Читать книгу Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel - Страница 14

10

Alcohol has been part of my life since the day when, before I was weaned, my mother got me to sleep by putting a cognac-soaked cloth wrapped around a lump of sugar to my lips.

Alcohol made my father loud and cheerful. He played, sang, acted the fool; he was my clown.

Alcohol broke through my mother’s Protestant restraint, brought her out of her silence, freed up unknown, vicious words, the words of a different person. Emotions burst forth, and then my mother would disappear.

Alcohol gave life. It was the song, the blood, the bond of the hotel. My father would drink up to forty beers a day. I practised my maths by counting them. To arrive at different totals I would then add each whole glass of cognac and each Underberg to the beers.

When he was sober, my father didn’t speak.

I preferred alcohol to silence.