The Border of Paradise
Описание книги
In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame — the sharp-tongued, intelligent Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California’s Polk Valley. As David's health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter.It’s Daisy's solution for the future of her two children, inspired by the old Chinese tradition of raising girls as sisterly wives for adoptive brothers, that exposes Daisy’s traumatic life, and the terrible inheritance her children must receive. Framed by two suicide attempts, The Border of Paradise is told from multiple perspectives, culminating in heartrending fashion as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune confront their past and their isolation.
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FOR CHRIS.
Here we are,
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He’d had a heart attack. The stress of reviving the manufactory after the war had done a number on him, and Dr. Herms said it was nothing to sniff at. But my father’s “ticker,” as Dr. Herms called it, could last Ojciec to old age if he took better care of himself. He listed a number of suggestions, which Matka took down in her notebook. God willing, Dr. Herms said, Peter would live to see his great-grandchildren’s christenings. I couldn’t help but daydream that those great-grandchildren would have Orlich blood in them, mixed with mine. What kind of son thinks these things in such calamitous circumstances?
I thought Matka would burst with joy as we walked to St. Jadwiga. She’d sneak looks at me, making sure I was still there, and then look at Ojciec as if to say, Look, I have done it. I’d been to the Cloisters with my parents on occasion, more for “tourism within New York” reasons than anything, on par with visiting Lady Liberty, but St. Jadwiga was the holiest place that I knew, and entering the double wooden doors was obviously my return as the prodigal son. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who would treat me as though I had never left, and who would act as though my afflictions—whatever they knew of my afflictions—were contagious. I was afraid that someone would accuse me of heresy, or possibly worse. But I came in flanked by my parents, and immediately we were greeted by the Orlichs, who descended like a flock of friendly gray pigeons, including Marianne, who had on an ashy sweater glittering with beads. “David, it’s so good to see you,” she said, her face brightening, and she grabbed my hand. I was so surprised by her warm skin that I flinched and almost pulled away, but she drew me close to a pew, and let go to briefly kneel and make the sign of the cross before scooting deep into the center, where she patted the wood beside her for me to sit down.
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