August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online

went back to the beach where the mattresses were, not knowing any other walk just yet. It was totally empty, the mattresses like corpses. It was not lit up, but all around the lights of other hotels, and of the town and of nearby towns gleamed steadfast. The holiday night was happening. Under those lights people danced and walked and held on to each other, their senses heightened by the fairy-tale prettiness of the towns and the dark water with its withheld sea-sob : ‘Ah…Ah… Ahh.’ A feeling of waste took hold of her. She ought to be seeing this with someone. No longer consecrated to loneliness, she was impatient to reach her destiny.
    She moved to the water’s edge. Then she bent down and washed her hands and her wedding-ring-which was loose anyhow – began to slip off. She removed it, looked at it, put it to her lips, kissed it tenderly, and then threw it violently into the water. The last unwitnessed act of flinging her husband away. She stayed there for a while, not regretting it, lost in a patch of darkness, and then she decided to retire early so that she would look well the following day.

Chapter Seven
    T HE VIOLINIST WAS LOCATED at the top of the building and next afternoon she set out for there. Along the quiet and empty corridor she walked, like a shadow, stealthily, and close to the wall. He had warned her not to be seen by guests. On the sixth landing she rested. He had warned her too about not taking the lift in case the lift operator might see her and watch where she went. By the time she got to his door she was out of breath. She tapped nervously and he opened it a little and drew her in. The first effect was of clutter and not much light. Musical instruments were strewn about and the feeling of constriction was terrible. It was an attic room, and compared with the majestic ballroom where he played each night, this was absurd.
    His clothes were hung in an alcove and she saw the jacket that had first introduced her to him. Not sumptuous now but a best jacket carefully hung up so that it would be perfect for its evening’s outing.
    She said ‘Bonjour,’ but said it badly. All the way up the stairs she had practised saying it casually. He scratched idly at the hair on his chest, smiling at her, stretching his other arm to show the difference in their colouring. They were like people from different orbits. There was a smell of ozone from under his armpits. Then in his shorts, he stood before her and kissed her and positioned his legs so that they coincided with hers exactly. When she made a small change of position he moved his limbs too and she thought, ‘He’s hurrying everything, he’s rushing it.’ Over his bare, bronze shoulder she saw a camera on a tripod, like an eye spying on her, and she drew back quickly and asked what it was. She really meant, ‘Why is it there spying on me?’
    ‘For photograph,’ he said, and then remembering his duties as a host he offered her apple juice.
    ‘Have you whisky?’ she said. She felt nervous. The small room was suffocating and insects came in hordes through the window space. He had taken the glass out completely. She breathed out through her parted lips to try and cool herself. The morning’s heat had murdered her. Sun got in the folds of her arms and legs, and she gasped when she went out and saw the cars cooking on the roadside and the brown bodies glistening with jelly and not even a twilight under the trees where she ran to escape.
    ‘Spirits no gud,’ he said handing her the half glass of apple juice.
    ‘Christ, I always pick the puritans,’ she said, hoping he would not know what she meant. He told her to sit on the bed and then he got behind the camera and asked if he could take a picture.
    ‘I’m not very pretty,’ she said, sitting all the same. She saw him stoop down and heard something click and knew that the picture when it was developed would show an apprehensive woman, with a glass midway between her chest and her open mouth. He