Read Online The Circle by Elaine Feinstein - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elaine Feinstein
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and just that evening, the long escalator was stopped. There was no-one in the whole humming underworld to ask, and was it Northern she wanted? She climbed anyway, past the bras, the new spring swim-suits, thinking how it was. All swim-suits looked so sexless. Chastity belts. You couldn’t get a hand in anywhere. And her feet made a mournful clanking noise on the unmoving edges of metal. Half way up she could see two girls walking slowly, and began to run, shouting: Hey, is this the way to Monument?
But the two girls went on walking slow and silent and unresponsive, and her voice fell back at her strangely small in the funnel shaft they were walking up.
–Hey, is this? The way to Monument?
Surely that must reach them. For she was up to them now, her heart banging, and still they had not turned either at her voice or the echoing sound of her feet.
As she drew level she put out a hand to them, staring into their round and pleasant faces, shouting the question again. And both girls smiling, with a gesture they must often have made, shook their heads, and covered their ears smiling. Deaf. And mute also.
Before she knew Eli at all, she had watched him covertly one early spring afternoon by the lake, with no desire to do more than that; just look. And perhaps place a peculiar and elusive resemblance which she could not at first fathom. It was hot and cloudless and her skin had the sun on it and gradually she could feel the pores in her face close and the muscles at the edge of her mouth soften. As she lay back and puzzled. Listening: the light movement of leaves over her, subtle as water, and the red triangles of the sun’s formation grew and spread on her lids, and the voices of the young people around her mixed and the heat did its work in her so that she fell into a golden doze, puzzling over it: his Renaissance beauty. At last sitting up to stare, with the sun still in her eyes, she recognised something in thethin lips that was like Michael, and more closely then she saw, behind that resemblance another: the early child picture (pink-tinted and sepia framed) of Ben in his childhood; open-eyed and hopeful. As this young stranger she delighted to watch seemed open; talking to the group about him. Which she had no wish to join.
He was a student. Of Russian poetry. So much she knew. And she would never have made a move to know him further.
The weather behaved oddly that year. After the early false Spring came snow, and then when the snow went the river rose right across the meadow to the edge of their garden, and the river birds took over the land, floating between thin trees without fear. One day she saw a swan, its strong neck visible behind the flimsy weeds at the garden end: yellow beak, black eye glinting . And the sun was hot again. Yet the children’s snow boulders had not yet melted.
She and Ben balanced precariously. When he rummaged in the bills drawer her mouth would tighten with fear; and he too was afraid. Of what he would find there that would be a mirror image of their condition. Of what they had failed to do and control. The black pieces of their neglect that showed themselves in stacked and unsorted clothes, the stuck lashes of a neglected eye, the sugar gone or the butter; stale bread. The whole unsalted food of their lives. On days like those the brightness of the day was irrelevant, the birdsong fell on waxed-up ears. And she understood so little. Or had forgotten. That they shared the same need for joy, that he wanted as little as she did the quarrels that silted up the natural flow of their response. They played so closely on one another.
On one such day she had a phone call from DannyField. Danny taught Russian at one of the London colleges: How are you? he asked her.
–Oh, fine. She said, her voice rising a little, dishonestly.
–Well, I’m not.
–Not? She was astonished. He was the healthiest man she knew.
–No. I’ve been bloody hospitalised in fact. For the last six
But the two girls went on walking slow and silent and unresponsive, and her voice fell back at her strangely small in the funnel shaft they were walking up.
–Hey, is this? The way to Monument?
Surely that must reach them. For she was up to them now, her heart banging, and still they had not turned either at her voice or the echoing sound of her feet.
As she drew level she put out a hand to them, staring into their round and pleasant faces, shouting the question again. And both girls smiling, with a gesture they must often have made, shook their heads, and covered their ears smiling. Deaf. And mute also.
Before she knew Eli at all, she had watched him covertly one early spring afternoon by the lake, with no desire to do more than that; just look. And perhaps place a peculiar and elusive resemblance which she could not at first fathom. It was hot and cloudless and her skin had the sun on it and gradually she could feel the pores in her face close and the muscles at the edge of her mouth soften. As she lay back and puzzled. Listening: the light movement of leaves over her, subtle as water, and the red triangles of the sun’s formation grew and spread on her lids, and the voices of the young people around her mixed and the heat did its work in her so that she fell into a golden doze, puzzling over it: his Renaissance beauty. At last sitting up to stare, with the sun still in her eyes, she recognised something in thethin lips that was like Michael, and more closely then she saw, behind that resemblance another: the early child picture (pink-tinted and sepia framed) of Ben in his childhood; open-eyed and hopeful. As this young stranger she delighted to watch seemed open; talking to the group about him. Which she had no wish to join.
He was a student. Of Russian poetry. So much she knew. And she would never have made a move to know him further.
The weather behaved oddly that year. After the early false Spring came snow, and then when the snow went the river rose right across the meadow to the edge of their garden, and the river birds took over the land, floating between thin trees without fear. One day she saw a swan, its strong neck visible behind the flimsy weeds at the garden end: yellow beak, black eye glinting . And the sun was hot again. Yet the children’s snow boulders had not yet melted.
She and Ben balanced precariously. When he rummaged in the bills drawer her mouth would tighten with fear; and he too was afraid. Of what he would find there that would be a mirror image of their condition. Of what they had failed to do and control. The black pieces of their neglect that showed themselves in stacked and unsorted clothes, the stuck lashes of a neglected eye, the sugar gone or the butter; stale bread. The whole unsalted food of their lives. On days like those the brightness of the day was irrelevant, the birdsong fell on waxed-up ears. And she understood so little. Or had forgotten. That they shared the same need for joy, that he wanted as little as she did the quarrels that silted up the natural flow of their response. They played so closely on one another.
On one such day she had a phone call from DannyField. Danny taught Russian at one of the London colleges: How are you? he asked her.
–Oh, fine. She said, her voice rising a little, dishonestly.
–Well, I’m not.
–Not? She was astonished. He was the healthiest man she knew.
–No. I’ve been bloody hospitalised in fact. For the last six
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