She wore the prettiest sundresses, white and yellow and covered with blue and purple flowers. All wavy and loose. Sometimes she'd wear her hair up, to give her neck some air she said, and she looked nice that way. But then when she'd take it down, the way it tumbled off her heead and rolled across her shoulders in waves, and colored like fire, the way fire is not just one color but about seven, all becoming one another over and back again: that was her hair.
There was something that she did to me, just looking at her, knowing she was close. That was all I did, of course: look, pass her in the hallway on the way to supper, smell the scent of her in my room after she'd cleaned it, her presence everywhere, in this house, on my mind, her note in my pocket.
Now here she is, flowered dress, bare feet and all, in a house full of the smell of baking, no longer a child playing at farmng but a solid countrywoman, a boervrou.
Temptress and Madonna, these Lucys. Or maybe simply Eve. The former two are the magical women at the heart of Daniel Wallace's The Watermelon King; the latter is the stable daughter of a unstable academic in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, my current read and next book club selection.
No comments:
Post a Comment