Читать книгу Jane - Мэгги Нельсон - Страница 24
ОглавлениеFIRST PHOTOS
The only photo of Jane
I saw while growing up
hung in my parents’
bedroom. She was wearing
a long raincoat and
standing on a stair,
against a tacky interior
of bronze chevrons.
Later I will find out
that Jane was wearing
a long raincoat the night
she was killed. What if
it were the same coat
as in the picture, the one
I looked at all those years?
I arrive at the New York Public Library
with my two dates, the bare brackets
of a life. I ask a librarian
where I might find information
about an old murder. Was it
a famous murder? she queries.
Not really, I say. It was in the family.
My answer embarrasses me.
She gives me little slips of paper
which I fill out and roll up
then shove into silver tubes
as long as pinkies. After
dropping them down a hatch
I wait for the invisible staff
to send up dark blue spools
of the Detroit News from below.
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, the spools
rocket across the lighted screen.
Ike Fights Heart Setback. Blacks
End Long Strike at College. Old Foes
Truman and Nixon Hold
a Sentimental Visit. “We’ll Be
on the Moon by July!” Then
on March 22, 1969, Jane’s face
suddenly fills the screen.
Her youth an aura like a
new haircut—just blatant,
raw, crushing. A headband
keeps her brown hair back;
her lips are parted slightly.
How she wants. How she
penetrates, her eyes set back
in her brow like my mother’s,
like their father’s: dark,
obedient, devouring.
My face stares into hers,
our thoughts frozen together
on the cusp of a wave
just starting to go white-cold, curl
and fall back into the spitting green.
When I started looking at Jane,
she was much older than me.
How strange her face seems now
enlarged on this grainy screen,
now that she will always be
only twenty-three.
