Now Reading ...
Jun. 21st, 2011 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
texchanLast night, I started reading The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart. I'm not that far into the book -- I just reached Chapter Four -- but I already think this has to be one of the most beautiful, charming, and heartbreaking books I have read. Just ... wow. The writing is gorgeous and powerful, and it really packs a punch.
As she scrubbed, she looked up at the picture on the wall in front of her depicting the Salt Tower in wobbly pencil strokes, coloured in with felt tip. Great care had been taken, but not always achieved, to keep within the lines. Next to the Tower stood three smiling figures, two tall, one short. Only the artist's parents had recognised the small object next to them, which was also smiling, as that of the oldest tortoise in the world. And she peered, with mounting distress, at the colours that had started to fade.
Suddenly she heard the thud of the Salt Tower door. Not long afterwards, her husband appeared in the kitchen and silently presented her with a warm, flat cardboard box. Hebe Jones, unable to admit that she still detested pizza, set the table and forced down the white flag in small mouthfuls that threatened to choke her. And for the rest of the evening the air in the Salt Tower was so fragile that they spoke to each other as if the place were filled with a million fluttering butterflies that neither dared disturb.
When Hebe Jones had received the call from the undertakers to say that Milo's remains were ready for collection, she instantly dropped the vase of flowers that had just arrived from Rev. Septimus Drew. Once Balthazar Jones had swept up the glass from the living-room carpet, he fetched the car keys from the hook on the wall and they made the journey in brittle silence. Balthazar Jones didn't put on Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight" so he could play the air drums to the music while they waited in traffic, nor was there anyone on the backseat joining in with his father at the best bit. The couple only spoke when they arrived, but neither of them could say the purpose of their visit, and all they offered were their names. The receptionist continued to look at them expectantly, and it wasn't until the funeral director came out that the awkwardness ended. But it started again as soon as he presented them with the urn, as neither of them could bear to take it.
On their return to Salt Tower, the heady fumes of white lilies flooding the spiral staircase hit them. Hebe Jones, who had clutched the urn while sitting in the passenger seat in a private state of agony, placed it on the coffee table next to Milo's kazoo on her way to the kitchen to make three cups of tea. The couple sat on the sofa in suffocating silence, the third cup abandoned on the tray, neither of them able to look at the thing on the table that induced in them both a secret wish to die. Several days later, Hebe Jones noticed that her husband had placed it on the ancient mantelpiece. The following week, unable to bear seeing it any longer, she put it in the wardrobe until they had decided upon Milo's final resting place. But each time one of them brought up the subject, the other, suddenly caught off guard, had felt too bruised to reply. So it remained at the back of the shelf behind Hebe Jones's sweaters. And every night, before turning off her bedside light, the mother would find an excuse to open the wardrobe doors and silently wish her child goodnight, unable to abandon the ritual she had performed for eleven years.
As she scrubbed, she looked up at the picture on the wall in front of her depicting the Salt Tower in wobbly pencil strokes, coloured in with felt tip. Great care had been taken, but not always achieved, to keep within the lines. Next to the Tower stood three smiling figures, two tall, one short. Only the artist's parents had recognised the small object next to them, which was also smiling, as that of the oldest tortoise in the world. And she peered, with mounting distress, at the colours that had started to fade.
Suddenly she heard the thud of the Salt Tower door. Not long afterwards, her husband appeared in the kitchen and silently presented her with a warm, flat cardboard box. Hebe Jones, unable to admit that she still detested pizza, set the table and forced down the white flag in small mouthfuls that threatened to choke her. And for the rest of the evening the air in the Salt Tower was so fragile that they spoke to each other as if the place were filled with a million fluttering butterflies that neither dared disturb.
When Hebe Jones had received the call from the undertakers to say that Milo's remains were ready for collection, she instantly dropped the vase of flowers that had just arrived from Rev. Septimus Drew. Once Balthazar Jones had swept up the glass from the living-room carpet, he fetched the car keys from the hook on the wall and they made the journey in brittle silence. Balthazar Jones didn't put on Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight" so he could play the air drums to the music while they waited in traffic, nor was there anyone on the backseat joining in with his father at the best bit. The couple only spoke when they arrived, but neither of them could say the purpose of their visit, and all they offered were their names. The receptionist continued to look at them expectantly, and it wasn't until the funeral director came out that the awkwardness ended. But it started again as soon as he presented them with the urn, as neither of them could bear to take it.
On their return to Salt Tower, the heady fumes of white lilies flooding the spiral staircase hit them. Hebe Jones, who had clutched the urn while sitting in the passenger seat in a private state of agony, placed it on the coffee table next to Milo's kazoo on her way to the kitchen to make three cups of tea. The couple sat on the sofa in suffocating silence, the third cup abandoned on the tray, neither of them able to look at the thing on the table that induced in them both a secret wish to die. Several days later, Hebe Jones noticed that her husband had placed it on the ancient mantelpiece. The following week, unable to bear seeing it any longer, she put it in the wardrobe until they had decided upon Milo's final resting place. But each time one of them brought up the subject, the other, suddenly caught off guard, had felt too bruised to reply. So it remained at the back of the shelf behind Hebe Jones's sweaters. And every night, before turning off her bedside light, the mother would find an excuse to open the wardrobe doors and silently wish her child goodnight, unable to abandon the ritual she had performed for eleven years.
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Date: 2011-06-22 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-22 09:44 pm (UTC)