Birth of a Bridge Read Online Free PDF

from the director’s secretary: they want to see her, they have something for her. Naked and alert, Summer walks to the window. The dawn stirs, the acacias are turning brown. She answers tonelessly, yes, okay, I’m coming. Later, she pulls on a pair of panties, makes a coffee, and in her bed the Tiger stirs – one shoulder first – lifts an eyelid heavy with tobacco and images still spinning. He looks at her through his lashes, she whispers, the Coca thing, I think it’s gonna happen, and he smiles. It’s the first time he’s come over, the first time that – ’cause that’s how it is, everything always happens at once.
    I’M LEAVING tomorrow. Summer Diamantis is standing in the train car, hanging on tight to the door handle, body swaying with the turns and heart compressed, I’m leaving for Coca, I’m going. The train ploughs under the Seine, the windows shake in a racket of underground rails, they’re black and liquid and the Tiger’s face is reflected there, blurred by speed; the profile of the Blondes like shadow puppets beneath the platinum of their manes of hair, the silhouette of her father. When they emerge from the tunnel, night has fallen. Port-Royal. Summer shivers. She pushes the strap of her bag up on her shoulder and gets ready to let go of the handle and step out onto the platform. Only a few people in the station, her heels resonate clack clack clack on the flagstones. A pharmacy that’s open, that’s what she needs. Stilnox for the plane, Dramamine for later, vaccines too, yes, she has to make sure she gets all this, and find a way to go and kiss the Tiger.
    BECAUSE SHE’S leaving tomorrow, going far, far away, to the other side of the world. Because in exactly seventeen hours, we’ll see her coming out of the Coca airport, getting into a lemon-yellow taxi, ponytail well elasticked, forehead and neck clear; she’ll give the address to the driver who’ll start the car without answering, heading into a labyrinth of express lanes that will suddenly propel them into the middle of a wide and empty plain where the sky will play an excessive part. Summer will grow dizzy when she sees the unbounded landscape, an immensity as uncontrollable as her breathing, she can’t keep it steady any longer, bit by bit she’ll suffocate, a faintness that will cause a bitter taste to rise up in her mouth, her head will ache, she’ll ask the driver to stop so she can get some air, he’ll park the vehicle on a shoulder without asking any questions, and once she’s outside she’ll breathe for a long time, bent over, hands on her knees, will spit on the ground a few times and then when she straightens up again will step over the guardrail to take a few steps into the pink, powdery plain, almost lunar in this razing light of dawn, a skin. She’ll stand stock still for a brief moment to listen to the silence, perforated by the rare cars that speed past behind her; a mineral silence where each sound rings out distinctly and pollinates space – a stone rolls, a branch cracks, a scorpion scratches the ground; a real silence, like that of a wildcat, while the lever of the night will cause the day to rise, stretching out space as far as it can go, like a screen, and the horizon will suddenly be so close that Summer will reach out her hand to touch it, she too, touched in that moment, and suddenly hearing the sound of human steps behind her will jump, the driver will be there, you okay, miss? They’ll head back to the car and Summer will roll down her window and lean back against the seat, shaken, they’ll drive till they reach the suburbs of Coca, fragrances will rush into the car, garbage, plastic cups deformed from the heat, rotting meat, newspapers smeared with gas, wilted flowers, mouldy vegetables, dirty laundry, and lots of sweat over everything – here it is, the smell of Coca, Summer will think, as though the odour of a city was first and foremost that of its trash. Once she has arrived, she’ll say