[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.And yet this time I did scream.Or I think I did, but the thunder came to drown me out.Then I was on my feet, and my feet were through the rotten floorboards, and I didn’t care except I had to get out of there, out of that choking, stinking, collapsing—I stumbled, crumbled my way into the tiny cloakroom, tripped and crashed into the clock where it stood in the corner.It was like a nightmare chain reaction that I’d started and couldn’t stop; the old grandfather just crumpled up on itself, its metal parts clanging together as the wood disintegrated around them.And all the furniture following suit, and the very wall paneling smoking into ruin where I fell against it.And there where that infected timber had been, there he stood—old Garth himself! He leaned half out of the wall like a great nodding manikin, his entire head a livid yellow blotch, his arm and hand making a noise like a huge puffball bursting underfoot where they separated from his side to point floppingly toward the open door.I needed no more urging.“God! Yes! I’m going!” I told him, as I plunged out into the storm…After that…nothing, not for some time.I came to in a hospital in Stokesley about noon the next day.Apparently I’d run out of road on the outskirts of some village or other, and they’d dragged me out of my car where it lay upside down in a ditch.I was banged up and so couldn’t do much talking, which is probably as well.But in the newspapers I read how what was left of Easingham had gone into the sea in the night.The churchyard, Haitian timber, terrible dry-rot fungus, the whole thing, sliding down into the sea and washed away forever on the tides.And yet now I sometimes think:Where did all that wood go that Garth had been selling for years? And what of all those spores I’d breathed and touched and rolled around in? And sometimes when I think things like that it makes me feel quite ill.I suppose I shall just have to wait and see…THE SUN, THE SEA, AND THE SILENT SCREAMThis time of year, just as you’re recovering from Christmas, they’re wont to appear, all unsolicited, plop on your welcome mat.I had forgotten that fact, but yesterday I was reminded.Julie was up first, creating great smells of coffee and frying bacon.And me still in bed, drowsy, thinking how great it was to be nearly back to normal.Three months she’d been out of that place, and fit enough now to be first up, running about after me for a change.Her sweet voice called upstairs: “Post, darling!” And her slippers flip-flopping out into the porch.Then those long moments of silence—until it dawned on me what she was doing.I knew it instinctively, the way you do about someone you love.She was screaming—but silently.A scream that came drilling into all my bones to shiver into shards right there in the marrow.Me out of bed like a puppet on some madman’s strings, jerked downstairs so as to break my neck, while the silent scream went on and on.And Julie standing there with her head thrown back and her mouth agape, and the unending scream not coming out.Her eyes starting out with their pupils rolled down, staring at the thing in her white, shuddering hand—A travel brochure, of course…Julie had done Greece fairly extensively with her first husband.That had been five or six years ago, when they’d hoped and tried for kids a lot.No kids had come; she couldn’t have them; he’d gone off and found someone who could.No hard feelings.Maybe a few soft feelings.So when we first started going back to Greece, I’d suggested places they’d explored together.Maybe I was looking for far-away expressions on her face in the sunsets, or a stray tear when a familiar bousouki tune drifted out on aromatic taverna exhalations.Somebody had taken a piece of my heart, too, once upon a time; maybe I wanted to know how much of Julie was really mine.As it happened, all of her was.After we were married, we left the old trails behind and broke fresh ground.That is, we started to find new places to holiday.Twice yearly we’d pack a few things, head for the sunshine, the sea, and sometimes the sand.Sand wasn’t always a part of the package, not in Greece.Not the golden or pure white varieties, anyway.But pebbles, marble chips, great brown and black slabs of volcanic rock sloping into the sea—what odds? The sun was always the same, and the sea…The sea.Anyone who knows the Aegean, the Ionian, the Mediterranean in general, in between and around Turkey and Greece, knows what I mean when I describe those seas as indescribable.Blue, green, mother-of-pearl, turquoise in that narrow band where the sea meets the land: fantastic! Myself, I’ve always liked the colours under the sea the best.That’s the big bonus I get, or got, out of the islands: the swimming, the amazing submarine world just beyond the glass of my face mask, the spearfishing.And this time—last time, the very last time—we settled for Makelos.But don’t go looking for it on any maps.You won’t find it; much too small, and I’m assured that the British don’t go there any more.As a holiday venue, it’s been written off.I’d like to think I had something, everything, to do with that, which is why I’m writing this.But a warning: if you’re stuck on Greece anyway, and willing to take your chances come what may, read no further.I’d hate to spoil it all for you.So…what am I talking about? Political troubles, unfinished hotel apartments, polluted swimming pools? No, nothing like that.We didn’t take that sort of holiday, anyway.We were strictly ‘off-the-beaten-track’ types.Hence Makelos [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

listy-do-eda.opx.pl