Girl in Profile by Zillah Bethell Read Free Book Online

with soundtrack, frantic sex, high-speed car chases, mysterious assignations, passionate illuminations… And now it is all constipation and colostomy bags and Satie coming from the Blue Room. Sad, faltering, slow. Like the tick-tock of Wendy’s heart that beats like a metronome. When the music stops so will she. We don’t stand a fucking chance, do we.
    â€œNow I want to immerse myself in the things themselves. Feel the thinginess of things, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I think it is a premonition of death when we dissolve into all things, into each particular thing.”
    â€œHamburgers for lunch,” Nurse Tinkerbell announces from the exit door.
    Is that bathos or pathos? I’m not really sure, but the gulls wheel away, screeching, over the waves of Peter’s hair, and the little book on crickets slides to the floor.
    â€œOh, and Elizabeth, you have a visitor.”
    My heart leapfrogs over all the other little children’s hearts. It must be Minnie.
    â€œDoctor Kharana wants a word.”
    A word. In the beginning was the word. What word will I end with? I need to learn the anagrams of life. Heart is an anagram of earth my late husband used to say. Never a linguist, poor man. Stumpy little tongue. Never a cunnilinguist either for that matter. The secret is to spell out the alphabet with your tongue. Most women have a favourite letter. Mine was m I seem to remember. The most curvaceous letter in the alphabet. Mmmm.

Gwen
    Bousculé par le Monde
    Dear Gwen Marie,
    Your letters are very touching, ma cherie. If you are so sad in your room you must change the apartment. I will gladly send money for this. I have always thought your atelier to be a little damp – damp enough for champignons in my opinion and not good for someone of your constitution. You must regain equilibrium of mind and body. Immodesty is not charming in a woman. Leave Paris for a while. Visit the countryside, look at the flowers and the starlings. Take a deep breath of nature and she will pay you later in blossom. I am bousculé par le monde as always. I must curtail everything in order to work. The promenade of one evening and I am debauched. You, as an artist, can understand that. Fundamentally I am a private man, a silent man, like a great moon that looks over an unknown empty sea where few ships pass. But I will visit you again, one day soon.
    Your affectionate friend, A.R.
    The twice weekly trip to market, nightly bed, daily meal, midday cup of tea when the houses opposite cast great shadows like dirty old tramps peering in at me. Ida sends a concoction of honey and coriander for my throat – it is bad again – and Dorelia sends a silver brooch. They are in the south of France, bathing their children in sea water to cure them of freckles. Ida is square as a box and mad as a lemon squeezer, so she says. The baby is due soon, just to add to the collection. They pop out whole and splendid as dolphins, her boys, leaving her shrivelled as seaweed. My brother is a satyr. Does he sleep with Ida one week, Dorelia the next? Do they take alternate shifts in bed, creeping into the soft contours of the one that has left? Do all men need more than one woman to be happy?
    One day soon . My heart tries to leap like a rabbit in the dilapidated gardens of the Hotel Biron, but I grab it by the neck with my tiny wee hands. Aha, little rabbit, you can strain, kick your legs, bulge the whites of your eyes at me, but I’ve got a good hold on you. Little darting heart that you are. He is bousculé par le monde as always. He is every e-acute you care to imagine: enrhumé , bousculé , agité , âgé . E-acute is a chronic condition with him. He is unrepentant, admits nothing. Am I to love flowers and cats for the rest of my life like a sad old spinster? Is that all I’m good for? I would not take a sou from him. I would rather wear my crimson faille through the winter, survive on one lump of coal a day,