Читать книгу The Book of Rapture - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 17

Motl and you battened down the hatches on your country’s strife. Created your little bauble of enchantment far away from everything while you sat the new politics out. And the new life was good, varnished with love and light. Motl was the teacher. He was born to it, he should have done it from the start. He’d grab the kids by the shoulders and tell them to go to the window and look, look, you wallies, because there was never nothing there. A cloud like a rocking horse!’ ‘A one-legged seagull!’ A snail’s frilled foot!’ ‘Look at the sea inhaling and exhaling but it’s the tide and it’s governed by the moon.’ ‘Look at the stained-glass window of that grasshopper’s wing, that’s your art lesson.’ ‘Biology, the carpet beetle’s defensive curl’ ‘Don’t ask me one more time, What are we doing next? Work it out for yourself! Explore everything, debate, rip the world apart. I want thinkers. Children who question everything. Who have vigorous, audacious, independent thought!’ And eventually, they forgot to ask, What are we doing next?

Taking it in turns to dance with their cheeks to his belt buckle and their feet on the pedals of his shoes as you’d sing your favourite song line, ‘I will wrap you in kisses’, and demonstrate. And everyone rushing outside when dolphins leapt past and standing in a row and whooping at the lovely oblivious joy of them, and at night Motl and you lifting each child solemnly to the high canopy of stars and telling them not to worry because you’re all in the magic house now, it will look after you, you’re safe here, you’re safe.

And now, and now, you wear them like a coat. Their squirmy demanding heat. That can never be taken from you. You envy the air in the room they’re in, rubbing up close. The silence here is a presence, constantly watching, listening, taking note. You need to be released into the outrageously beautiful world. Can’t. Bear. This.

The sun and all light have forever fused themselves into my heart and upon my skin.