Hearts Invisible Furies Quotes

Maybe there were no villains in my mother’s story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.

A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.

I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,

What you know about women,” replied Maude, “could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer.

It's as if she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are wrong for us.

I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world.

If there is one thing I've learned in more than seven decades of life, it's that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what's around the corner and it's often something unpleasant.

It's not easy losing someone," she said. "It never goes away, does it?" "The Phantom Pain, they call it," I said. "Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.

I’ve spent so much time pushing the boat out that I forgot to jump on and now it’s out beyond the harbour on the high seas, but it’s very nice to look at.

You look like a Greek God sent down by the immortal Zeus from Mount Olympus to taunt the rest of us inferior beings with your astonishing beauty, I said, which somehow in translation came out as "you look fine, why?

You were never a real Avery,” he hissed. “You know that, don’t you?” “I do,” I said. “But Christ on a bike, you came close. You came damned close.

life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face.

Every man is afraid of women as far as I can see,” said Julian, displaying an understanding of the universe far beyond his years. “That’s true,” she said. “But only because most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power. They fear a change of the world order.

Do you enjoy being a writer, Mrs Avery?” asked Julian. “No, of course not, she said. “It’s a hideous profession. Entered into by narcissists who think their pathetic little imaginations will be of interest to people they’ve never met.

The women are always the whores; the priests are always the good men who were led astray.

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.

Anything is possible,’ I said. ‘But most things are unlikely.

There’s nothing more tedious than a grown man blaming his parents, birth or otherwise, for all the things that have gone wrong in his life.

I was deluding myself, for love was one thing but desire was something else entirely.

What you know about women,” replied Maude, “could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer. For all your

We’re none of us normal. Not in this fucking country.

The notion that he had a life outside our life, outside our friendship, was deeply hurtful to me.

A marriage should be about friendship and companionship, not about sex.

I’ve always felt that the Catholic Church has the same relationship to God as a fish has to a bicycle.

Does it ever get easier?" she asked. I nodded. "It does," I said. You reach a point where you realize that your life must go on regardless. You choose to live or you choose to die. But then there are moments, things that you see, something funny on the street or or a good joke that you hear, a television program that you want to share, and it makes you miss the person who's gone terribly and then it's not grief at all, it's more a sort of bitterness at the world for taking them away from you. I think of Bastiaan every day, of course. But I've grown accustomed to his absence.

I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations. The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighed heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life.

What do dreams mean anyway? They’re just a lot of silly nonsense.’ ‘Or wish fulfilment. The subconscious representation of our true desires.

Most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power. They fear a change of the world order.

I'm not praying," she said. "I'm remembering. Sometimes the two things look alike, that's all.

Do you watch Neighbors, Cyril?” “Well, I’ve seen it,” I admitted. “Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I watch it.” “You should. It’s magnificent. Shakespearean in its characterization.

I married up several times. And then across once or twice. And then beneath me. I never quite found the right level somehow. Perhaps I should have married diagonally or in a slightly curved direction.

He tells a story, and that's what I like. Does this fella tell a story? He doesn't spend twenty pages describing the colour of the sky?' 'He hasn't so far.' 'Good. Jeffrey Archer never talks about the colour of the sky and I like that in a writer. I'd say Jeffrey Archer has never even looked up at the sky his entire life.' 'Especially now that he's in prison,' I suggested.

I didn’t blow anyone!’ he roared. ‘If anyone was getting blown it was me. Although, of course, it wasn’t me anyway, as it never happened.’ ‘That’s a great quote,’ said Mr Denby-Denby. ‘We should definitely put that into the press release. I don’t blow teenage boys. They blow me.

My mother was Eveline Hartford,” said Maude, as if this would mean something to one or the other of us. “So as you know, she simply adored chairs.

I don’t drink coffee,” she said, taking a sip from her tea. “Coffee is for Americans and Protestants. Irish people should drink tea. That’s how we were brought up after all. Give me a nice cup of Lyons and I’m content.” “I don’t mind the occasional cup of Barry’s myself.” “No, that’s from Cork.

You know, Emily Dickinson is here too. All she does is write poems about life all the time. The irony! She keeps asking me to read them. I refuse, of course. The days are long enough as it is.

no man with any sense should marry the girl to whom he loses his virginity. It’s like learning to drive in some clapped-out old banger and then holding on to it for the rest of your life when you’ve developed the skill to handle a BMW in rush-hour traffic on a busy Autobahn.

