Ingalls Theft

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-29977-5
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 96 Seiten

'Every volume [Rachel Ingalls] has written displays the craft of a quite remarkable talent. Tales of love, terror, betrayal and grief, which others would spin out for hundreds of pages, are given the occluded force of poetry.' Amanda Craig, Independent Rachel Ingalls (b. 1940) grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has lived in London since 1965. Theft, her literary debut, won the Authors' Club First Novel Award for 1970. 'Theft is a parable-parallel taking place in some dehumanizing, militarized society where Seth, a starving working man, is jailed for stealing a loaf of bread. In prison with him is a manic-messiah, a wife-killer, some affluent youngsters doing their 'mental slumming' via protest, and his protective, smarter brother-in-law.' Kirkus Review 'Imaginative and intelligent'. Sunday Times 'Tautly told with great power.' Sunday Mirror

Rachel Ingalls was born in Boston in 1940. She spent time in Germany before studying at Radcliffe College, and moved to England in 1965, where she lived for the rest of her life. Her debut novel, Theft (1970), won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, and her novella Mrs Caliban (1982) was named one of the 20 best American novels since World War Two by the British Book Marketing Council. Over half a century, Ingalls wrote 11 story collections and novellas - all published by Faber - to great acclaim, but remains relatively unknown. She died in 2019 after a revival of interest in her work.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ingalls, Rachel

Leseproben

“Look out, Jake,” I said, “there’s a big stone in the middle of the road.”

“Where?”

“Straight ahead, right in front of you. Hold on. Over to the left a little ways. Mind you don’t bump into it.”

“Can’t bump into it. Can’t even see it.”

“Right up there.” I pointed at it in the dark. “A big goddam boulder, right in the middle of the road. Who’d want to put a thing like that there?”

“Where?”

“Right there, right in front of you,” I said, and fell over it.

“Where are you?” he started to call. “Hey, where did you go?”

“I’m down here. By this big boulder.”

“What boulder?” he muttered. And he fell on top of me.

“Jake, I think maybe I’m drunk,” I said.

“Who, me? I’m not drunk.”

“Me. Do you think I’m drunk?”

“I don’t know. Do you think so?”

“I believe maybe I just might be. Just a little.”

“Let’s have another,” he said. “Where did it go?”

“I think you’re sitting on it.”

We had another, and then another. And one more. And he said for about the tenth time that night, “Well, how’s it feel to be a father?”

“Fine. Feels good. Feels grand. God almighty, I’m glad it’s over.”

“Nothing to it. I told you it was going to be all right, didn’t I?”

“Sure. It’s all right now. But wait till it happens to you. Man, I been scared before. Not like that.”

“Why scared? Happens every day. That’s nature. Annie says she’ll be aiming for eight. Eight, she says. At least.”

“Eight. Holy God.”

“What she says. And I want to be there when it happens.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Why not? That’s life. That’s important. I’d want to be there.”

“Let me tell you,” I said, and I thought I was going to start crying, but it came out laughing, “let me tell you, it was almost death. They said she almost died. I’m so glad it’s over, I’m just so damn glad it’s over.”

“Have another,” Jake said.

I took some and held on to it.

“Listen. You want to be there when it happens? Look, I wasn’t even there and I felt like you can’t imagine what. All week I been all cramped up and sick with it, like I was the one having the child. You just don’t know. Here, have another.”

I passed it to him and he dropped it and we had to hunt around.

“Got it,” Jake said after a while. “What you doing going dropping it right on the ground like that? I thought you was handing it over.”

“You dropped it.”

“Who, me? It’s all right. Plenty left.”

“Have another.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

I leaned my back against the rock. It was still so dark you couldn’t see much.

“Well?” Jake said.

“Well what?”

“You said have another. Let’s have it.”

“You’re holding on to it.”

“Who, me?” he said. After a little he began to laugh. I didn’t know what was so funny but I started to laugh too.

“You’re right,” he said. “I had a hold of it all the time. Do you think maybe I’m drunk?”

“Who, me?” I said.

“Here, have another. How’s it feel to be a father?”

We both got laughing. When we stopped it was at the same time, so it sounded very still afterwards. I felt quiet and better.

“I’ll tell you, Jake,” I said. “It’s quite something. It makes you feel strange. I expect you get used to it, but it makes you feel like—makes you feel real awestruck. When you think about it, it’s a big thing.”

“Sure. Sure is. I’ll drink to that. What are you going to name him?”

“I think we’ll have to name him after Uncle Ben.”

“You ain’t going to name him after me?”

