This Magnificent Desolation Read Online Free PDF Page B

stained and blurred by grime, the back disfigured and partially melted from the heat of its transistor tubes. Brother Canice chews on his sunflower seeds and stares pensively at it as he spits and his seeds hiss and whistle in the stove. It’s a radio, he says and raps his knuckles sharply against its top as if to confirm this.
    It’s yours. You listen to it and see what it tells you. When I was a boy, I’d listen to it late at night and it told me things, things only I could understand. Once it even told me my future. If that doesn’t work, you can always listen to music.
    Duncan wants to ask Brother Canice if he is truly a Brother or merely an imposter, and if this is the future that the radio spoke of, but he holds his tongue. Brother Canice stares at Duncan, unblinking, chewing his seeds like cud, holding their edges between the tips of his yellow teeth, and Duncan reaches out and, saying thank you, takes the radio.
    Perhaps it will help you sleep, Brother Canice says and shrugs. It never worked for me.
    After reciting the rosary again, Duncan climbs into bed and turns the radio’s knob low, watching as the deep-set black and gold frequency dial fills with warm amber light and, slowly, as the tubes glow through the partially melted back, the hum of electricity buzzing softly through the speakers and the smell of rubber thickening in the room.
    He scans across the radio’s wavelengths, picking up meager signals here and there, and finally listening to the beeps and squeaks of satellites passing twenty-two thousand miles overhead as he waitsfor some other sound to emerge from the speakers. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for exactly, perhaps the sound of his mother or father or some other ghost from his past to come crackling and spitting through the ether with news of his future.

Chapter 7
    Parasomnias, or sleep problems, are common in childhood, Dr. Mathias says, and Duncan has to remind himself that the doctor is speaking and he must concentrate on his words. Clouds pass above the skylight in his office and the room turns ashen; the light trembles as clouds thin or thicken and then rain clouds move in and Dr. Mathias switches on a floor lamp next to his desk, illuminating his mahogany desk and turning the finely polished wood a rich, translucent brown.
    Dr. Mathias clears his throat and begins again: A distinction is made between problems that are abnormal, such as sleep apnea and narcolepsy, and problems that are behavioral in origin, such as night terrors, somnambulism, and enuresis.
    E-N-U-R-E-S-I-S, Duncan speaks aloud.
Enuresis
.
    Dr. Mathias frowns, clearly irritated by his intrusion. Duncan, there is no need to do that with your mouth. You do not need to contort it in such a manner. You enunciate your words perfectly well. You speak perfectly well.
    And then he sighs. Yes. Bedwetting. But, of course, you do not wet the bed, Duncan. That is not what we’re talking about here.
    As far as Dr. Mathias is concerned, the only thing wrong with Duncan is that he has suffered from a range of sleeping disorders that many children his age are prone to.
    This is nothing to be alarmed about, he exclaims. He tells Duncan that he is an extremely shy and anxious young boy but that, too, is nothing to worry about; it is merely the “type” of boy he is and there is no point in mucking about and trying to make him into something he’s not, now is there? Absolutely not.
    A few fat raindrops thump the glass and then the clouds are gone and the late-afternoon sun is shining brightly through the windows and Duncan wonders what Billy and Julie are doing and whether Father Tobin is playing baseball with the other kids in the field behind the chapel. Dr. Mathias sighs and switches off the lamp.
    These parasomnias that we’re talking about, Duncan—and he waves at the air—these sleep disorders, they’re episodic in nature and are a reflection of central nervous system