Augustino and the Choir of Destruction Read Online Free PDF Page B

parents suddenly showed itself in such savage hostility, they no longer saw each other, spoke together, even on a day like that, her grandmother’s funeral, and Mère recalled Mélanie shedding finally the tears she had held back the day of the communicants in the Pyrenees, when one little girl had separated herself from the line of communicants on the edge of a highway and had in an instant been struck down by a bus, the flash of white thread from her dress caught between the wheels, Why Mama? Mélanie had asked her, her long hair masking her crying face, she was the same age as Mélanie, what was unexplained, what failed to explain the undefinable, the indefensible, and above all the word not to be spoken in front of Mélanie, Mère had managed to extricate herself from all these entanglements . . . you see, it’s like a moth, it comes, it flies away, the communicant was that white moth, the shining blood on the snow, Mama, tell me why? Don’t look back my dear, Mère had said, we must learn that in life, don’t look back, I can’t explain any of it, Mélanie, except that when a child is struck down like that, it is a crime, a crime of God, this was how she tried to distract Mélanie from her sadness, for Mère had never spoken to her of God, and Mélanie fell quiet, never did Mère see her cry again, yes, perhaps on the day Samuel left for New York, but it was her son, her flesh, pulling away from her, she had been expecting that, hadn’t she, Einstein said glory had not corrupted Marie Curie, but how could such glory corrupt a woman who deemed herself so ordinary, who had never considered this glory for herself? Notoriety was a man’s business, a ridiculous ambition which did not concern her there in her shed, her shadowy laboratory, and with these numb, swollen hands impeding her progress, would she have time to finish, thus was the simple, pain-filled woman Albert Einstein was to meet later on, someone who thought of herself as she had been before, an ordinary being riddled with doubts and privation, then Mère remembered Chuan’s question, Why aren’t your sons here for your birthday, Esther? Oh, I invited them, but they don’t have much time to visit their mother, Mère had replied abruptly, my sons take after their father, cosmetic surgeons, they don’t have time for me any more, Mère slid out from under Chuan’s questioning intrusion into her family life, which seemed complex to her, forcing deeper inside the shame her sons had made her feel, lining up as they had with their father at a time when he was unfaithful to her, she saw her sons again on the back seat of the white limousine, they had mortified her, but still why couldn’t she forgive them, it was time to erase past wrongs, these boys were young and already successful in life, she ought to have spoken of them with pride to Chuan and Olivier who were covered with pride in their son, well yes, Jermaine was charming, not contemptuous of his mother for being a woman, if you could call life successful when it concerns only material wealth, thought Mère bitterly, neither of her sons was as sensitive as Mélanie, though really she could not complain about them, whether she felt humiliated or not, the boys were her triumph like Mélanie, they had a considerable place in society, even if they did have precious little time to visit their mother, and they did live far away in California but phoned often, more polite than before, not like a friend of hers who had no news from her son for years, and then suddenly learned by accident that he had died of AIDS in a Los Angeles hospital, or had she found out by messenger or letter, the mother had often said our son Thomas never told us anything about his life, we know nothing about him, and why had these middle-class parents entered into a pact of mystery when they suspected how their son lived his life, the same bourgeoisie as Mère