But for all that we had, for all the luxury to which we were accustomed, we were both denied love, and this deficiency would be scorched into our futures lives like an ill-considered tattoo inscribed on the buttocks after a drunken night out, leading each of us inevitably toward isolation and disaster.

Why do they hate us so much anyway?’ I asked after a lengthy pause. ‘If they’re not queer themselves, then what does it matter to them if someone else is?’ ‘I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves,’ she said with a shrug.

What you know about women,” replied Maude, “could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer. For

line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face.

Please don’t let Julian die, I asked God. And please stop me from being a homosexual. Only when I stood up and walked away did I realize that that had been two prayers, so I went back and lit a second candle, which cost me another penny.

Sure the priests ran the country back then and they hated women. Oh my God, they hated women and anything that had to do with women and anything to do with women’s bodies or ideas or desires, and any chance that they had to humiliate a woman or bring her down, they would take full advantage of it.

But this was Dublin, the nation's capital. The place of my birth and a city I loved at the heart of a country I loathed. A town filled with good-hearted innocents, miserable bigots, adulterous husbands, conniving churchmen, paupers who received no help from the State, and millionaires who sucked the lifeblood from it.

were both denied love, and this deficiency would be scorched into our future lives like an ill-considered tattoo inscribed on the buttocks after a drunken night out, leading each of us inevitably towards isolation

What you know about women,’ replied Maude, ‘could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer.

They sat there in ascending order of age and stupidity.

Every man is afraid of women as far as I can see.

Why are you so afraid of people being happy?" he read. "Why can't you just live and let live?

Do you watch Neighbors, Cyril?” “Well, I’ve seen it,” I admitted. “Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I watch it.

that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face.

My mother was Evelin’s Hartford,” said Maude, as if this would mean something to one or the other of us. “So you know, she simply adored chairs.

sometimes feel as if I wasn’t supposed to live among people at all. As if I would be happier on a little island somewhere, all alone with my books and some writing material for company.

I stared at him and felt the tears forming in my eyes. “Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” I asked him. “It’s been almost thirty years. I shouldn’t have had to spend all that time on my own.

Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.

Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoloeague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, in the parish of Goleen, West Cork, and denounced my mother as a whore.

The only thing I’d tell Maude, if she was here, is that she runs the risk of sounding a little anti-man at times, don’t you agree? All the husbands in her novels are stupid, insensitive, faithless individuals with murky pasts, empty heads, micro-penises and questionable morals. But I suppose she had a good imagination, as all writers must, and she was simply making things up.

I may not have known much about pregnancies but I knew that you couldn’t have a son or a daughter without actually doing it first. The priests at school had once muttered something to the effect that when a mummy and a daddy loved each other very much, they lay close together and the Holy Spirit descended upon them to create the miracle of new life. (Charles, in his one attempt at a man-to-man talk with me, had put it rather differently. ‘Get her kit off,’ he said. ‘Play with her tits a bit, because the ladies love that. Then just stick your cock in her pussy and ram it in and out a bit. Don’t hang around too long in there – it’s not a bloody train station. Just do your business and get on with your day.’ It’s no wonder he managed to secure so many wives, the old romantic.) I

Cyril, you remember Peter and Ruth, don't you?' she said. 'Of course' I replied. 'Happy Christmas. Nice to see you both again.' 'Happy Christmas to you,' said Peter, an enormous man bursting out of an extra-large shirt. 'And may the blessings of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior be with you on this momentous day.' 'Fair enough,' I said 'Hello, Ruth.

Whenever I look at Edna O’Brien,” continued Mr. Denby-Denby, “I get the impression that she wants to put every man she meets across her knee and give them a good spanking until they show her the proper respect. Oh, to be the bare bottom beneath that alabaster palm!

I hope he didn’t suffer too much.” “He did,” she said. “But he was very stoical about it. It’s those of us who are left behind who’ll have to suffer now.

This deficiency would be scorched into our future like an ill-considered tattoo.

It's not easy losing someone," she said. "It never goes away, does it?" "The Phantom Pain, they call it," I said. "Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.

Anything is possible,” I said. “But most things are unlikely.

Why couldn't Ireland have been like this when I was a boy?

It takes all sorts to make a world.

I need to get back to the office. Those windows won't stare out themselves all afternoon.

The same thing that’s happened

We all fall in the shit many times during our lives. The trick is pulling ourselves out again.

