Read Online The Hours by Michael Cunningham - Free Book Online Page B

means more than the notice of a congress of poets and academics; it means that literature itself (the future of which is being shaped right now) seems to feel a need for Richard’s particular contribution: his defiantly prolix lamentations over worlds either vanishing or lost entirely. While there are no guarantees, it does seem possible, and perhaps even better than possible, that Clarissa and the small body of others have been right all along. Richard the dense, the wistful, the scrutinizing, Richard who observed so minutely and exhaustively, who tried to split the atom with words, will survive after other, more fashionable names have faded.
    And Clarissa, Richard’s oldest friend, his first reader—Clarissa who sees him every day, when even some of his more recent friends have come to imagine he’s already died—is throwing him a party. Clarissa is filling her home with flowers and candles. Why shouldn’t she want him to come?
    Richard says, ‘‘I’m not really needed there, am I? The party can go on just with the idea of me. The party has already happened, really, with or without me.’’
    ‘‘Now you’re being impossible. I’m going to lose my patience soon.’’ ‘‘No, please, don’t be angry. Oh, Mrs. D., the truth is, I’m
    embarrassed to go to this party. I’ve failed so terribly.’’
    ‘‘Don’t talk like that.’’
    ‘‘No, no. You’re kind, you’re very kind, but I’m afraid I failed, and that’s that. It was just too much for me. I thought I was a bigger figure than I was. Can I tell you an embarrassing secret? Something I’ve never told anyone?’’
    ‘‘Of course you can.’’
    ‘‘I thought I was a genius. I actually used that word, privately, to myself.’’
    ‘‘Well—’’
    ‘‘Oh, pride, pride. I was so wrong. It defeated me. It simply proved insurmountable. There was so much, oh, far too much for me. I mean, there’s the weather, there’s the water and the land, there are the animals, and the buildings, and the past and the future, there’s space, there’s history. There’s this thread or something caught between my teeth, there’s the old woman across the way, did you notice she switched the donkey and the squirrel on her windowsill? And, of course, there’s time. And place. And there’s you, Mrs. D. I wanted to tell part of the story of part of you. Oh, I’d love to have done that.’’
    ‘‘Richard. You wrote a whole book.’’
    ‘‘But everything’s left out of it, almost everything. And then I just stuck on a shock ending. Oh, now, I’m not looking for sympathy, really. We want so much, don’t we?’’
    ‘‘Yes. I suppose we do.’’
    ‘‘You kissed me beside a pond.’’
    ‘‘Ten thousand years ago.’’
    ‘‘It’s still happening.’’
    ‘‘In a sense, yes.’’
    ‘‘In reality. It’s happening in that present. This is happening in this present.’’
    ‘‘You’re tired, darling. You must rest. I’m going to call Bing about your medicine, all right?’’
    ‘‘Oh, I can’t, I can’t rest. Come here, come closer, would you, please?’’
    ‘‘I’m right here.’’
    ‘‘Closer. Take my hand.’’
    6 6
    Clariss a takes one of Richard’s hands in hers. She is surprised, even now, at how frail it is—how palpably it resembles a bundle of twigs.
    He says, ‘‘Here we are. Don’t you think?’’
    ‘‘Pardon me?’’
    ‘‘We’re middle-aged and we’re young lovers standing beside a pond. We’re everything, all at once. Isn’t it remarkable?’’
    ‘‘Yes.’’
    ‘‘I don’t have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we’re having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might die.’’
    ‘‘Don’t regret anything, Richard,’’ Clarissa says. ‘‘There’s no need, you’ve done so much.’’
    ‘‘It’s kind of you to say