If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things Read Online Free PDF

feel nostalgic for something before it’s in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.
    In the bathroom of number eighteen, a face looks out from the polaroid, wide-eyed, composed. A young man, early twenties, a smooth round face, straight nose, full lips, pale hair losing thickness around the temples, a buckle of skin folded below each eye. It’s a good picture, and in a moment he will date it and place it with the other objects he has collected together on his bedroom floor, a magazine article, a half-finished crossword, a twin-bladed razor.
    But for now he has his head tipped up to the ceiling, a capful of solution bathing the dryness of his eyes, one hand gripping the sink until the ache subsides.
    It’s light that makes his eyes hurt, mostly, bright or sudden light, and the dust in the air. It’s a rough prickling sensation, like sandpaper pressed up against the skin of hiseye, a dryness he can mostly soothe by blinking rapidly, squeezing moisture across the surface.
    It’s worse in the city, with all the dust and the dirt, and it’s worse in the summer, with the long bright days, but usually it’s bearable, usually he doesn’t notice and he just keeps blinking away that gritted feeling. And if it gets too much, like it has now, he comes to his bathroom and bathes his eyes, and it’s a relief like finding a spring welling up in the desert.
    He puts the eyedrops back into the cabinet, scratching the back of his hand, he picks up the camera and the selfportrait and returns to his bedroom, he wonders what else he might hide away with this collection. And he thinks about the girl at number twenty-two.
    In the street, the front door of number thirteen is swinging gradually open, a young boy who can barely reach the doorhandle is peering around the door, his hair is sticking up and he is still wearing his pyjamas. He climbs onto a bright red tricycle which is waiting for him on the front path, he pushes all his weight onto the pedals and he creaks out of his garden and onto the main pavement. He looks back at the still open front door, he looks ahead of him to the main road, he puts his head down and he pedals, slowly at first, bumping and wobbling over loose paving slabs, picking up speed.
    A streetcleaner whirrs past, brushes spinning and skidding across the tarmac, grit and glass and paper skipping up into its innards. The driver stares sleepily ahead, sunglasses curled across his face, lips mouthing the words of the song on the radio, I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to fall. As he passes number nineteen he glances across at a girl sitting on the garden wall, a girl in a red velvet dress wearingvery tall boots, she has her face arched up to the sky and a boy in wide trousers is gently kissing the tight curve of her throat. The streetcleaner whirrs away around the corner and the girl takes the boy’s hand and bites his little finger. He makes a noise, a soft noise and his eyes are closed and his stomach is like it was left behind over a humpbacked bridge and she says shall we go now and they both stand.
    They hear voices then, shouted voices crashing down from the attic flat of number twenty-one, a woman’s voice shouting no but listen will you, listen to me, it’s not okay is it you shit you weren’t thinking about me were you you just went off out and did what you wanted to do it’s always about what you want isn’t it you selfish fucking wanker and what about me what about me she screams and the woman between the washing in next-door’s backyard stands and wonders how these people manage to shout at one another so much and still walk in the street with a hand in a hand. Shut up says the man’s voice, just shut up, shut up shut up will you please shut the fucking fuck up please? and his voice rises and rises until it sounds almost like the woman’s and it cracks and it breaks.
    The girl and the