The Vanishing Act Read Online Free PDF Page B

and some nights I tried to decipher a sentence by torchlight. But all I could make out were odd shapes in the hollow spaces between the words: birds, lions, and the curve of Mama’s rowboat that had lain near the fishing spot since the day she arrived.
    It was the twenty-seventh scarf that I had knitted. Descartes too had a hobby. He loved parades and would travel far and wide to attend one. Papa said it was entirely possible that Descartes’ hobby had contributed favourably to his reasoning. He encouraged me to keep knitting, so that I too could strengthen my philosophical faculties.
    I glanced at the four portraits of Descartes on the big bulb. It was the same portrait, but in different sizes. I could barely make out his profile in the darkness, but I knew he looked both serious and brooding, as though he was pondering a very tricky philosophical question. Papa said I resembled Descartes quite a bit. I couldn’t really see it; instead his sharp nose and his dark eyes reminded me of Peacock.
    Papa was still talking downstairs. A hoarse cry from a raven cut through the night. Snow whirled and danced on every side of the lighthouse and Boxman had moved on to a slow tune on the accordion. I stopped knitting and measured the scarf. It reached from one end of the mattress to the other. It was almost finished.
    Mama liked birds. She liked the blue-black feathers of the ravens and their strong beaks, and shehad done many drawings of them. But the bird she liked more than any other was Peacock.
    When Mama arrived she opened her red suitcase and unpacked five dresses, eight jars of paint, two brushes and a white enamel clock that didn’t work. She left the golden bowl outside the house, wherein Peacock immediately settled. Mama warned Papa that Peacock had seen things during the war that no bird should see. He had become sensitive and was known to nip without rhyme or reason. Papa didn’t know much about birds, but he knew how to repair clocks, and asked if Mama wanted hers fixed. But she didn’t, she liked time standing perfectly still.
    Peacock lay in the golden bowl for hours each day, head resting lazily on the edge, but when he died years later, the golden bowl got filled with rain and snow, and over time it lost its shine. Mama didn’t like the bowl without Peacock in it. She even kicked it one day, because it reminded her that he had died. The bowl rolled onto its side where it lay, grey and neglected. But that didn’t stop the boatmen wanting to buy it.
    The boatmen came with our weekly deliveries. We would all be on the beach, Papa and me, Boxman,Mama and Priest, when their ship arrived out past the reef. We would watch the boatmen lower a dinghy into the chaotic sea and hear them swear across the waves. They didn’t like coming to the island. Our deliveries often consisted of packages in strange shapes and if they saw a box on the beach next to Boxman, packed and ready to go, then their swearing grew louder.
    With every delivery the boatmen got a new shopping list. Mama used to add a list to Papa’s weekly order:
    Flowers, red (if not possible, then yellow)
    Ink, black
    Three boxes of Zackerburg’s Ginger Treats (make sure it’s not Tennille’s Delights, they are too chewy)
    Three tubes of oil paint: cerulean blue
    A stuffed bird, white, to put in hair, not too big
    Green ribbon
    A pair of reading glasses. Same as the previous pair
    A box of oranges, the finest you can get
    A paintbrush, 15mm, horsehair only
    Four rolls of violet yarn and another pair of knitting needles for Minou
    The boatmen had lined faces and thin mouths, and their eyes were watery blue. They lived on the ship and whenever they had to step onto the beach they looked uncomfortable and wobbly, as if the sea moved inside them.
    Once their dinghy capsized as it was leaving the island with one of Boxman’s wrapped boxes. Boxman shouted, the boatmen got wet and the box was lost. The sea was very deep. A few metres out the sand abruptly gave way