Antarctica Read Online Free PDF Page B

something like that.’
    The parade drifts into town. The travellers have lit a fire in the car park. There’s a smell of burning rubber and then the doctor runs up the dunes, breathless and smiling until he sees his wife.
    ‘I took a wild guess,’ says the doctor’s wife.
    He stands there, looking ten years older, looking at Cordelia. In the moonlight, his suit is shiny. He is alive and it is almost midnight. Cordelia is pleased, but nothing is as she imagined. The doctor, stiff with shock, does not reach out for her. He does not lie down in the tall grass and put his head in the crook of her arm as he used to. He stands there as if he has arrived too late at the scene of an accident, knowing he might have done something if only he had come earlier. Behind their backs the perpetual noise of the ocean folds in on itself. Together they listen to the tide, the waves, counting down what time remains. Because they don’t know what to say or do, they do and say nothing. All three of them just sit there and wait: Cordelia, the doctor and his wife, all three mortals waiting, waiting for somebody to leave.

Where the Water’s Deepest
    The au pair sits on the edge of the pier this night, fishing . Beside her, cheese she salvaged from the salad bowl at dinner, her leather sandals. She removes the band from her ponytail and shakes her hair loose. Leftover smells of cooking and bathsuds drift down from the house through the trees. She slides a cube of cheese on to the hook and casts. Her wrist is good. The line makes a perfect arc in the air, drops down and vanishes. Slowly she reels it towards her, where the water’s deepest. She’s caught a nice perch this way before.
    Lately she’s not been sleeping well, wakes to the same dream. She and the boy are in the yard at evening time. Wind bloats the clothes on the line and black trees are nuzzling overhead. Then the ground trembles. Stars fall and jingle around their feet like coins. The barn roof shudders, lifts off like a great metal leaf, scraping clouds. The earth fractures open and the boy is left standing on the other side.
    â€˜Jump! Jump, I’ll catch you!’ she yells.
    The boy is smiling. He trusts her.
    â€˜Come on!’ She holds her arms open wide. ‘Jump! It’s so easy!’
    He runs fast and jumps. His feet clear the canyon, butthen the strangest thing happens: her hands melt and the boy drops backwards into the darkness. The au pair just stands on the edge and watches him fall.
    Sometimes she dreams this twice in the same night. Last night she got up and smoked a cigarette in the bathroom and watched the moon. The light slid off the gold-plated taps, dipped into the porcelain sink, making shadow. She brushed her teeth and went back to bed.
    *
    That afternoon they’d dug up worms and carried their fishing gear down to the lakeshore. The au pair flipped the boat right-side-up and slid it into the water, held it steady for the boy. ‘Right-ho!’ she said and rowed them out past the shade of the pier. The boy was wearing a Salt Lake City baseball cap his father had brought back from a business trip. Freckles had grown together across his nose; the scab on his knee was healing. His hand dangled over the side and tore the water’s surface as she rowed. When she raised the oars and let them drift, mosquitoes gathered quickly in a small cloud around the boat.
    â€˜Do they have bugs in the Reef?’ the boy asked.
    The au pair’s voice changed when she talked about home. She talked as if she could reach out through the past and touch it with her hands. She baited his pole, told him how she’d learned to scuba-dive and snorkel with a spear, explored the hidden world under the ocean. Gigantic mountains where the fish swam in schools and changed direction all at once. Seaweedswirling. A turtle with great spirals on his back, swimming past. Seahorses.
    â€˜I wanna go scuba-diving here,’ the boy said.
    â€˜We