This Magnificent Desolation Read Online Free PDF

aftershave or cologne? Of dry wood and bright recently painted walls unlike the damp-mold-spore taint here, with the permanent stains upon the walls and ceilings and the dewy, greasy consistency of the damp pillow beneath his head.
    About him the other boys sigh and moan and exhale in their sleep like some great incoming and withdrawing tide—the moan of the relentless sea—and as he listens and closes his eyes, he is rocked by the sound of it and knows that strange comfort that comes with familiarity, despite the sadness and fear and emptiness the sounds of their sleep evoke, and why very often he leaves his bed and pads to the kitchen in search of Brother Canice.

Chapter 6
    Tonight Duncan waits for Brother Canice to toll the bells for Matins, listens to the peal of the bells, their soft rising and falling, and, finally, their ebb—glad on this particular night for Brother Canice’s restraint—before he gets up and treads the hall. Like some strange psychic reverberation that reaches out to touch them in the night, they know when the other is awake and this is where they know they’ll find each other, placing wood in the stove, stoking the embers, putting the kettle up for tea, or spooning milk warming in a saucepan upon the Titan with the windows frozen and the walls creaking slightly as, outside, ice hardens and shifts, splinters with long, dull cracking sounds upon the stone and clapboard.
    Brother Canice has just placed two mugs of steaming milk upon the charred and battered woodblock table and is sitting in the near dark before the woodstove when Duncan patters in upon stockinged feet. The old black-and-white with its rabbit-ear antenna wrapped in tinfoil flickers soundless images, casts them upon the wall.
    You’re not sleeping again? Brother Canice grumbles, his lower lip bunched with sunflower seeds.
    Neither are you, Duncan says.
    Brother Canice shrugs, spits casually into the grate, then: You’re not wearing your slippers either. He shakes his head. You’ll end up getting sick walking these cold floors. I won’t be responsible for you getting sick.
    I’ll wear them next time, Duncan says, and when Brother Canice continues to stare at him, he adds, I promise.
    Chilblains, that’s what you’ll get—chilblains. And they’re no fun. Trust me. Brother Canice spits into the grate, lifts the hem of his cassock, stoops to pry off his shoes, and then vigorously rubs his feet together, one on top of the other, first the left and then the right, so hard it looks as if it must hurt.
    He opens the grate with a soiled dish towel and throws another long onto the flames. His face is momentarily illuminated by flame-light: orange and crimson and then dark sliding down his brow, his wide, full cheeks. He closes the door and sits back with a grunt onto his chair.
    What was it like, he asks suddenly, God talking to you?
    Duncan looks at him. He’s never asked him this before.
    I mean, was it a big whooshing sound or something, or did he actually speak?
    I thought you didn’t believe that God spoke to me.
    I’m just asking a question. It doesn’t have to mean a thing.
    I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. You just know, that’s all.
    When I was young, I used to hear the sound of my heart beating on my pillow, you know, through my ear, and I thought it was God.
    Brother Canice considers what he has just said for a moment, and adds: Or perhaps it’s only now that I think it was God. Do you ever do that? Put your ear up against your pillow and listen to that thumping, like footsteps shaking the heavens.
    Brother Canice shakes his head. That’s why you can’t sleep, hesays and keeps at his feet. It’s like watching a dog scratching fleas. When he’s done, he sighs and stands, pushes the tins aside on the shelf, and lifts down his old Vulcanite transistor radio.
    Here, take this, he says and places it on the table. Its black resin is