Maude's way of dealing with Charles was to treat him like an ottoman, of no use to anyone but worth having around

But here’s what you have to remember: There are no homosexuals in Ireland. You might have got it into your head that you are one but you’re just wrong, it’s as simple as that. You’re wrong.

Every man is afraid of women as far as I can see," said Julian, displaying an understanding of the universe far beyond his years. "That's true," she said. "But only because most men are not as smart as women and yet they continue to hold all the power, they fear a change of the world order.

What's wrong with you people?" he asked, looking at me as if I was clinically insane. "What's wrong with Ireland? Are you all just fucking nuts over there, is that it? Don't you want each other to be happy?" "No," I said, finding my country a difficult one to explain. "No, I don't think we do.

What you know about women,’ replied Maude, ‘could be written in large font on the back of a postage stamp and there’d still be room for the Lord’s Prayer. For all your great flirtations and seductions, for all your tarts, whores, girlfriends and wives, you’ve really learned nothing about us over the years, have you?

Still, I had resolved to sit and talk with him and that is what I would do. He neither offered permission nor withheld it regarding the curtains, so I stepped over to the window and pulled them apart, glancing down onto the New York streets below. The yellow cabs were driving up and down honking their horns and the view between the skyscrapers held me for a minute. I had never fallen in love with this city—even after almost seven years my head was still in Amsterdam and my heart was still in Dublin—but there were moments, like this one, when I understood why others did.

And what did I do, only slip my hand inside his own and say that maybe he should hold my hand instead for a while, and I can see the look on his face even to this day. The shock and the desire. Oh, I loved the power I had over him! The power I could sense in myself! You won't understand this but it's something that every girl realizes at some point in her life, usually when she's around fifteen or sixteen. Maybe it's even younger now. That she has more power than every man in the room combined, because men are weak and governed by their desires and their desperate need for women but women are strong. I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world. But they don't. I don't know why. And for all their weakness and stupidity, men are smart enough to know that being in charge counts for a lot. They have that over us at least.

Cyril about Charles Avery: 'Charles was a banker. He was quite rich but he was always cheating on his taxes. He went to prison a few times for it. And when he was younger he always had a string of women on the go. But he was good fun. He was always telling me I wasn't a real Avery, though. I think that I could have done without that.' 'That sounds quite mean on his part.' 'I honestly don't think that he was trying to be cruel. It was more a matter of fact. Anyway, he's dead now. They both are. And I was with him when he went. I miss him still.' (p. 557)

You reach a point where you realize that your life must go on regardless. You choose to live or you choose to die. But then there are moments, things that you see, something funny on the street or a good joke that you hear, a television program that you want to share, and it makes you miss the person who’s gone terribly and then it’s not grief at all, it’s more a sort of bitterness at the world for taking them away from you.

No, not at all,' I told her. 'I had a reasonably happy childhood, which is rather strange in retrospect, as neither Charles nor Maude showed any particular interest in me at all. But they didn't beat me or starve me or anything like that. I wasn't a Dickensian orphan, if you know what I mean. And as for my birth mother, well I daresay she did what she had to do. I assume she was unmarried, that's where adopted babies usually come from, isn't it? No, I don't feel any anger at all. What's the point' 'That's good to hear. There's nothing more tedious than a grown man blaming his parents, birth or otherwise, for all the things that have gone wrong in his life.' (p. 267)

My six uncles, their dark hair glistening with rose-scented lacquer, sat next to her in ascending order of age and stupidity. >> In her absence they would say that she had always been a floozy and this mattered a great deal to my mother, for she and the person they would fashion from their sordid imaginations would have little in common except for a name.

It’s not easy losing someone,” she said. “It never goes away, does it?” “The Phantom Pain, they call it,” I said. “Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs.

tooth

What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.

the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant.

Actually, they were very strange parents,' I told her. 'Neither of them were what you might call conventional people. And they had an extremely peculiar approach to parenting. Sometimes I felt as if I were little more than a tenant in their house, as if they weren't entirely sure what I was doing there. But they never mistreated me, nor did they ever do anything to hurt me. And perhaps they loved me in their own way. The concept itself might have been slightly alien to them.' 'And did you love them?' 'Yes, I did,' I said without hesitation. 'I loved them both very much. Despite everything. But then children usually do. They look for safety and security, and one way or another Charles and Maude provided that.' (p. 556)

Fucking fantastic," insisted George, pulling Marcus close to him and giving him a quick peck on the lips. I couldn't help but notice how both his parents looked away instinctively, while his younger brother and sister stared and giggled, but it felt very good to watch the moment as he pulled away and they looked into each other's eyes, a couple of teenager who had found each other - and would surely lose each other again for someone else soon but were happy right at that moment. It was something that never could have happened when I was that age.

