Читать книгу Desiring Cairo - Louisa Young - Страница 15

The next day, Saturday, there were two letters. One contained a razor blade, the other a poem.

Distracting is the foliage of my pasture

The mouth of my girl is a lotus bud

Her breasts are mandrake apples

Her arms are vines

Her eyes are fixed like berries

Her brow a snare of willow

And I the wild goose!

My beak snips her hair for bait,

As worms for bait in the trap.

I knew this poem. Not that it’s famous, out of its field. It’s from an ancient papyrus. It’s, I don’t know, three thousand years old. I didn’t like it – I’d never liked it. Hair as worms, bait in a trap. Ugly. Violent. Fixed berries, vines, snares. It speaks to me of desire and resentment – a bad combination.

And a razor blade.

How very unpleasant.

Each one gave me a cold shudder. I didn’t know, actually, which was nastier.

I burnt the poem and broke the blade in half with a pair of pliers, then wrapped it in cotton wool, soaked the package in baby oil and threw it in the rubbish, which I then took out on to the balcony and dropped – plop! – into the wheelie bin seven storeys below. I’m pretty ritualistic on occasion.