Read Online The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine by Peter Straub - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Straub
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in the photo had a head and a torso, but little else. The eyes, nose, and ears were gone. A congeries of scars like punctuation marks, like snakes, like words in an unknown language, decorated the torso.
I know what
munna
means, and
num, thought Sandrine, and for a moment experienced a spasm of stunning, utterly sexual warmth before she fully understood what had been given her: that she recognized the man in the photo. The roar of oceans, of storm-battered leaves, filled her ears and caused her head to spin and wobble. Her fingers parted, and the Polaroid floated off in an artificial, wind-machine breeze that spun it around a couple of times before lifting it high above the port and winking it out of sight, lost in the bright hard blue above the
Sweet Delight
.
Sandrine found herself moving down the yellow length of the long dock.
Tough love
, Ballard had said. To be given and received, at the end perfectly repaid by that which she had perhaps glimpsed but never witnessed, the brutal, exalted, slow-moving force that had sometimes rustled a curtain, sometimes moved through this woman, her hair and body now dark with mud, had touched her between her legs, Sandrine, poor profane lost deluded most marvelously fated Sandrine.
1997
From the galley they come, from behind the little dun-colored curtain in the dining room, from behind the bookcases in the handsome sitting room, from beneath the bed and the bloodstained metal table, through wood and fabric and the weight of years, We come, the Old Ones and Real People, the Cloud Huggers, We process slowly toward the center of the mystery We understand only by giving it unquestioning service. What remains of the clients and patrons lies, still breathing though without depth or force, upon the metal worktable. It was always going to end this way; it always does; it can no other. Speaking in the high-pitched, musical language of birds that We taught the Pirahã at the beginning of time, We gather at the site of these ruined bodies; We worship their devotion to each other and the Great Task that grew and will grow on them; We treat them with grave tenderness as we separate what can and must be separated. Notes of the utmost liquid purity float upward from the mouths of We and print themselves upon the air. We know what they mean, though they have long since passed through the realm of words and gained again the transparency of music. We love and accept the weight and the weightlessness of music. When the process of separation is complete, through the old sacred inner channels We transport what the dear, still-living man and woman have each taken from the other’s body down, down, down to the galley and the ravening hunger that burns ever within it.
Then. Then. With the utmost tenderness, singing the deep tuneless music at the heart of the ancient world, We gather up what remains of Ballard and Sandrine, armless and legless trunks, faces without features, their breath clinging to their mouths like wisps, carry them (in our arms, in baskets, in once-pristine sheets) across the deck, and permit them to roll from our care, as they had always longed to do, and into that of the flashing, furious little river monarchs. We watch the water boil in a magnificence of ecstasy, and We sing for as long as it lasts.
Peter Straub
Peter Straub is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Two of his most recent,
Lost Boy Lost Girl
and
In the Night Room
, are winners of the Bram Stoker Award, as is his recent collection,
5 Stories
. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of America anthology
American Fantastic Tales
. He lives in New York City.
www.peterstraub.net
ALSO BY PETER STRAUB
Novels
A Dark Matter
In the Night Room
lost boy lost girl
Black House
(with Stephen King)
Mr. X
The Hellfire Club
The Throat
Mrs. God
Mystery
Koko
The Talisman
(with Stephen King)
Floating Dragon
Shadowland
Ghost Story
If You Could See Me Now
Julia
Under
I know what
munna
means, and
num, thought Sandrine, and for a moment experienced a spasm of stunning, utterly sexual warmth before she fully understood what had been given her: that she recognized the man in the photo. The roar of oceans, of storm-battered leaves, filled her ears and caused her head to spin and wobble. Her fingers parted, and the Polaroid floated off in an artificial, wind-machine breeze that spun it around a couple of times before lifting it high above the port and winking it out of sight, lost in the bright hard blue above the
Sweet Delight
.
Sandrine found herself moving down the yellow length of the long dock.
Tough love
, Ballard had said. To be given and received, at the end perfectly repaid by that which she had perhaps glimpsed but never witnessed, the brutal, exalted, slow-moving force that had sometimes rustled a curtain, sometimes moved through this woman, her hair and body now dark with mud, had touched her between her legs, Sandrine, poor profane lost deluded most marvelously fated Sandrine.
1997
From the galley they come, from behind the little dun-colored curtain in the dining room, from behind the bookcases in the handsome sitting room, from beneath the bed and the bloodstained metal table, through wood and fabric and the weight of years, We come, the Old Ones and Real People, the Cloud Huggers, We process slowly toward the center of the mystery We understand only by giving it unquestioning service. What remains of the clients and patrons lies, still breathing though without depth or force, upon the metal worktable. It was always going to end this way; it always does; it can no other. Speaking in the high-pitched, musical language of birds that We taught the Pirahã at the beginning of time, We gather at the site of these ruined bodies; We worship their devotion to each other and the Great Task that grew and will grow on them; We treat them with grave tenderness as we separate what can and must be separated. Notes of the utmost liquid purity float upward from the mouths of We and print themselves upon the air. We know what they mean, though they have long since passed through the realm of words and gained again the transparency of music. We love and accept the weight and the weightlessness of music. When the process of separation is complete, through the old sacred inner channels We transport what the dear, still-living man and woman have each taken from the other’s body down, down, down to the galley and the ravening hunger that burns ever within it.
Then. Then. With the utmost tenderness, singing the deep tuneless music at the heart of the ancient world, We gather up what remains of Ballard and Sandrine, armless and legless trunks, faces without features, their breath clinging to their mouths like wisps, carry them (in our arms, in baskets, in once-pristine sheets) across the deck, and permit them to roll from our care, as they had always longed to do, and into that of the flashing, furious little river monarchs. We watch the water boil in a magnificence of ecstasy, and We sing for as long as it lasts.
Peter Straub
Peter Straub is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Two of his most recent,
Lost Boy Lost Girl
and
In the Night Room
, are winners of the Bram Stoker Award, as is his recent collection,
5 Stories
. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of America anthology
American Fantastic Tales
. He lives in New York City.
www.peterstraub.net
ALSO BY PETER STRAUB
Novels
A Dark Matter
In the Night Room
lost boy lost girl
Black House
(with Stephen King)
Mr. X
The Hellfire Club
The Throat
Mrs. God
Mystery
Koko
The Talisman
(with Stephen King)
Floating Dragon
Shadowland
Ghost Story
If You Could See Me Now
Julia
Under
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