Did I ever tell you that they nearly cut my dick off?’ ‘No,’ I said, uncertain whether this was something that had really happened or something he was misremembering in his delirium. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘The night before the Gardaí found me. They said that I had a choice. That they’d either pop one of my eyes out or cut my dick off. They told me I could choose which.’ ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I mean I would have said my eye, of course. Probably the one on the other side to the missing ear, just to balance things out. But can you imagine if they had cut my dick off? I wouldn’t be lying here right now, would I? None of this would have happened.’ ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ I said. ‘They would have saved my life.’ ‘Maybe.’ ‘No, you’re right. I’d be dead already because I’d probably have killed myself if they’d cut my dick off. There’s no way I would have gone through my life dickless. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how one small part of our anatomy completely controls our lives?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in more than seven decades of life, it’s that the world is a completely fucked-up place. You never know what’s around the corner and it’s often something unpleasant.

monogamy is simply not the natural state for man, and when I say man I mean man or woman. It just doesn’t make sense to manacle yourself sexually to the same person for fifty or sixty years when your relationship with that person can be so much happier if you give each other the freedom to enter and be entered by people of the opposite sex whom you find attractive. A marriage should be about friendship and companionship, not about sex.

Oh, I hate him,' she said, and I noticed a flush of colour come into her cheeks and the manner in which the fingers of her left hand dug into her palm, as if she wanted something to take away the pain. 'I absolutely detest him. Afterwards, I didn't feel very much at all for a week or two. I suppose I was in shock. But then the fury rose and it hasn't subsided since. Sometimes I find it difficult to control. I think it was around the time that everyone stopped asking me whether I was all right, when lives went back to how they had been before. Had he been in Dublin I might well have gone over there, broken down his door and stabbed him as he slept. Fortunately for him, he was in Madagascar with his lepers.' (p. 268)

It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature. I had never considered myself to be a dishonest person, hating the idea that I was capable of such mendacity and deceit, but the more I examined the architecture of my life, the more I realized how fraudulent were its foundations. The belief that I would spend the rest of my time on earth lying to people weighed heavily on me and at such times I gave serious consideration to taking my own life. Knives frightened me, nooses horrified me and guns alarmed me, but I knew that I was not a strong swimmer. Were I to head out to Howth, for example, and throw myself into the sea, the current would quickly pull me under and there would be nothing I could do to save myself. It was an option that was always at the back of my mind

(Cyril and Alice talking about Maude Avery and her books) 'I occasionally get letters from students asking for help with their theses.' 'And do you offer it?' 'No. It's all there in the books themselves. There's nothing much I can add that would be of any use to anyone.' 'You're right,' said Alice. 'So why any of them feel the need to talk about their work in public or give interviews is beyond me. If you didn't say what you wanted to say in the pages themselves, then surely you should have done another draft.' (p. 271)

if you ever tell anyone about this conversation, not only will I deny everything but I’ll sue you for libel.” “A libel is written down,” I told him. “If I tell someone, then it would be a slander. Although it wouldn’t be anyway since it would be the truth.” “Fuck you,” he said.

A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face. He looked a hundred years old. He looked like a man who had died several months earlier. He looked like a soul in pure torment.

He lifted his pint and took a long gulp and I watched his face grimace a little as he tried to swallow. His eyes closed briefly as he fought the urge to spit it back up. 'Christ, that tastes good,' he said with all the credibility of a Parisian complimenting a meal in Central London. 'I needed that.

