Longlisted for the Booker Prize
E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-25453-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Hailed as a 'writer of show-stopping genius' and a two-time Man Booker Prize nominee, Sarah Hall is the award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections. Notably, she is the only author to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice -first in 2013 with 'Mrs Fox' and again in 2020 with 'The Grotesques'.
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Translated from the Bottle Journals
Today a journalist from the city came up here and admired the view and asked me why I paint these objects on the table. They are so plain and ordinary, he said. Why do you paint bottles and bottles and bottles? The same painting, over and over. What does it mean? He asked this of me as if it were answerable, as if it were important. And I said to him, I do not paint bottles. The man must have thought me mad or obtuse or cunning perhaps. He will, no doubt, blame the rustication of the place where I live, or my absence from the galleries and salons. He does not see choice. He does not see beyond the quartet of fruit in the dish, such as it is presented – a plum, two apricots and another plum. On the canvas he sees only the surface: the green paint and the grey and the white, which will not pass over a border unless it is directed. He considers quaint the long shadows taught to us by the academies. To him, the painting on the easel is a funeral. It is careful and uncluttered, and it is not loud enough for him to understand. He does not have the practical training to recognise the discreet layers of vermilion used, their illuminating effect. If he had turned to the west during our conversation, he might have seen the sun setting behind the mountains, he might have seen the radiance of the sky. But I am not whom he expects, this young traveller with his recording device and his pressed suit. He tells me he is sorry to hear of my ill health. He grieves on behalf of Italy. Then you must have acute indigestion, I said to him, and you will surely need some Averna to restore the balance. I assured him that I am quite well, merely old. I do not know who makes these reports, in which I am lying on my deathbed. Next week, he told me proudly, he is going to Milan to hear Miles Davis play his trumpet. How wonderful, I said. Now he has gone away, back to his apartment in the street with its commotion and motorcars and thin girls selling chips of ice. And he will write in the magazines and tell his friends that I am an artist of great simplicity and a man of great complexity. He will say that I like to make a joke when the issue of mortality is raised, and my body is profoundly stooped, and I show no sign of enlightening the world about the subject of my work. He will say that the paintings have a strange luminosity, but it is meaningless. The meaning is unavailable; it cannot be grasped. And they will photograph these bottles of mine for the exhibition catalogues, and in America I will upset the critics. They will say it is deliberate. Look, I told the man, look again, because he had driven a long way to get here. Theresa visits me once a day, sometimes twice if there is a delivery or laundry to be done. She brings my cigarettes, onions and anchovies, the usual things. She will let herself in without knocking and call out because she imagines one variety of noise disturbs me if I am at work in the studio while another does not. In her there is the bustle of the market where she has been shopping. Hurry is in her hands as she turns items over in the sink to rinse off the soap. There are tremors in her flesh from the broom’s short strokes. If asked she will turn the earth and uproot my garlic, some of which I give her to take away. I tell her to step over the basil, not to water it until it has parched completely, though she will often water it. The tomatoes she likes to bring inside, yellow-red, and she puts them in bowls against the walls, like ornaments. The lizards she sweeps into a pan, flicking them outside with broken tails. They scurry back into the house to begin their campaign again. She might think I want to paint her. I do not know her thoughts. In the winter she comes less often. The hill to Serra Partucci is too steep. I receive other visitors, and more frequently than has been supposed. Antonio has begun keeping tabs on me. He would like me to move to a house less like the house of a peasant; he would prefer me in the apartment on the Via Fondazza in Bologna where he can call round regularly. The journalists are nervous if arriving unannounced. I do not believe it is stealth but perhaps they feel they will catch my true self. Then the enigma will finally be solved. Perhaps they think they will see me wearing a uniform, or performing a curse, or talking to the objects in the studio. They say the unmade roads remind them of the weddings of their cousins. They leave their motorcars down by the cypresses and walk up the slopes. If a bird skull or an iris catches their eye they will always pick it up and arrive holding it like treasure. Nature is found particularly in single objects here, though it is all around. For city dwellers Nature is invisible, located inside the weather brought to their towns, or inside their bodies when they visit the doctor to hear of its errors. To collect bones and items of colour is instinctual. They practise the language of still-life as they approach. I like to be surprised by visitors though I can often hear the engines labouring and cutting out and the vehicles reversing back to the bottom of the hill, so I am not truly surprised, just anticipating the appearance of a face at the window. I always have the coffee ready to make by the time anyone arrives. Oh, you take honey to sweeten your coffee, they always say, how unusual, is it not unlucky? It is better not to begin debates about the importing of sugar, and from which states, so instead we talk of bees labouring in our golden fields. I put their stems in a basin to keep fresh and I put their bones on the kitchen table. Other times there will be a letter of inquiry first, with particular mention of this composition or that composition, or the old party, or a new theory, and I write back of course, come, but not on Thursday. On Thursday, if I am well, I teach in the local school. Such courtesy is not necessary but I can instruct them not to attempt the hill. If ever a car makes the climb all the way to Serra Partucci then I will be absolutely surprised and I will enjoy asking the driver of such a fine vehicle if they would like some coffee. My dog Benicio died a year ago in the summer. I miss his warm presence in the house. He was a loyal dog with short brown fur and he was run over and could not be saved. In the afternoons the sun is very strong, I think it blinded him on the road or he was sleeping on the warm dirt. His back legs were injured in a difficult way – they had already been broken once before. I wish in mercy that he had died more quickly. A companionable dog cannot be replaced for many years. I do not need one for hunting or digging for truffles but have always enjoyed the easy fellowship of dogs. In any case there are too few years for another, so I have taken to finding company in other ways, such as the radio and writing. At the house now there is me, an old man who does not paint bottles, the little broken lizards, and Theresa, installing her red tomatoes. To begin each day there is only the wind, asking to come in from the north before even the daylight. It is a rolling wind, excitable as it prepares to leave the continent. Some mornings I will accompany the wind to the road above the town. It helps me to unstiffen. There is sciatica in my legs and my breathing these days is somewhat impaired. Really I can do no more than amble. The land often seems like an ocean below – the hill moves through leaves, wheat, lavender tides. It never reaches the mountains on the horizon, but still we can hope. Heat arrives after the wind has passed over the bricks. Then fire blooms across the tiles of the town. The flames of the sun turn back the petals of the flowers in the gardens. It is as if the ground has secreted embers overnight. If I knelt down and cupped my hands to my lips and blew perhaps the day would start early. There was no decision made to never leave this place, though it has been said that I renounced everything, that I suffered a great dismay and withdrew. Or that I was possessed by art, removing my heart to paint its space, its absence. This is said because of my wife and child. I am a brute and the work denotes much calculation and control. Old news. When I hear such things I do not ask for sympathy. Whatever sins I have committed exist beyond me now. I will let Nature alone judge me; she will abominate me if it is her finding. We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness. I cannot say that I have found peace now. But I have never loved with greater strength than in this place, with its earth the colour of verdaccio and its generous fruit. Sometimes I long for the wind in the studio, to harden the tips of the brushes if they have not yet been cleaned, to ruffle these pages, as if in answer to a question I have posed. But the studio faces south and its shutters are quite secure. The work must not move or display movement, otherwise I might try to turn the house and gratefully receive the wind. Then the easel would tumble over and the bottles would sing at their necks. This of course is the alternative, which we must all imagine from time to time. Benicio used to bite the wind. Poor confused dog! If it came suddenly through the trees and assailed the house, if it tugged his ruff and made balloons of his ears, he would snap and snap his jaws. He did not understand that to lean back against the current is to have a firm...
