Night

Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Night Read Online Free PDF
Author: Edna O’Brien
soon as the ground felt damp to the touch, I rose to wend my way. It took me a long time what with going astray and all that. Murder entered my mind, or beheading, or a rosy crucifixion. I had to cross a common and there wasn’t a soul except myself and a runner in a track suit, threshing through the ferns. All this walking, theremust be some purpose to it, I said to myself, coming in at the gate that creaked. I dare say all gates creak unless they get treated to linseed oil from time to time.
    There it was waiting for me, half in, half out of the letterbox. I rushed into the hall, and then, as always with portents, I hesitated before unsealing it. “In votre absence Nick came.” I dropped, I almost snivelled. Missed a nice cuddle. We would have been shy at first, but maybe we would have come out of our shells and started kissing in the dark, and feeling as in an undergrowth, then reclining, our persons buoyed up on beautiful blue plush, no missus of his to disquiet us, him telling me little things and I retaliating, and everything between us verdant and radiant with promise. We might have danced an old-time waltz. Nothing in the world to equal it for harmony, for concinnity as they say. I would have made him a little snack. Damnation to it.
     

Paramours are not battering on any door…
    Paramours are not battering on any door, there’s no form at the casement saying “I’m waiting for you love”. I can’t cavil. I’ve had my share, even a lumberman from Scandia with a very radical thrust. A motley crew, all shades, dimensions, breeds, ilks, national characteristics, inflammatingness, and penetratingness. Some randy, many conventional, one decrepit. An old man. He couldn’t bear the ticking of my bedside clock. I could smell death and extreme unction off him. Why did I concur? An act of clemency, one of my very few. He was a Benjaminite. I couldn’t do that now. Farcical.Rather a cowhorn, or a thornbush through the arse. Harrowing that was called in Coose, that impact of thornbush on obstinate land. That was before machinery. That was before.
    Machines have played their part in my life too. Machines and people. Perfidious. People cling on to me like sloths. How they weigh, how they prey upon me. I am prepared to vouchsafe that they are attached to my scalp by means of brooches, so tenacious are they. I am amazed at the number of people that can be affixed to a normal-sized scalp. I take size nine in a hat. Sometimes they surpass themselves, get rowdy, boisterous, take to swinging back and forth like children or bantams, upon a fender or a swing gate at eventide. I was ever one for eventide. I have so many maudlin memories of it, the soft feel of wallflowers, or is it heliotrope, showers of rain, smoke curling up, the dogs famished, mavourneen, the pig badgers and the dog badgers out, warring, evening auguring towards night, and such a momentum of tears, and for what, and for whom – Lil, Boss, Dr Flaggler, Tutsie.
    *

Nick was of the red-haired fraternity…
    Nick was of the red-haired fraternity, and growing a beard. We danced, divinely. The floor was sheer. I would like to think that our bloodstreams danced, bounced, bounded together. I would like to think our sensibilities met. Is that possible? Melted into one another. Suddenly his wife was there, prancing about like an old lioness. She was a dab hand at it, prancing.She nudged him with her shoulder, then bumpsie daisy with one of her flanks, then ousting me out of place she tried levering herself on to him. There was a touch of a dancer or a stripper about her. A bit of a trouper. She started to undress. He commenced on my necklaces, started untugging. The lights were lowered but the music put up. We were no longer dancers, we were performers, three, at each other, at. She bayed like a hyena. He flicked her in the air and unerringly she came down. Well trained, a trapeze artist, a wife. Conceited slaves. Come to think of it
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