The Disinherited Read Online Free PDF

cloth of the suit scratched against his skin. He offered the pack to her. They had eaten quickly, hardly talking, not really enjoying the food. They had discussed marriage a few times but only theoretically, as if it was something that couldn’t possibly happen to them. Some of their friends had children. Their houses seemed to be filled with broken toys and empty beer bottles. “I don’t know how they can live like that,” Erik would say afterwards, meaning not just the mess but the constant harassment.
    “Let’s go,” Valerie said. The waiter had put their bill in a little plastic tray. “Don’t forget to leave a tip.” Outside they walked quickly. It was warm and humid and the streets were filled with cars and people.
    “We could go to a movie,” Erik said.
    “No. We’ll go back to my place.”
    Her apartment was the third floor of a large run-down house near the centre of the city. Although the house, from the outside, seemed almost like a mansion, the apartment itself was small and closed in by slanted ceilings. She had painted the walls white and then filled them with posters, and it looked like thousands of similar apartments in Toronto, speaking distantly of trips to Europe and movies very old and very new. There was a back door leading to a fire escape. It and all the windows were open for the breeze. They sat on the floor, drinking beer. Erik looked at the posters on the wall and tried to imagine the apartment transferred, whole, to Edmonton. “I’ll miss Toronto,” Erik said.
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t know why,” he said.
    “There was never anything here I wanted.” He picked at the label of his beer bottle. “I wonder, you know, if you ever get through things by thinking. I wonder if you ever get through anything at all. Anyway.” He didn’t want the job but he didn’t know what else to do. “Maybe I should go back to the farm for a year. Do physical work. You know.”
    Valerie laughed. “You never do any work at all,” she said. “I’ve never known anyone as lazy as you.” She moved over so she was sitting beside Erik. “You don’t have to marry me.”
    “It’s not that.”
    “We could just say good-bye and send letters to each other. People do it all the time. We could plan a vacation, but at the last minute it would be impossible.”
    “Something would come up.”
    “Yes,” Valerie said. “Something like that.”
    He was looking at one of her posters, a brass church spire. That was the way he felt it should have been: a hot summer day on a terrace somewhere, red wine, overlooking the Mediterranean and laced through with the sounds of sand and water.
    “I would have liked to have seen your farm,” she said.
    “My father’s farm.”
    “Yes,” she said. She had edged away from him again, so that they were facing each other over the beer bottles and the ashtray. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make it so difficult.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “Decisions are stupid anyway. It’s better just to let things happen.” She stood up and walked to the hall. Erik followed her. The hall was the only place in the apartment where it was possible to move around freely, without being conscious of the eaves. The house had once belonged to someone wealthy enough to have had servants. The kitchen, only half the size of the bathroom, was a made-over cupboard. “Well,” Valerie said. They were standing in the hall, looking at the stairs. She went into the bedroom. “Help me undo my dress,” she said. Her skin was soft, almost like velvet. He wanted to be swallowed up by her and to be free of her. He slid his tongue between her teeth, sharp and even. She enclosed him. He forgot the dinner. He was left finally with the image of himself flopping on top of her like a fish out of water.
    “I love you,” she said. She twisted away from him so that he would be forced to look at her. He wanted to answer her in some way but didn’t know how. He could feel his