And what did I do, only slip my hand inside his own and say that maybe he should hold my hand instead for a while, and I can see the look on his face even to this day. The shock and the desire. Oh, I loved the power I had over him! The power I could sense in myself! You won't understand this but it's something that every girl realizes at some point in her life, usually when she's around fiteen or sixteen. Maybe it's even younger now. That she has more power than every man in the room combined, because men are weak and governed by their desires and their desperate need for women but women are strong. I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world. But they don't. I don't know why. And for all their weakness and stupidity, men are smart enough to know that being in charge counts for a lot. They have that over us at least.' (p. 561-562)

Walk slowly," said a voice from behind me, and I turned around and felt my heart jump in delight. "Remember, you're on a crutch and she's an old lady." "You came!" I said. "I heard you were looking for me. Julian told me." "I didn't think I'd see you. Not till, you know, till it was my turn." "I couldn't wait," he said. "You look exactly the same as you did on that last day. In Central Park." "Actually, I'm a few pounds lighter," he said. "I've been on a fitness drive." "Good for you." I stared at him and felt the tears forming in my eyes. "Do you know how much I've missed you?" I asked him. "It's been almost thirty years. I shouldn't have had to spend all that time on my own." "I know, but it's nearly over. And you haven't done a bad job of it at the same time, given the mess you made of the first thirty. The years apart will feel like nothing compared to what we have before us." "The music's started," said my mother, clutching me to her. "I have to go, Bastiaan," I said. "Will I see you later?" "No. But I'll be there in November when you arrive." "All right." I took a deep breath. "I love you." "I love you too," said my mother. "Shall we go?" I nodded and stepped forward, and slowly we made our way down the aisle, passing the faces of our friends and family, and I delivered her into the arms of a kind man who swore to love her and take care of her for the rest of her life. And at the end, when the entire congregation broke into applause, I realized that I was finally happy.

Mathilde watched as down the street came a little girl in a red snowsuit with purple racing stripes. Mittens, a cap too big for her head. Disoriented, the girl turned around and around and around. She began to climb the snow mountain that blocked her from the street. But she was so weak. Halfway up, she’d slip back down. She’d try again, digging her feet deeper into the drift. Mathilde held her breath each time, let it out when the girl fell. She thought of a cockroach in a wineglass, trying to climb up the smooth sides. When Mathilde looked across the street at a long brick apartment complex taking up the whole block, ornate in its 1920s style, she saw, in scattered windows, three women watching the little girl’s struggles. Mathilde watched the women as they watched the girl. One was laughing over her bare shoulder at someone in the room, flushed with sex. One was elderly, drinking her tea. The third, sallow and pinched, had crossed her skinny arms and was pursing her lips. At last, the girl, exhausted, slid down and rested, her face against the snow. Mathilde was sure she was crying. When Mathilde looked up again, the woman with crossed arms was staring angrily through all the glass and cold and snow directly at her. Mathilde startled, sure she’d been invisible. The woman disappeared. She reappeared on the sidewalk in inside clothes, tweedy and thin. She chucked her body into the snowdrift in front of the apartment building, crossed the street, grabbed the girl by the mittens and swung her over the mountain. Carried her across the street and did it again. Both mother and daughter were powdered with white when they went inside. Long after they were gone, Mathilde thought of the woman. What she was imagining when she saw her little girl fall and fall and fall. She wondered at the kind of anger that would crumple your heart up so hard that you could watch a child struggle and fail and weep for so long, without moving to help. Mothers, Mathilde had always known, were people who abandoned you to struggle alone. It occurred to her then that life was conical in shape, the past broadening beyond the sharp point of the lived moment. The more life you had, the more the base expanded, so that the wounds and treasons that were nearly imperceptible when they happened stretched like tiny dots on a balloon slowly blown up. A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges. A

