Shan Hughes: Perl

The Livibuk Publishing House represents Roman Shan Hughes (Translated by Daria Ivanovskaya).

The disappearance of the loved one changes not only the present and future, but also the past of a person. Marianne was only eight when her mother disappeared, and the memories of a sunny garden, walks and aromatic pies seemed faded. Was the life of their family really so cloudless if one day mom just left home and did not return? This question torments Marianne, she is looking for an answer to him in an old house and on the river bank, at her father, neighbors, in medieval poetry. He is looking for a child, a difficult teenager and an adult woman, already becoming a mother. Is there a miracle that will help her regain a happy past, and change the future with him?

We offer to read a fragment of the book.

I used to fantasize about our return to the old house. For example, as if the new owners wake up one morning and understand that not all documents have signed, but in the will of grandfather Matthew there is a note in small print, according to which no one has the right to live there, or that, for example, every time they drive to the house, lightning beats into the chimney, and so on until they understand that this is a sign and they will not be removed from there.

Or, for example, they will somehow return home from work, and the house will elegantly swim past them, carried away by a dirty river stream, farewell to fluttering curtains, because he decided to go in search of his former, real owners. Such children's fantasies, for which I was already too adult.

All these years, while the house has been in vain expectation of customers, long adult conversations about interest rates, about joint access and what is called a chain was held around it. Constantly someone asked if they were in a chain. I quite vaguely imagined what kind of chain could be and how these people got into it, but any child knows that being in a chain is bad.

With those who bought the house in the end, there were no chains. It pleased me. I did not want someone to carry his shackles on the cold stone floor, tragically clanged them along a wooden staircase and smelled a metal taste of sadness throughout the old garden. There is already knee -deep dirt there.

I did not get acquainted with the new owners. Edward invited me to go with him and show them the house when they were ready to buy, but asked for another view. He said that it may be easier for me to accept the presence of new people in the house if I see them with my own eyes. And I did not want to take a nobody there. It was much easier for me to imagine fictional pathos villains with thin antennae and insidious women in long dresses, sliding above the stairs a couple of centimeters from the floor. Evil ghosts. Beating the dishes of Poltergeist. Clapping without anyone's part of the door. Faceless shadows in long clothes made of prickly and tenacious balls of burdock, with which we threw ourselves into each other in primary school.

But this time I returned. I did not enter either the house or in those parts of the buildings that survived since my childhood. It was Sunday evening, vigils came to an end, people collected things, smelled of popcorn and diesel fuel in the air, and these smells were absorbed in the living hedges around the church.

Suzanne met some local guys who promised to eat on some kind of piece called “Flying Sausage” if they sit down until the end of the day. I left her with a group of girls, they sat in the triangle of shadows at the truck with hot dogs, tearing the grass under their feet and endlessly twisted bracelets on his wrists. I said that I would return soon, but she did not deign to answer, so I went with the dog to the green chapel to lay out my traditional bouquet.

Near the place where our old gate used to lead to the path to the river, someone made a new white gate with a small wooden door and a canopy. Almost in the right place, but not quite.

A winding path, strewn with gravel, stretched from the gate, with wooden borders, along which thickets of decorative onions, shtokrosis and other lush plants stretched.

From under the fence and right from under gravel, my mother’s mint grew. The mint that was supposed to be grown in containers, which she did not know about, so that the plant was dissipated, lined and upward, paving the path under the hedges and fences.

Behind the winding path, a red -haired brick garden wall with trellis on which apple trees relied was visible. At the far end, a half-open wooden door was seen, painted with bright green paint. My dog ​​pulled a leash with curiosity, trying to smell something under the fence.

A few steps behind someone rolled a wheelbarrow from the river, and I had to step by the gate to miss this man. But he did not follow the path, but went to me and stopped:

“Sorry, but I just have to go here.” You will have to move here.

So I met the new owner. Having blocked his path to his own garden. When we changed places and I shook the dog leash caught on the wheelbarrow, I already managed to admire the new gate and decorative onions along the path aloud aloud, and even pull the dog, which tried to lick his rubber boots. Then it came to the owner who I am. Sister Joe, he said.

In a sense, I was not surprised. Joe makes friends wherever appears. As soon as he went to school, I turned into Joe's sister. Very often in the kitchen of the new house, people are being interpreted for whom I am also a “sister of Joe”. But, on the other hand, there was something to be surprised. If I have never seen the new owners, then how did Joe succeed? Did he come here all his life and maintained friendship with them while we forever pulled away from this place? Is it really possible for us all this time here, and only I stubbornly ignored this fact?

- You probably came to the vigil? Anthony in the garden. Come, introduce. Wow, sister Joe! She will be very happy!

I followed him past the garden wall and old kitchen, where his wife gathered late raspberries under the window in shorts and tops from a swimsuit. When she heard that the sister of Joe had come to visit, she went to meet us with a smile, then she remembered that she was not dressed, she put a bowl of berries in my hands and ran into the kitchen for a T -shirt.

The aroma of berries mixed with the brackish smell of walls heated in the evening sun, and from Antonia itself it smelled of sunscreen and perfume.

I felt these smells right with my skin, not my nose and tongue. They seemed to rise from the very feet with a wave. I felt that I was filled with these aromas, and realized that when this wave reaches the eye, she would spill with tears. I tried my best to keep it at least at the chest level, stomping into the house after Ted and carrying a bowl with raspberries, the aroma of which penetrated me right under the ribs.

