Read Online Linger Awhile by Russell Hoban - Free Book Online
Authors: Russell Hoban
Tags: Retail, 20th Century, Literature, USA, Amazon.com, 21st Century, Britain, British History, American Literature, Expatriate Literature
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Poplar in what was then called a ‘colored’ neighborhood. There was a display window in which hung two amphora-shaped glass vessels suspended by chains. The one on the left contained a beautiful red liquid; the one on the right was filled with green. There is just such a drug store in a painting by Edward Hopper, with PRESCRIPTIONS DRUGS and EXLAX across the top of the window. There must have been a lot of constipation at that time. The Ex-Lax slogan was ‘When Nature forgets, remember Ex-Lax’. I don’t think Uncle Barney’s window said EX-LAX. He had many customers who came in with cuts fromrazor fights and said, ‘Fix me up, Doc.’
There was no soda fountain that I remember but I was often given chewing gum. The rooms behind and above the drug store were divided by bead curtains made of little pink and yellow glass sticks that clicked as you passed through them. They looked like candy. The lampshades also had little pink and yellow glass sticks hanging from them. In an upstairs bedroom lay my mother’s father whom we called Zayda (Grandfather). The room smelled medicinal. He spoke no English but gave me dimes. Tante Celia was Uncle Barney’s wife and Uncle Izzy, pronounced Easy, from my father’s side lived there also. Uncle Easy wore a truss. My cousins Daniel and Leonard and Bobby were there too. Did we play Parcheesi? There are flavours that one tastes not with the mouth but with the mind. I taste the flavour of those Sundays as I write this: the street lamps in the evening; the brilliant red and green vessels in the illuminated window. Their reality was not the same as what I have now.
My thoughts about Justine change from moment to moment. I was naturally offended by her rejection of me but I no longer am. To be called up out of the dead as she was must be a terrifying experience and her being must be an uneasy construct of shifting realities that might collapse at any moment into nothingness. I can’t imagine her memories.
19
Medical Examiner Harrison Burke
13 January 2004. John Hunter said to me, ‘Harry, what are you saying?’
‘What’s in my report,’ I told him, ‘that’s what I’m saying.’
‘OK, so Istvan Fallok left saliva on Rose Harland’s neck?’
‘I didn’t say that, I only said there was a match with his 10th January sample.’
‘So how’d his saliva get on her neck? Did he suck her blood? Is he the murderer we’re looking for?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘And Justine Trimble’s 10th January sample matches Chauncey Lim’s of the same date? What about that? Heavy kissing?’
‘I have no explanation for that.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘Just what I’ve said.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it from me.’
20
Grace Kowalski
13 January 2004. I don’t like being mucked about. Istvan Fallok and I aren’t a couple but we sleep together once in a while and we’re intimate in all kinds of practical ways that make people closer than sex does. And now he’s got this dead-meat video creature and Grace is out of the loop. Fine. Great. But maybe I can make him sorry for that. I’m not sure how but I’ll think of something.
21
Irving Goodman
14 January 2004. Somebody once said, ‘You get too soon old and too late smart.’ I’m eighty-three now. Maybe I’ll get smart when I’m dead. Today is Wednesday but it feels like the Sunday evenings of my boyhood. Darkness coming on and tomorrow is Monday and nothing to look forward to but school. Sunday evenings were the death of the weekend and here it is Sunday evening on Wednesday.
I was playing chess against myself and losing. What did I expect? I’m still opening with the Ruy Lopez just as I did at sixteen. While losing I was listening to Souad Massi’s album
deb
(heartbroken):
Oh! My heart, your wound deepens
Oh! My heart, who is responsible for that?
There she was on the album cover, young and beautiful with her guitar and her sweet seductive voice full of sadness. Any man hearing her sing
There was no soda fountain that I remember but I was often given chewing gum. The rooms behind and above the drug store were divided by bead curtains made of little pink and yellow glass sticks that clicked as you passed through them. They looked like candy. The lampshades also had little pink and yellow glass sticks hanging from them. In an upstairs bedroom lay my mother’s father whom we called Zayda (Grandfather). The room smelled medicinal. He spoke no English but gave me dimes. Tante Celia was Uncle Barney’s wife and Uncle Izzy, pronounced Easy, from my father’s side lived there also. Uncle Easy wore a truss. My cousins Daniel and Leonard and Bobby were there too. Did we play Parcheesi? There are flavours that one tastes not with the mouth but with the mind. I taste the flavour of those Sundays as I write this: the street lamps in the evening; the brilliant red and green vessels in the illuminated window. Their reality was not the same as what I have now.
My thoughts about Justine change from moment to moment. I was naturally offended by her rejection of me but I no longer am. To be called up out of the dead as she was must be a terrifying experience and her being must be an uneasy construct of shifting realities that might collapse at any moment into nothingness. I can’t imagine her memories.
19
Medical Examiner Harrison Burke
13 January 2004. John Hunter said to me, ‘Harry, what are you saying?’
‘What’s in my report,’ I told him, ‘that’s what I’m saying.’
‘OK, so Istvan Fallok left saliva on Rose Harland’s neck?’
‘I didn’t say that, I only said there was a match with his 10th January sample.’
‘So how’d his saliva get on her neck? Did he suck her blood? Is he the murderer we’re looking for?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘And Justine Trimble’s 10th January sample matches Chauncey Lim’s of the same date? What about that? Heavy kissing?’
‘I have no explanation for that.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘Just what I’ve said.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it from me.’
20
Grace Kowalski
13 January 2004. I don’t like being mucked about. Istvan Fallok and I aren’t a couple but we sleep together once in a while and we’re intimate in all kinds of practical ways that make people closer than sex does. And now he’s got this dead-meat video creature and Grace is out of the loop. Fine. Great. But maybe I can make him sorry for that. I’m not sure how but I’ll think of something.
21
Irving Goodman
14 January 2004. Somebody once said, ‘You get too soon old and too late smart.’ I’m eighty-three now. Maybe I’ll get smart when I’m dead. Today is Wednesday but it feels like the Sunday evenings of my boyhood. Darkness coming on and tomorrow is Monday and nothing to look forward to but school. Sunday evenings were the death of the weekend and here it is Sunday evening on Wednesday.
I was playing chess against myself and losing. What did I expect? I’m still opening with the Ruy Lopez just as I did at sixteen. While losing I was listening to Souad Massi’s album
deb
(heartbroken):
Oh! My heart, your wound deepens
Oh! My heart, who is responsible for that?
There she was on the album cover, young and beautiful with her guitar and her sweet seductive voice full of sadness. Any man hearing her sing
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