Читать книгу Jane - Мэгги Нельсон - Страница 21

THE FIRE

According to family lore, there was a great bonfire in which all of Jane’s possessions perished. Her journals, her clothes, her scrapbooks, her books, her typewriter, her school papers, her love letters. Her parents supposedly set this fire a few days after she was killed, when they went to Ann Arbor to clear out her things. The way my mother remembers the story, they set the fire outside her room at the Law Quad.

The Law Quad is a grassy, public area, traversed by several cement paths and surrounded by ivy-covered Gothic buildings, one of which is the main law library. Upon returning to the spot, my mother agrees that the idea of my grandparents, two very private people, setting a large bonfire there and feeding Jane’s belongings to the flames seems unlikely.

But questions remain. Where was the story from, and where did the belongings go?