Then, in the garden, Ted said that he and Antonia bought this house from those to whom we sold it initially. That family lived in the house for about ten years. Anthony and Ted worked as lawyers, both of their daughters now also studied on the legal; In general, it is clear where these people get the money, in order to equip everything so beautifully here. Ted said that his daughters grew up here, playing in the garden. Here is a house on the tree that he built for them, and here they kept a donkey named Klaw from India - he already does not remember why the animal was called that.

- Did you have a donkey here too? No? We found a wagon for a donkey in the barn. Apparently, the past residents left. We picked up the idea. But my God, these donkeys! There is so much noise from them. And Clive was so stubborn that he had never even been drawn.

I said that we had chickens and ducks. He was even upset.

- That is, the wagon is definitely not yours? Maybe she appeared here before you? For some reason, we were sure that she was yours. No?

As if wanting to refresh my memory, he pointed to the barn - updated, beautiful, completely safe. All the old inventions of Grandfather Matthew were removed from there, the floor was painted. This is how they met Joe-he asked for permission to come and see what was left of grandfather's things, then he helped inventory and transferred a technically little-known museum.

Ted jokingly said that in fifteen years of life here they are not enough to take them in the village for their own. Fifteen years! That is, he and his wife lived here two years longer than I am in due time! Almost as much as my parents managed to live here! How did it happen? Did none of these people understand that this house is mine?

Anthony already came out of the house - in a colorful shirt with a belt and pink linen trousers.

“Let's go to the greenhouse,” she said. - We built an excellent greenhouse behind the house. Let's drink something cool. Such a day!

If, with the word “greenhouse”, a white plastic structure in the backyard seems to you, where dog litter and old damming toys are stored, then think again. This greenhouse was more like a greenhouse. Or on the botanical garden. It was a bizarre wooden structure with a complex pointed roof and a weathercock in the form of a dragon.

“Do you remember this weather vane?” Ted asked. “We found him in the barn.” He definitely lay there since your times. And even longer.

I did not remember any flood. It seems that I disappointed them around.

Anthony looked at my face, definitely looking for a similarity with Joe.

- When Joe came here last time, he managed to tame our dog. Such a dog - there was no way to control him. And for Joe he literally went on the heels. He would go home with him, right?

My dog ​​at this time behaved extremely ugly, trying to gobble up horse manure scattered under pink bushes. But even without taking into account the dog, they clearly managed to decide that I was not from this world.

Ted twisted some wooden wheels on the walls of the greenhouse to open the windows in the roof, and I dragged my dog ​​dog inward, where we were already waiting for a tray with glasses of cold lemonade and leaves of my mother’s mint floated over ice cubes.

Anthony said that Joe had a pretty amused when he came to look for a box with treasures, which he buried in the garden for the next residents. He buried her under the apple tree, but found nothing - everything rotted and rotted for a long time. Those who lived before them did not say anything like that, but they are not chatty, yes.

And I said: you do not particularly dig under the apple trees at the fence, because there we once buried six chicken, and some were without a head, and this is definitely not the treasure that I would like to find.

They asked about Edward - they said that they saw him on TV in the program about medieval settlements and that the whole village watched this program - well, how, their own expert participated in it. I said - yes, wonderful, although I myself saw only the second half of the release, which he did not even get into. They noted that I am probably proud of them and everything that he did. Yes, I said, in his time there were few single fathers, it was probably not easy for him. They were embarrassed, and I thought that, probably, they meant pride about his textbooks and appearance on television.

Ted asked if I could help him reveal one secret: why the lawn over the house in dry weather lifted a little, as if repeating the outlines of some small structure. We left the greenhouse and followed him to the wall of the kitchen. Oh yes. It was him, the earthen Palimpsest of our old laundry, where my old three -wheeled bicycle, puppet strollers, and piles of flower pots, which were to be useful the next year were lying. And now there was only a rectangle slightly lighter than around the grass.

These lines in the grass excited me. I said: yes, there was a street toilet. And stable. There was still a kind of wall, I loved to burn the bonfires there. True, there is nothing romantic in the toilets and pigs, so Ted and Anthony were slightly shameful.

- Stories were told about the house. Such, you know, typical old stories about houses. Your brother probably does not remember any of them, he was too small. -Anthony did not take her eyes off the yellowish grass, and Ted's gaze was anxious because of the glasses. Is she trying to find out something about ghosts? Or about my mother? It is incomprehensible.

In addition, Suzanne was waiting for me at the fair, so I said: thanks for the treat, it is very nice to see the house and the plot so well -groomed - and dragged the dog away from their impeccable lawn, where she tried to dig a hole.

I could not recall what used to stand in the place of the current greenhouse. Nothing, probably.

Maybe the pasture fence took place there? Or broken supports of the old terrace, split by the vine sprouted through them? Or were they near the other wall? I would definitely pass them past them, rising from the side of the river, isn't it? Although I entered the gate located elsewhere.

Maybe I went to the house from the wrong side and did not understand this myself? Why did everything mix so in my head? Really all my memories turned upside down, turned inside out? I ran along the path towards the Green Captain, still clutching flowers in my hand and fearing now that I'm going somewhere in the wrong place; Maybe in fact I moved away from the chapel and fair, as it happens in nightmares, when you find yourself farther and farther from the place where you need to get.

Will the ghosts of the green chapel be angry with me for taking their flowers? I remembered the funeral ritual, when the deceased is put in the wrong direction, so that if his ghost gets out and decides to return to his house, he will move in the wrong direction and get lost. And there is also a ritual when the deceased is put their heads towards the house, because everyone knows: when the ghost rises from the grave, it takes one hundred and eighty degrees.