По правде, Эмили была чудесная девушка, очень красивая, если это так важно, но с ней-то я и потерял невинность, а ни один разумный человек не женится на женщине, с которой он стал мужчиной. Это все равно как научиться вождению на раздолбанной колымаге и потом всю жизнь на ней ездить, хотя уже приобрел навык в час пик рассекать по оживленной магистрали на BMW. Из уважения к памяти Эмили я почти две недели ни с кем не спал. Вот оно как, Сирил. И будь у меня родной сын, я бы ему втемяшил: моногамия неестественна для человека, а под словом «человек» я подразумеваю и мужчину, и женщину. Что толку на пятьдесят-шестьдесят лет приковывать себя к плоти одного человека, когда ваши отношения станут гораздо лучше, если вы дадите друг другу свободу проникать в ту или быть пронзенной тем, кто вам приглянулся. В супружестве главное – дружба и партнерство, но никак не постель. В смысле, какой мужчина в здравом уме возжелает свою жену? Только не надо приписывать мне политические взгляды моего отца. У него их полно, а у меня, знаете ли, нет вообще. – Почему нас так ненавидят? – после долгой паузы спросил я. – Кому какое дело, если кто-то голубой? Миссис Гоггин пожала плечами. – Помню, один мой приятель как-то сказал: мы ненавидим то, что боимся найти в себе. Не валяй дурака. В нашей сволочной стране вообще нет нормальных людей. Приятно слышать. Хуже нет, когда взрослый человек винит родителей, среду и прочее в том, что все в его жизни пошло не так. В шумной толпе я задыхался от зловония спиртного, духов и табачного дыма. Я себя чувствовал малышом, безнадежно заплутавшим на карнавале, сердце мое пыталось выпрыгнуть из груди. – Вы не считаете, что институт брака себя изжил? – Райан окинул нас с Алисой таким взглядом, словно вдруг узрел две говешки в человечьем облике. Обладай я прозорливостью, я бы все это разглядел, но я не видел ничего, потому что всю свою жизнь был слеп, глух, нем и дремуч, был лишен всех чувств, кроме одного, которое управляло моими плотскими желаниями и привело меня к этому страшному месту, откуда, я знал, нет возврата. – Что вы за народ, ирландцы? – Он смотрел на меня как на клинического идиота. – Что у вас за страна такая? Вы там совсем с ума съехали, что ли? Не хотите, чтобы все были счастливы? – Наверное, не хотим. – Я не умел объяснить суть своей родины. – С вашей страной мне все понятно, – продолжила Эдда. – Я про нее читала и кое-что слышала. Дремучее, похоже, государство. Никто никому не сочувствует. Почему вы позволяете священникам все за вас решать? – Наверное, потому, что так было всегда. Он обнялся с родителями, что было выражением неведомой мне семейной любви, и посмотрел на меня с улыбкой, говорившей, что больше всех на свете он рад мне. Позже, когда я перешагнул на третий десяток и отличительными чертами моей жизни стали глубинное одиночество и угнетающая фальшь, я умышленно игнорировал все, что могло напомнить о непростых годах моего детства. Запомни накрепко... – он подался вперед и выставил палец, – в этой сволочной стране никогда ничего не изменится. Ирландия – поганая дыра, там правят порочные церковники-изуверы, которые держат правительство на коротком поводке. – Видали? – сказал я. – Эта сволочная страна ничуть не меняется. Всё тайком да украдкой. Ведь именно этого он и хотел – вытурить меня и вновь страдать из-за того, что все его бросили. Иногда мы даже делили молодого человека. Ох, не делай такое лицо, Сирил! Люди тридцатых годов были весьма раскрепощенные, не в пример нынешним. За семь лет я так и не смог полюбить этот город (мысли мои остались в Амстердаме, а душа – в Дублине), но в иные моменты, вот как сейчас, я понимал, за что его любят другие. Он всегда был красив и возраст его не портил, что характерно для тех, кто этого вовсе не заслуживает. Я по нему тоскую. Очень. Перед нами открывалось большое будущее, но его украли. Я уже примирился. Жизнь одна, и смерть одна.

Our supposed leader was Miss Joyce, who had been working as a civil servant in the department since its foundation forty-five years earlier in 1921. She was sixty-three years old and, like my late adoptive mother Maude, was a compulsive smoker, favouring Chesterfield Regulars (Red), which she imported from the United States in boxes of one hundred at a time and stored in an elegantly carved wooden box on her desk with an illustration of the King of Siam on the lid. Although our office was not much given to personal memorabilia, she kept two posters pinned to the wall beside her in defence of her addiction. The first showed Rita Hayworth in a pinstriped blazer and white blouse, her voluminous red hair tumbling down around her shoulders, professing that ‘ALL MY FRIENDS KNOW THAT CHESTERFIELD IS MY BRAND’ while holding an unlit cigarette in her left hand and staring off into the distance, where Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin were presumably pleasuring themselves in anticipation of erotic adventures to come. The second, slightly peeling at the edges and with a noticeable lipstick stain on the subject’s face, portrayed Ronald Reagan seated behind a desk that was covered in cigarette boxes, a Chesterfield hanging jauntily from the Gipper’s mouth. ‘I’M SENDING CHESTERFIELDS TO ALL MY FRIENDS. THAT’S THE MERRIEST CHRISTMAS ANY SMOKER CAN HAVE – CHESTERFIELD MILDNESS PLUS NO UNPLEASANT AFTER-TASTE’ it said, and sure enough he appeared to be wrapping boxes in festive paper for the likes of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, who, I’m sure, were only thrilled to receive them