The Rest is Silence Read Online Free PDF

eyes.
    She turns toward the house and I follow the thick, dark braid that flows like a tail down her back. The scarlet ribbon tied at the end, near her sacrum, sways from side to side as if flicking flies off her hips. Her studio is in the northwest corner of the house, facing the water. It smells of oil paints, turpentine, and books mouldering from the damp sea air. The spines on the shelves are discoloured from sunlight. It is a strange collection. Poetry by Hopkins and Hardy, a thirty-volume set by Trollope, and three works by Krishnamurti. Portraits are hung on the high white wall opposite the windows. The features in each one look like they are made of melted wax. Out of the top of each head emerges the clear and precise image of a bird, its wings outstretched in liftoff.
    Lina motions for me to sit in a chair facing the row of windows and moves to her easel. I rest my hands on my thighs. My shoulders and forearms relax after their exertion. I reach up to remove my hat, with its floppy, dirty-white brim.
    â€œOh, leave it on. It’s what made me want to sketch your head. That and your nose.”
    â€œIt’s the hat that becomes the bird?”
    â€œSometimes.”
    â€œWhat bird will this become?”
    â€œCan’t say yet.”
    She is quiet while she draws. She wears loose, paint-splattered jeans and a white T-shirt that hugs her breasts and accentuates the darkness of her skin. I focus on her eyes while she is intent on my portrait. Even when she looks up from the easel she ignores me, as if she is a surgeon and I am her patient etherized upon the table. When she looks back at the paper, her irises are iridescent, like the glossy purple head of a grackle. She looks up again, this time into my eyes, and smiles. Her smile is subtle, lips pressed together, corners curving up slightly. I wait for another. Her pencil scratches are punctuated by the scream of Art’s chainsaw coming through the open windows.
    â€œWhere are you from?” I ask.
    â€œQuebec.”
    â€œAnd where’s your family from?”
    She guesses what I’m wondering and, in a minute, says, “My mother’s Wendat.”
    â€œWendat?”
    â€œHuron. I grew up on the Wendake reserve in Quebec City.”
    I don’t interrupt her concentration again. Instead I imagine what she is drawing coming out of my head. Based on my hat it could be a gull or tern. A few minutes pass, and she puts down her pencil and sighs.
    â€œCan I see it?”
    â€œIt didn’t work.”
    â€œI don’t get to have a pileated woodpecker pounding on my head?”
    â€œNot today, I’m afraid.”
    She walks me to the door. I stand, awkward and quiet, wanting her to say more, wanting her to keep me from leaving. I want her hand in mine again.
    â€œLet me get your money.” She turns back into the room.
    â€œForget it. The rest was good.”
    I leave the house.
    â€œBy the way,” she says as I stand on the grass below her. “He’s not my grandfather.”
    Lucy follows me back to the hole and lies nearby while I finish digging. When Art comes back I show him where the pipe is broken.
    â€œI called down to Home Hardware,” he says. “They stopped ordering PVC pipe a month ago. Everybody’s afraid it’s gonna fall apart like the rest.”
    â€œIt won’t. It’s different plastic.”
    â€œI have a length of the old clay stuff in the shed.”
    It is suppertime when we finish, fill the hole, and stomp the ground back into place. Art helps me put the tools back in the shed.
    â€œWill you stay for supper?”
    The smell of sewage is stuck in my nostrils if not on my clothes. I look at my pants and shirt sleeves, covered in dirt, and then at him.
    â€œTo hell with that.” He waves a thick hand in the air. “I’ve smelled a lot worse.”
    I wash my hands, then stick my head under the tap, revelling in the warmth and volume of water. I