Dreams of Leaving Read Online Free PDF

float, he knew the river would carry his son. He became impish and for the first time in years looked as young as he really was, if not slightly younger. He danced a jig in the spotlight of his desk-lamp. He unleashed silent cries of jubilation. He saw a policeman turn into the street below, a truncheon swinging from his wrist. From his attic window, the chink in the curtains narrowed to an inch, George mocked the policeman as he passed.
    â€˜You fool,’ he hissed. ‘Fool bobby. Look at you. Bobby fool.’
    It was four in the morning before his excitement died down and he could sleep.
    During the hours of daylight he hid the basket under a torn sheet in the corner of the room. It looked like a miniature ghost – the ghost Moses would become. It looked capable of uncanny things. It radiated power. The various materials he had used lay scattered on the floor – dried rush-stems cut to length, coils of thin blond rush-stems stringy as hair, pots of rush-glue that he had made by boiling the base of the stalks – and the reek of pitch hung in the air, so acrid that it was almost visible. How long before it crept downstairs, spread through the house, filtered out into the village? How long before the police started poking their noses in?
    In ten days he had finished. He took Alice by the hand and led her up to the attic. A drab spring day. Wind nagging the wet trees. When he drew the cover off, she held her face in both hands as if it contained something that she was afraid she might spill. She examined the basket with nervous fingertips, her left eye twitching. He had been standing close to her, his arm touching hers, but now he stepped back, allowed her room to speak.
    â€˜It’s beautiful. It’s – ’ and she hunted for more words with her hands as if they might be found on her person somewhere, in a pocket, perhaps, or up a sleeve. ‘It’s, it’s,’ and they came tumbling out, ‘it’s like an ark, isn’t it, George?’
    George clapped his hands, then brought them to his lips. ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ he cried. ‘It’s an ark. Of course. Oh, Alice. You’re – ’
    He couldn’t speak. In that moment he had seen his wife transformed again. She had forgotten herself so rarely during their nine years of marriage. He opened his arms, offered her an avenue. She closed her eyes and turned into it, blind. They clung to one another. Just there and then, the room darkening, rain closing in and shutting out the world, she was with him.
    â€˜Alice,’ he murmured. ‘I love you.’
    *
    A misty dawn in the June of that year. Trees’ branches blurred, hands gloved in white lace. The fields beyond the trees invisible.
    The sun, the world, invisible.
    Ideal conditions.
    Since his birth, Moses had been growing at a startling rate and now, at thirteen months, he already measured over two and a half feet. George knew he had to act fast. If he left it any longer the whole thing would be impossible.
    He turned away from the bedroom window. Alice was still asleep, her many anxieties holding her down, weights on her body, weights on her eyelids. She slept late these days. After that morning in the attic she had curled in on herself like a snail, all her life inside, withheld. When he tried to speak to her, she flinched, backed away, hands muffling her ears. She didn’t want to listen any more.
    He crossed the landing to his son’s room. Moses lay on his back. He was gazing at his fish mobile. The window stood open a notch and cool air flowed in. Finned shapes swam in the gloom. When he noticed his father standing above him, one of his hands began to strike the air. Sounds that had the feeling of words and the complexity of sentences bubbled from his mouth. He would be talking in no time.
    George reached down and lifted him out of his cot. The baby’s feet pumped the air like someone treading water. A trickle of