Читать книгу The Book of Rapture - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 32

A thud. Outside their door. Mouse gasps. Eyes wide, rabbit-still. Until he was five he’d pad into your room when the terrors of night became too much. You’d open out the duvet and sling him in close and he’d nestle against you like a door jamb to a door and you’d smile at the hot firm wedge of him and wish it would go on forever and want it now, so much. Everything’s worse after dark when the fear crowds in. Those strange bumps and scrapes outside their door are like secrets being shifted in the dead of night and your boy is rigid with fear.

You long for rest. That moment of grace every night in Salt Cottage when you’d tiptoe into their bedroom and the short, sharp shock would come; alone, every night, standing in that room that was filled with the sleep of your children. Just … breathing them in. Then a great warmth would flood through you, an enormous, glittery, heart-swelling gratitude, and you’d find yourself closing your eyes in unstoppable thanks. Prayer is gratitude, oh yes. You never told Motl of those luminous moments, can’t understand what combusted within him, resolutely do not believe yet want to, need to, at times. Religion may be a delusion but it’s a delusion of solace and there’s something to be said for that. Yes, it may be all lies and creaky myth but what is this stillness that steals through you in moments, what? The short, sharp shock of it.

There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple.