you were six

months pregnant, so he did the heavy work)

“a whited grey.” After you gave birth,

the wallpaper roses made their way

into “Morning Song,” your poem about

your infant daughter. Six months later,

on the verge of moving to Devon, you tore

up the check of the “busybody man” who wanted

the flat, leasing instead to the couple Ted liked—

“a nice young Canadian poet and his

very attractive, intelligent wife.”

By such “fate playing” (as Ted would one day write),

Assia came to sleep among

the flat pink roses.

COURT GREEN

“Rugs is the main thing now,” you wrote

within a month of arriving in North Tawton.

“We ordered a lovely all-wool Indian carpet

for our bedroom (10’7” x 9’3”) with off-white, rose

& green border & center medallion, at just under $150.”

Ted painted the “acres of as yet bare

boards” (you were pregnant again):

“pale grey lino paint, as in our London flat.”

When the floral Indian rug was delivered,

the bedroom felt like “a place of luxury.”

Until Ted bought a 2’ x 4’ Chinese goatskin,

with “long black and grey silky hairs”:

“guess whose side of the bed it will be on!”

Once you were dead, Assia purged the drawers

of your combs and ribbons and brushes,

your miscellaneous half-discarded things.

“The God’s bedroom,” she facetiously called it.

23 FITZROY ROAD

On your own, you painted all the floors—

“2 coats!” Feeling empowered, you adorned

your bedroom with “bee colors”:

“yellow & white wallpaper, straw mat,

black floor borders & gold lampshade.”

It faced the rising sun, which you likened

to a blooming geranium. London was

“very Dickensian,” an 18th century engraving.

From your “little balcony” you viewed the full moon

“in sheer joy.” You would have liked to have lived

in the flat forever. You planned to “furnish it, poem

by poem, in beautiful taste from second hand shops.”

In the meantime, you slept in a single bed, on loan

from the Portuguese friend that supplied you

with gossip about Assia, your “evil shadow”

who, after your suicide, would sleep there, too.