The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [109]
Jean reached over and put her hand on his. He lifted her hand and put it down gently on the bed between them.
– You wanted me to tell this, he said.
He was right to reproach her; she should not have reached out her hand. What could her touch mean against such facts; nothing. Someone else's touch perhaps, but not hers.
– There are people on this earth who can't even bear to hear the engine of a truck. And the fact that their memories are shared by thousands of others – do you imagine this feels like a brotherhood? It's just as Ranger said … Every happy person, said Lucjan, and every unhappy person knows exactly the same truth: there is only one real chance in a life, and if you fail at that moment, or if someone fails you, the life that was meant to be yours is gone. Every day for the rest of your life you will be eviscerated by that memory.
Jean lay meagrely next to him in the dark.
Soon she realized Lucjan was asleep. His stillness was large and solid, a fallen tree. But she could almost hear his brain, even in sleep, rampage.
On a clear blue morning near the end of March, Jean drove out to Marina's to examine the peach trees. Then she and Marina made lunch together. Jean was peeling carrots and Marina was folding a mixture of egg and onion into a pan, when Marina said,
– I've given Avery a little project.
Jean looked up.
– Nothing expensive, mind. Marina smiled. Something he can plan on a single piece of paper. In fact, that was a condition. If the design can't be folded out of a single piece of paper, he has to start again.
It came alert inside her, an almost forgotten feeling: anticipation.
– Just a small one-or two-room house, a hut, a cabin, he can put it anywhere, but I thought perhaps by the canal. A place to think, to drift. A little project for him to do with his bare hands and his brain, something he can make mistakes with.
And I've thought of something for you too, said Marina.
She steered Jean into the dining room. Fabric, folded in large, flat squares, was piled on the table. Marina began to open and shake them out, one by one, perhaps a dozen designs of such outrageous brightness Jean had to laugh, erratic geometrics or florals eight or ten inches across, clean and alive, poppy red, graphite, mustard, cerulean, cobalt, lime, anemone white, of stiff strong cotton that looked like it could be used for the sails of a fantastical ship.
– I discovered the Marimekko shop in Karelia's, said Marina. It's a revolution. Fabric like this was unimaginable when I was young. Women are wearing these brilliant, preposterous colours and designs and striding about the world. We are going to make you some summer clothes, big, happy, square frocks, loose and cool. With your lovely arms and legs sticking out of them, you are going to look magnificent.
– And would you wear one too? asked Jean. A big, square, loose Marimekko frock?
They looked at each other, and themselves; Jean's shabby turnout – in planting clothes, baggy black leggings, an old shirt of Avery's that hung to her knees and an old sweater of an unidentifiable shade, mud-coloured, also Avery's, with elbows worn through, falling loose from Jean's slight shoulders. Marina's plastic painting apron, her woollen trousers that looked as though they'd been made before the war, which they had been, nicely tailored (for they had been William's) but sagging and paint-stained.
– Marina, said Jean, you're quite insane.
Marina took Jean's hand, almost desperate to see happiness again in Jean's eyes.
– Not quite insane.
A few days later, Jean came again to the marsh and left her car, as she usually did, just off the main road, so she could approach the white house on foot; to take in the sight of it, among the trees,