The Disinherited Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth twitching vaguely. “It’s not important,” she said. The urge to laughter was cramping his stomach and sprayed across the muscles of his face. “What’s so funny?”
    “I don’t know.” He reached over her to the night-table andpicked up the package of cigarettes. He rotated it so it would open towards him. She took the package from his hand and skimmed it across the room. “I feel I should be able to respond,” Erik said.
    “Yes,” Valerie said. “I guess you should.”
    They slept and when they woke up it was dark. It was cooler outside and they walked slowly to Erik’s place, stopping on the way to buy an ice cream cone. “This is what I like about the city,” Erik said. “You can always walk around at night.”
    “Can’t you do that in the country? I think it would be nicer.”
    “You can walk but there’s nowhere to go.”
    They had come to his apartment building. As they went into the lobby, Valerie pointed at the furniture, chained to the floor. “I like the way they do that,” she said. “You know it’s going to be there in the morning.” The padded walls of the elevator had been slashed open so often that they appeared to be a collage of masking tape. Even as they were approaching his door they could hear the ringing of the telephone.
    “Erik?” As always, Brian shouted into the phone. Erik could hear the familiar buzzing of the rural party line behind his brother’s voice. “Richard had a heart attack,” Brian said. “Take the night train. Pat or I will meet you.” That was all. Valerie drove down to the station with him and kissed him under the big clock.
    “I’ll come with you, if you want.”
    “You don’t have to come.”
    “I’d like to.”
    He looked up at the clock and then kissed her again. “Hurry,” she said. “You’ll miss your train.” She took his arm and started him moving in the direction of the departure gate.
    “I’ll call you in a couple of days, when things are calmer.” As he said it he imagined himself getting onto the train and never seeing her again. “Don’t worry,” he said.
    “It’s a fast train between stations but it stops a lot.” The conductor pronounced this to Erik, in practiced cadence, and then, pleased with his own wit, continued on his way down the near-empty car. The train moved in fits and starts, pausing atevery town between Toronto and Montreal to exchange grey canvas mailbags. The trip took eight hours: perfect for those who had berths and were travelling the whole way. Erik was only going half the distance, to Kingston, and he sat up the whole time.
    He had his feet propped against the seat in front of him. More like Miranda than his father, he gave the impression of being vaguely ethereal, of being cautiously balanced in his movements — as if he didn’t quite trust the reality of his body and was carefully shepherding it through the necessary obstacles. He was large-boned but not heavy. Unmarked by his years on the farm, he had entirely taken on the appearance and smoothness of a city person — one for whom the outdoors was a park where one might seek diversion or renewal but not the place where survival was decided. He was tall with wide-set blue eyes, thick brown hair, and Richard Thomas’s strong features. While the train was stopped at Belleville he went and got some coffee and a hamburger that was heated in a micro-wave oven. It tasted of cardboard and stale tomato paste.
    When he was home at Christmas, he went to visit her again. All traces of the leaves and fall colours were completely erased. The trees were stripped bare and metallic, grey-black in the late afternoon sun that glared off the ice on the road, the banks of snow on either side that already, only Christmas, pushed up over some of the fences. An old pick-up truck was parked in the front yard of the school house and wood was stacked high against its southern wall. She opened the door for him as he knocked, not seeming at all surprised to see