Read Online The New Uncanny by Etgar Keret, Ramsey Campbell, Hanif Kureishi, Christopher Priest, Jane Rogers, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek - Free Book Online
Authors: Etgar Keret, Ramsey Campbell, Hanif Kureishi, Christopher Priest, Jane Rogers, A.S. Byatt, Matthew Holness, Adam Marek
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formality of the announcement.
‘I need to ask you why there is someone else on the back of my head.’
The boy was aware that the warm peace of the study was broken. It made him wary – his father was a hero of the nation and should not be afraid of anything. He said nothing, awkward now. After a pause his father said, ‘How did you find out?’ He sounded weary.
‘It bit me.’ The boy walked towards the desk holding out his hand.
He was almost too big to climb into his father’s lap but the older man held him close, kissing the small bruise. He sagged there for a while exhausted by the long slow day, but it was not enough,
‘But why, Daddy?’
‘I don’t know,’ his father said, ‘no one knows. It is a strange and mysterious thing.’
‘Couldn’t you take it away?’
‘No, no, I’m afraid not. But it is not a someone, it is a part of you.’ The boy could hear a strange insistent urgency in his father’s voice; and he thought it might be fear. So his father was afraid of something. The boy’s world shivered, threatened. Perhaps it was his own fear that made him daring, because even as he asked, he knew it was a dangerous question. He asked, ‘Is it what killed my mummy?’
‘No.’ But the no was too loud, too strong, too resolute. It was like Nanny’s ‘naughty girl’; it was true but not true; the speaker chose it to be true although there were other choices which the speaker did not choose. Grown-ups, he learned far too suddenly, spoke with double voices, cunningly, so that true and not true weren’t like white and black, like either-or, like plus and minus; they were like the bogs on the hill side, shifty, invisible and dangerous.
His father’s revulsion from the boy’s deformity was very strong. Because he was a man of self-discipline rather than courage he would never admit this even to himself; this was why, each evening, he obliged his often reluctant lips to kiss the secret face so tenderly. This was why, too, he missed the boy’s curiosity and tried to offer him consolation instead of information.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘have I ever shown you a picture of your mother?’ He turned the boy’s head very gently towards a miniature set up on a filigree easel on his desk. She smiled there, all pink and blond and blue-eyed. She was pretty. But it was a picture, a painting; the boy knew that paintings did not always look like the thing they were paintings of. He could never be sure. And he did not much care; he had other things on his mind. But he understood that his father had let him into a secret place of his own and deserved some sort of thanks. He tried, slightly experimentally, to say the right thing, to do that grown-up speaking which makes a gap between the feelings and the thoughts and the words.
‘I don’t look much like her, do I Daddy?’
He had got it right. He felt his father smiling. ‘No, you look more like me, and bad luck to you, except that men should never be that pretty.’ Their dark eyes met in what the father thought was a sweet moment of male complicity and bonding. And a little later they went upstairs, hand in hand, to play with their train set.
But the day had been too difficult and his need had not been met. What he had learned was not about the other face, but about the way grown-ups did not want to talk about the other face. There was something dark and horrible about it. They were ashamed. They wanted him to keep it secret with them and from them.
But alone, alone in the darkness of night, and the deeper darkness of its invisibility, with delicate and attentive fingers, he began to explore the back of his head. He learned that what hurt it, hurt him, so he had to treat it tenderly; he learned that it blinked when he blinked, but did not smile when he smiled, or weep when he wept; he learned that its nose never dribbled, but if he pinched its nostrils closed, it did not breath through its mouth, but he became breathless; he learned that he could
‘I need to ask you why there is someone else on the back of my head.’
The boy was aware that the warm peace of the study was broken. It made him wary – his father was a hero of the nation and should not be afraid of anything. He said nothing, awkward now. After a pause his father said, ‘How did you find out?’ He sounded weary.
‘It bit me.’ The boy walked towards the desk holding out his hand.
He was almost too big to climb into his father’s lap but the older man held him close, kissing the small bruise. He sagged there for a while exhausted by the long slow day, but it was not enough,
‘But why, Daddy?’
‘I don’t know,’ his father said, ‘no one knows. It is a strange and mysterious thing.’
‘Couldn’t you take it away?’
‘No, no, I’m afraid not. But it is not a someone, it is a part of you.’ The boy could hear a strange insistent urgency in his father’s voice; and he thought it might be fear. So his father was afraid of something. The boy’s world shivered, threatened. Perhaps it was his own fear that made him daring, because even as he asked, he knew it was a dangerous question. He asked, ‘Is it what killed my mummy?’
‘No.’ But the no was too loud, too strong, too resolute. It was like Nanny’s ‘naughty girl’; it was true but not true; the speaker chose it to be true although there were other choices which the speaker did not choose. Grown-ups, he learned far too suddenly, spoke with double voices, cunningly, so that true and not true weren’t like white and black, like either-or, like plus and minus; they were like the bogs on the hill side, shifty, invisible and dangerous.
His father’s revulsion from the boy’s deformity was very strong. Because he was a man of self-discipline rather than courage he would never admit this even to himself; this was why, each evening, he obliged his often reluctant lips to kiss the secret face so tenderly. This was why, too, he missed the boy’s curiosity and tried to offer him consolation instead of information.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘have I ever shown you a picture of your mother?’ He turned the boy’s head very gently towards a miniature set up on a filigree easel on his desk. She smiled there, all pink and blond and blue-eyed. She was pretty. But it was a picture, a painting; the boy knew that paintings did not always look like the thing they were paintings of. He could never be sure. And he did not much care; he had other things on his mind. But he understood that his father had let him into a secret place of his own and deserved some sort of thanks. He tried, slightly experimentally, to say the right thing, to do that grown-up speaking which makes a gap between the feelings and the thoughts and the words.
‘I don’t look much like her, do I Daddy?’
He had got it right. He felt his father smiling. ‘No, you look more like me, and bad luck to you, except that men should never be that pretty.’ Their dark eyes met in what the father thought was a sweet moment of male complicity and bonding. And a little later they went upstairs, hand in hand, to play with their train set.
But the day had been too difficult and his need had not been met. What he had learned was not about the other face, but about the way grown-ups did not want to talk about the other face. There was something dark and horrible about it. They were ashamed. They wanted him to keep it secret with them and from them.
But alone, alone in the darkness of night, and the deeper darkness of its invisibility, with delicate and attentive fingers, he began to explore the back of his head. He learned that what hurt it, hurt him, so he had to treat it tenderly; he learned that it blinked when he blinked, but did not smile when he smiled, or weep when he wept; he learned that its nose never dribbled, but if he pinched its nostrils closed, it did not breath through its mouth, but he became breathless; he learned that he could
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