Steeplechase Read Online Free PDF Page A

room and makes us tea with real milk from a carton that isn’t powdered and lumpy.
    The doctor shows us another glass case that seems to be filled with more dead branches. I search the bottom for cockroaches, but Emily nods and points and when I adjust my vision I notice that some of the branches are insects that look like sticks and leaves.
    There are more jars on shelves and he shows me the preserved body of a snake that has mistakenly eaten an echidna. The spines poke out through its skin.
    â€˜It is terrible what desperation drives us to,’ he says, and his voice is so deep and rich he might as well be a radio presenter and not a doctor at all.
    In the car on the way back our mother starts to sing, just softly, a little tuneless song that seems stuck on a loop. Our grandmother shushes her but she sticks with it. She is still singing when we pull into a little town for lunch. We sit in the park there with the last of our buns and leave Mother in the car to eat her lunch alone. If we took her with us she would only draw attention to us. Our grandmother stares at the kombi all through lunch and I suppose she is just checking up on our mother, making sure she does nothing to harm the wooden crates filled with paintings in the back of the car. Priceless, she called them. Actually this means very expensive rather than worth nothing at all.
    â€˜Your mother is very smart,’ she says and I glance over my shoulder to where she is sitting, stiff-backed, staring out towards the parked van. ‘When something snaps it doesn’t mean you are not still smart. It is like a watch when the winding mechanism is broken, it still has the potential to tell the time. Although, of course, it is broken, so it does not.’
    Emily is sitting with her foot near my leg. She kicks me hard in the shin for no reason and when I look to her she is crossing her eyes, trying to make me laugh. It would be mean to laugh at our mother and so I scowl at her instead.

The Nude Maja
    When I open my office door John is still outside. There is an awkwardness. He shifts his weight from foot to foot and his gaze is furtive. He looks everywhere but at me. The pages of his sketchbook protrude from his folder. It looks as if he might drop them at any moment.
    â€˜Okay.’ I step aside and he sidles past me. The sole of his taped-up shoe flaps. He is tall and he hunches. It gives him a cowed look.
    â€˜Hi.’ John sits in the comfy couch opposite my desk and picks up the nearest book, turning the pages so quickly that it seems he is not looking at the pictures at all.
    When the book is shut and resting in his lap he glances up at me. ‘I like the way Goya uses a single source of light.’
    â€˜Did you read that somewhere?’
    â€˜No. I just noticed.’ He glances up at the wall and nods. ‘Your sister does that too. One light source. It’s very dramatic.’
    I nod. John shrugs. ‘Just an observation.’
    â€˜We all have our habits.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he says. ‘You backlight things as if there is a lamp hidden somewhere behind them. Subtle. But effective.’
    â€˜What do you want, John?’
    John shifts on the leather couch. He is round, round-bellied, round-shouldered, moon face gazing up at me half terror, half expectation. I am reminded of puppies when they get wind of food, wide-eyed hope and fear all at once.
    â€˜To go look at your etchings?’
    This is a joke, of course, but he says it without a smile. He is all hunched over himself and his irises are small and dark in the wide white stare. It breaks my heart to look at him, his eager expectation.
    â€˜I thought we were going to stop all that.’
    â€˜Were we?’
    â€˜You’re my student, John.’
    He leans forward and opens the heavy cover of the art book. He flicks past Manet, Raphael, Picasso.
    â€˜You know Goya went deaf, right? I don’t remember what caused