Shroud Read Free Page B

diarrhoeal labours when the rain stopped abruptly. I never got used to the weather on that coast, it was always too orderly, too arranged; there the spring with its discreet matutinal downpours followed by days of seamless sunlight had none of the unpredictability, the flushed feverish-ness, of the springtimes of my youth. Arcadians complain of the climate, in their relaxed, wry way, but to me these conditions hardly constituted weather at all, product that I am of Europe 's bleak northern lowlands with their ice storms and slanting rain and skies of tumultuous cloud endlessly unscrolling eastward. I took my steaming mug into the breakfast nook, easing myself awkwardly between the bench seat and the table. The drenched garden, tousled and glittering, had the abashed look of something picking itself up after an unseemly tussle. There would be mist on the bay for half the morning, until the sun was strong enough to burn it off, as the weather forecasters would say. I like that phrase, to burn it off, the figurative, brisk assurance of it. Out there on that coast the elements are something to be patronised; even the not infrequent earthquakes are a sort of huge communal joke. In the first months after we moved into the house I used to love to sit like that of a morning, looking out on my avocado tree, my peach tree, at the humming-birds busy about the bush that I think is called hibiscus, listening in a state of tingling bliss to the early-morning news on the radio, impatient for the end when the risibly solemn-voiced announcer would inform me of what the day had in store for me, the highs and lows of temperature – never too high, never too low – the breezes pacific and soft as breaths, the fog's standing mirage. It was like being promised a succession of lavish and wholly undeserved treats.
    I went off to the bathroom, and when I returned, haphazardly shaven and putting on my tie, this time Magda was there, in her old grey dressing-gown with the frayed drawstring, sitting in the nook where I had sat. She looked as solid as an armchair, with hands laid flat along her thighs and a yard of flannel stretched between her splayed knees, and my heart gave a sideways knock and for a second I was afraid I would fall over. This is how I best remember her in that house, planted there in the neuralgic light of early morning, the iron hair severely parted down the middle and the heavy braids coiled against her head like two outsized earphones, her callused feet bare, her brooding, inexpectant gaze fixed slightly off to one side of me. Today she held her face turned away a little, at a characteristically watchful angle. It seemed that she might speak, if I waited long enough. But then I blinked and she was gone, and my heart settled down grumpily to its accustomed, rocky measure. Why could she not leave me alone? She had wanted to go, I was sure of it, so why must she keep coming back like this? My coffee mug stood at the place where she had appeared, still with its faint plume of steam; it had the look of the smoking barrel of a gun.
    Unnerved, I went into what was known, I do not know why, as the lounge. It was the dimmest room in the house; a lamp had to be kept burning wanly there, too, day and night. Perhaps that was the reason people were always unwilling to linger in the room, despite the sofa and the easy chairs and the invitingly jumbled bookshelves. People? What am I saying? There never were people, to speak of, except me, and Magda. We did not encourage visitors; we were not sociable; we barely knew the names of our nearest neighbours; it was how I had insisted it should be, and Magda had willingly complied, at least I think she did so willingly. I sat down on the couch, crapulent and tired and squelchy with sudden, sweet self-pity. I never feel more acutely the pathos and perils of my life as in the early morning, the very time when I should be full of renewed hope and vigour. Briefly my resolve faltered; why was I going on