The Tyrant's Novel by Thomas Keneally Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Thomas Keneally
Tags: Fiction
the student newspaper soon after Sarah's and my delightful session in the library. The next day she told me that the University Drama Society had voted to turn it into a play. In return she would teach me how to download and print computer files. After a week, she had already created a play script from my short story. And so it was rehearsed over three or four weeks. Produced by Sarah Manners, the foremost youngster of the National Theater, who played one of the young women. Old Billy Salter, Cultural Commissioner, let it run ten nights, attracting people from throughout the city, before he closed it down in response to complaints that the students took the play's ritualized sexuality beyond the limits of propriety.
That production sealed the closeness between us. I was by now enchanted not by her casual splendor but by the energy and nobility of her soul. To my delight and bemusement we became a couple. I thought myself mere protective covering for her, and I restrained myself through breathless fear I would be dismissed from that high office. It was only by her unambiguous signs that I realized my job was more dazzling still, that of intended lover. There was more wonder in that idea than I could use in a lifetime.
We walked, delightedly enyoked, as one creature. Sarah and Alan. What a phenomenon! He with a grin of idiot delight, she with the slight frown of her art producing one small crease across the bridge of her nose, a harbinger of doubts and pains years from revealing themselves.
We had not made it to the Kennedys' for the Thursday night gathering following the one at which Toby had told his astonishing tale of walls and gates. And on Friday, Sarah went to bed early, half blinded by migraine and the normal sickening yellow blotches of light in her vision. I had until now unjustly associated migraine with neurotic thyroidy women and was surprised by how profoundly Sarah had recently been struck by the complaint. I would sit beside her on a chair, since any sudden weight shift on the bed caused her pain, and place cold cloths of the lightest cotton on her brow. Once I said, Maybe you should have gone on with that part in the soapie, and she laughed painfully. I regretted the joke, of course, since nearly every human gesture was agonizing when these bouts came upon her.
She had been to our doctor, who gave her some potent capsules and a form of suppository, but none of that worked very quickly when she was at the apogee of her pain. Instead they made recovery quicker and then gave her some eight hours' seamless sleep. I have to say, part of me dared be gratified that Friday night—the attack was severe enough to justify canceling the next day's visit to Mrs. Carter. In case it did not, I had recourse to the black-market vodka bottle.
The next morning, however, Sarah dragged herself up and took extra painkillers, specifically because she did not want to give me an excuse to put off Mrs. Carter. She did not want to cancel one stressful appointment and then have another in a few weeks' time hanging over us. Best for all our sakes, for the ease of my questionable soul and her clearing brain, that we get it over today! To brace myself I drank some more, and Sarah declared herself more than well enough to drive. The yellow blotches had disappeared and her head felt clear.
Mrs. Carter lived in a seedy but interesting old building where the young intellectuals of the Fusion Party had gathered in the 1940s and 1950s for rumored free love, irreligious drunkenness, and political discussion and subversion. Mrs. Carter had once been, during the time of puppet governments, clients of the West, a famously beautiful woman, favored by the monarchy but also a lovely presence in the early party from which Great Uncle came, which he had ultimately perverted and subsumed.
Parenthood had changed Mrs. Carter, and loss of her son, Private Hugo Carter, had transformed her too. Her eyes were full of an unreliable glitter as she greeted us
That production sealed the closeness between us. I was by now enchanted not by her casual splendor but by the energy and nobility of her soul. To my delight and bemusement we became a couple. I thought myself mere protective covering for her, and I restrained myself through breathless fear I would be dismissed from that high office. It was only by her unambiguous signs that I realized my job was more dazzling still, that of intended lover. There was more wonder in that idea than I could use in a lifetime.
We walked, delightedly enyoked, as one creature. Sarah and Alan. What a phenomenon! He with a grin of idiot delight, she with the slight frown of her art producing one small crease across the bridge of her nose, a harbinger of doubts and pains years from revealing themselves.
We had not made it to the Kennedys' for the Thursday night gathering following the one at which Toby had told his astonishing tale of walls and gates. And on Friday, Sarah went to bed early, half blinded by migraine and the normal sickening yellow blotches of light in her vision. I had until now unjustly associated migraine with neurotic thyroidy women and was surprised by how profoundly Sarah had recently been struck by the complaint. I would sit beside her on a chair, since any sudden weight shift on the bed caused her pain, and place cold cloths of the lightest cotton on her brow. Once I said, Maybe you should have gone on with that part in the soapie, and she laughed painfully. I regretted the joke, of course, since nearly every human gesture was agonizing when these bouts came upon her.
She had been to our doctor, who gave her some potent capsules and a form of suppository, but none of that worked very quickly when she was at the apogee of her pain. Instead they made recovery quicker and then gave her some eight hours' seamless sleep. I have to say, part of me dared be gratified that Friday night—the attack was severe enough to justify canceling the next day's visit to Mrs. Carter. In case it did not, I had recourse to the black-market vodka bottle.
The next morning, however, Sarah dragged herself up and took extra painkillers, specifically because she did not want to give me an excuse to put off Mrs. Carter. She did not want to cancel one stressful appointment and then have another in a few weeks' time hanging over us. Best for all our sakes, for the ease of my questionable soul and her clearing brain, that we get it over today! To brace myself I drank some more, and Sarah declared herself more than well enough to drive. The yellow blotches had disappeared and her head felt clear.
Mrs. Carter lived in a seedy but interesting old building where the young intellectuals of the Fusion Party had gathered in the 1940s and 1950s for rumored free love, irreligious drunkenness, and political discussion and subversion. Mrs. Carter had once been, during the time of puppet governments, clients of the West, a famously beautiful woman, favored by the monarchy but also a lovely presence in the early party from which Great Uncle came, which he had ultimately perverted and subsumed.
Parenthood had changed Mrs. Carter, and loss of her son, Private Hugo Carter, had transformed her too. Her eyes were full of an unreliable glitter as she greeted us