“I wanted to, but Maddie said how it would mean so much to him and Annie says she thinks it’s right, seeing how he practically brought us up.”

“I was only fooling.”

“No, I meant it. I did want to. We’ll name the next one after you.”

“Right. And we’ll name one after you, too.”

“One of the eight.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he said. We both drank some more and sat quiet for a while. I got to thinking how good it was to have the worry over but how funny we should be sitting in the middle of the dark, in the middle of the road, up against a big boulder that shouldn’t be there.

“Hey Jake, I don’t know about this rock. Who’d want to go and do a thing like that?”

“Like what?”

“Go and put a big rock in the middle of the road like that, where somebody can come along and get hurt. I think we should push it out of the way.”

I gave it a shove but it was too heavy to move. I tried again and my hand slipped.

“Leave it be,” he told me. “Wait till daylight and I’ll help you move it.”

“All right. All right, we’ll leave it. Let’s have another.”

“Funny it should make such a difference—names. You remember when I used to tell you the names of the stars?”

“Sure,” I said. “I remember.”

“Funny it should make such a difference. Why people remember a name a long time after they’ll remember anything else, after they forget what went with it. Did you ever think: names are very old things. Old as the stars. Pass them down from way back, and then people give them to children when they’re born. Funny way to start out.”

“I’ve forgotten most of them,” I said.

“Which?”

“Names of the stars. A long while back. I was ashamed to say, because of all the trouble you took and then me going and forgetting.”

“That’s all right. Everybody does. Remember some things and forget some things. I’ll teach you again sometime. Not tonight. No stars tonight. It’s going to rain.”

“We’ll name the second one after you,” I said.

“Right. And we’ll name one after you. The first boy. Unless Annie’s got some name she won’t give up.”

“You mean it?”

“Sure,” he said. “Promise.”

He fell asleep first. During the night it rained and when daybreak came we saw that we weren’t in the middle of the road; there wasn’t any road at all. We were lying in somebody’s field, miles from home and feeling like nothing on God’s earth. I’ve only been drunk twice in my life and that was the first time. Almost eight years ago.

“You,” the foreman calls, “you there, boy, you dreaming?”

“No, sir,” I say.

I’m not dreaming, I’m just trying to stay on my feet. If I could dream it through I would, right on through the day. What I do is more like just thinking or remembering, anything to take my mind off being hungry. I didn’t start on it till after the fire and now I have to do it every day.

It’s best if you can do it to singing or to counting, out loud. The new man gets nervous if there’s too much of the singing, he thinks every song he doesn’t know might be a protest song. Up he walks in his Godalmighty way like he’s saying to himself: here I come, boys, here I come. And tells us not so much of the singing, it slows down the work.

I can do it in my head now and I expect it’s what happens to soldiers; they say soldiers can be sound asleep and still keep on marching once they’ve got the rhythm. That’s the way it happens. Sometimes I begin by saying over words to myself. Or names, or following the line of a song without sounding it. Then I can imagine pictures of things, people, or places, and go on from there. Just remembering back a week will often take you into a string of things you haven’t thought about for a long while, and they can keep you going.

I think about my mother’s voice sometimes. She could sing. And I think about my father, though only a couple of memories and they’re like the ones of her, blurred and hard to get at. I remember looking into his face but not what the face looked like. I remember being held in his arms and being small enough to be held like that. Clearest of all, I have a picture of being out walking with him. He lifted me up and carried me on his shoulders—that’s all I remember of it, like a picture I can stand away from and look at: me riding on his shoulders and looking up ahead, seeing the sky. But it’s very strong and always when I think of him it leads me into other thoughts, I think how I did the same thing with Ben when he was smaller.

They say he was a great man, at least that’s what everyone said till after Aunt Mary died. Then Uncle Ben started saying, “Yes, he was a great man all right, such a fine character, such high principles. He was such a great man and had such strong principles your Mama died of work.” A long time later I said to him, “I don’t know what he was like, I was too young. Aunt Mary saw him one way, you saw him another way—leave it like that. I only saw him like a child, I only remember him lifting me up on his shoulders and looking at the sky.”

“Yes, that’s what he was like,” says Uncle Ben in a bitter voice. “He’d lift you up and show you the sky. Some it cured and some was killed by it.”

I don’t know if he was such a high-principled character. Maybe he was just wild, like Jake. And a man people would always be talking about, with a kind of public reputation. Like Jake; I’ve seen him walk down the street and have people come up and follow him, follow him around like dogs, just to be near him. And I’ve seen it the other way around, name-calling when he walks by,...