Read Online Rose Leopard by Richard Yaxley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard Yaxley
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time is nothing more than a random sequence of flashes in the darkness â some illuminating, some nondescript, some resonant with terror, all lighting the slipslide to oblivion. Time splashes, in no sequence or order. It is not linear and it does not care.
What else can happen on this day? What else can time bring forth?
I turn back into that bright room and gorge on sudden details: the neatness of a stray beam of sunlight as it refracts off a curtain rail, thin gold stripes in the wallpaper that remind me of a night-gown my mother wore, electronic clicks and throat-clearings, other noises intruding. For a moment this fascinates me: that in our world, there can never be a total absence of sound. Even now, as I lie across her breast and let hope drag my finger inquisitively to her lips, I am immersed in hummings, the clatter and shuffle of shoes, wind slapping the window panes, other people breathing.
And I am thinking: Just shut up. All of you, everything, everyone ⦠just shut up! How can she be heard amidst all this noise?
âMr Daley? Mr Daley, thereâs nothing to hear, not any more â¦â
Someone is talking ⦠perhaps it is me. Nothing to hear . Well thatâs right, isnât it? Surely thatâs right. I canât hear her, canât detect any of her; her familiarity, the lift and crack of her voice, the steadiness of each heartbeat, the rustle of fresh morning clothes.
Canât hear her. Can only watch her pallid face, think how much it looks like an old painting, Renaissance perhaps, ivory skin with the texture of damask, vague time-cracks in the parchment, features set in ordered restraint. A quaint, elegant beauty: thatâs my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive.
Then I am surrounded, besieged by doctors and nurses and other medics, their own faces grey and drawn, their lips moving quietly, murmuring. There is a heart-drop when Garten says, âIâm very sorry. There was nothing ⦠we tried everything. Iâm sorry. Nothing we could do.â Suddenly I feel sick and I want to vomit but there is a hand on my shoulder urging me from the room. The smell of disinfectant, the blinding light. Something primitive kicks inside me â leave the room? Leave her be? My love, my rock, my wife ⦠leave the room?
âI am never leaving! Do you hear me? I am never leaving!â
I am never leaving ⦠never ⦠never going away ⦠never never never â¦
Now, minutes later â maybe hours, maybe days, I donât know â I stand and watch, feel somehow disconnected. It strikes me that the most amazing thing about a dead body is its stillness. We are as used to movement as we are to sound â but she has neither. Neither! My mind flies back to another time; Otis just born and me sneaking out of my bed in the middle of the night, tip-toeing into the rooms of my children because I was desperate to see their rise-and-fall, tiny chest-cages fluttering and dropping. This is the second movement that a parent learns to love, after the slide of a childâs head as it enters the world, mucky and distorted from the pressures of the womb, strangely elastic until the neck muscles flex and the chin lifts, as if that tiny new face wants to stretch its cheeks and greet our good and glorious world.
Good and glorious? When so much is a throwing-away process? When parents battle to discard their childrenâs dependencies, one by one, so that those same children may live without and despite us?
Good and glorious? When parents die before their children?
Love words, love Kaz, loved that other time, movement and sound and being alone in the room, a father in the darkness with his children, a father watching the shimmering glow of lamplight cast its whiteness around their eternal rise-and-fall.
Splash in the darkness.
Stuâs big voice, thundering down the corridor.
âIn here, I think!â and he is bursting through
What else can happen on this day? What else can time bring forth?
I turn back into that bright room and gorge on sudden details: the neatness of a stray beam of sunlight as it refracts off a curtain rail, thin gold stripes in the wallpaper that remind me of a night-gown my mother wore, electronic clicks and throat-clearings, other noises intruding. For a moment this fascinates me: that in our world, there can never be a total absence of sound. Even now, as I lie across her breast and let hope drag my finger inquisitively to her lips, I am immersed in hummings, the clatter and shuffle of shoes, wind slapping the window panes, other people breathing.
And I am thinking: Just shut up. All of you, everything, everyone ⦠just shut up! How can she be heard amidst all this noise?
âMr Daley? Mr Daley, thereâs nothing to hear, not any more â¦â
Someone is talking ⦠perhaps it is me. Nothing to hear . Well thatâs right, isnât it? Surely thatâs right. I canât hear her, canât detect any of her; her familiarity, the lift and crack of her voice, the steadiness of each heartbeat, the rustle of fresh morning clothes.
Canât hear her. Can only watch her pallid face, think how much it looks like an old painting, Renaissance perhaps, ivory skin with the texture of damask, vague time-cracks in the parchment, features set in ordered restraint. A quaint, elegant beauty: thatâs my last Duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive.
Then I am surrounded, besieged by doctors and nurses and other medics, their own faces grey and drawn, their lips moving quietly, murmuring. There is a heart-drop when Garten says, âIâm very sorry. There was nothing ⦠we tried everything. Iâm sorry. Nothing we could do.â Suddenly I feel sick and I want to vomit but there is a hand on my shoulder urging me from the room. The smell of disinfectant, the blinding light. Something primitive kicks inside me â leave the room? Leave her be? My love, my rock, my wife ⦠leave the room?
âI am never leaving! Do you hear me? I am never leaving!â
I am never leaving ⦠never ⦠never going away ⦠never never never â¦
Now, minutes later â maybe hours, maybe days, I donât know â I stand and watch, feel somehow disconnected. It strikes me that the most amazing thing about a dead body is its stillness. We are as used to movement as we are to sound â but she has neither. Neither! My mind flies back to another time; Otis just born and me sneaking out of my bed in the middle of the night, tip-toeing into the rooms of my children because I was desperate to see their rise-and-fall, tiny chest-cages fluttering and dropping. This is the second movement that a parent learns to love, after the slide of a childâs head as it enters the world, mucky and distorted from the pressures of the womb, strangely elastic until the neck muscles flex and the chin lifts, as if that tiny new face wants to stretch its cheeks and greet our good and glorious world.
Good and glorious? When so much is a throwing-away process? When parents battle to discard their childrenâs dependencies, one by one, so that those same children may live without and despite us?
Good and glorious? When parents die before their children?
Love words, love Kaz, loved that other time, movement and sound and being alone in the room, a father in the darkness with his children, a father watching the shimmering glow of lamplight cast its whiteness around their eternal rise-and-fall.
Splash in the darkness.
Stuâs big voice, thundering down the corridor.
âIn here, I think!â and he is bursting through
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