E-Book, Englisch, Band 0, 256 Seiten
Reihe: Salt Modern Fiction
Petit My Hummingbird Father
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78463-312-7
Verlag: Salt
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 0, 256 Seiten
Reihe: Salt Modern Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-78463-312-7
Verlag: Salt
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl, from Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and for Wales Book of the Year. A poem from the book won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Her seventh poetry collection Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the inaugural Laurel Prize in 2020, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2018, was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society Choice.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
The letter trembles in Dominique’s hand as if she’s holding Angel Falls – a kilometre-long cataract shrunk to the size of a page. She folds the letter and it’s like trying to hold an archangel’s wing in her palm. She unfolds it and it fills the room. She’s creased it so many times that one line of Father’s address is faint. What if her tears blur his phone number?
Now she’s dressing, no time for breakfast. She’s running for the tube to the French Consulate, which closes for emergencies at noon. They must renew her passport; she’ll make them do it.
Now she has her passport and she’s running back home, to the phone, to let him know she’s coming.
A week ago, she dreamt of him: she was back in Venezuela, at the base of Angel Falls. His face appeared titanic in the tumbling comets. She looked into the vapour as his face dissolved and reformed. First, she saw the lace of a wedding-veil, shreds of skin behind a veil, then his face turned towards her, and she saw her father.
Dominique dials the number and listens to his phone ringing, and in the pause as she waits for him to answer there is this sound – far away and very near, as if she’s also got the Amazon on the line. A series of low grunts inside her ear, then an icy roar – deeper and longer than a jaguar’s. Howler monkeys swing through the space between them while time drops in light-year-long arrows. And she can wait. She has already waited thirty years. She is not afraid. Then a voice – French, formal, familiar, from the slash-and-burn past:
‘I have thought of you every day,’ he says. It’s in French, so she has to check she’s heard right.
He repeats, ‘I have thought of you every day, chérie.’
Dominique tries to absorb this word as he asks, ‘What time will you arrive?’
‘I’m catching the Eurostar tomorrow at ten,’ she says.
‘Can’t you come this evening?’ he asks.
‘I have to pack!’ she explains. And she has to tint her hair and wash and dry her best clothes. And there is a mask she has to conjure, to hide her hunting-face.
When Dominique first arrived at the foot of Angel Falls, she was feverish. She camped in a tent on Raton Island. Before dawn she was up and out, in time for the first rays to pierce the saddle between Sun and Moon Mountains and hit the falls so they shone like fire. She stared at them transfixed as mist tumbled slowly, then rose back up and vibrated in the morning steam rising from the treetops, before it disintegrated and fell in forests of foam. If the falls look supernatural in ordinary light, they were now god-like, imprinted on her retina.
She will visit him with that letter lighting up her face – the world’s wonder as her bridal veil. She will wear this Amazonian armour and it will be frozen at first, even though she’s at the equator of her life. After a few hours sitting opposite Father – after he has answered some of her questions – her angel-veil will start to thaw. Behind it will be her rose-quartz face, blinding in the dawn light, like a mirror where he will catch glimpses of himself behind the shreds of glitter. The ice will heat up under the morning rays. The released vapour from her bride-visor will sting him. Gradually, he will see small black words in the falling haze, a life he must translate.
When Dominique reaches the Gare-du-Nord she rushes to the toilet and makes herself up, as if she’s painting the cliff behind Angel Falls with foundation, highlighter, concealer, blusher, copper eye shadow. The full works. She wants him to regret not having known her. What time did she tell him she’d arrive? She can’t rush. She must look her best. The light is so bright there are spots in front of her eyes, but it’s a harsh light; she’s not slept. Her eyes are puffy. How she wishes he could have seen her when she was younger.
The taxi stalls. She’s going to be late. Let him wait! She keeps folding and unfolding the lawyer’s letter as they cross the Seine by Notre-Dame into the Boulevard Saint-Michel:
Yesterday I went to meet your father, Abel Emmanuel Grandin, in his home. Despite the many years of his disappearance, he asked me to come to Paris urgently to see him so he can make contact with you.
Your father understands perfectly that your first reaction might be surprise and anger but he wants to put his life in order. He is dying.
He wants you to visit him. He has asked me to give you his address. Here is his phone number. He would be so happy to hear from you.
As they enter the Quartier Latin, the taxi driver asks if she’s visiting Paris for the first time. She explains she was born here and is coming back to meet her father who she hasn’t seen since she was seven. He catches her face in his mirror as he says, ‘Your father must be well off – this is a smart area.’
They draw to a halt at 7, rue Clovis.
Dominique glances up at the windows in case he can already see her. She pictures him looking out for her from his elegant apartment and can’t believe she will soon be up there. She tries to look composed. It’s hard to pay, as her whole body is shaking.
She pulls out the instructions Father has given her for entering his apartment block – the code to the courtyard gate, the number of his flat, the code she must key in at the outer door. But his name isn’t on the panel. She rings other names. It’s 3:15, siesta time and maybe no-one’s home. She tries the concierge as Father had suggested, but there’s no answer. Has she got the right address? She tries the second building and rereads Father’s instructions, but they still don’t make sense. Then she realises there’s a fourth building at the far back of the courtyard. And there, in a bank of buttons next to the glass outer door, is his flat number, with his name. She presses it.
His voice!
She answers, ‘It’s me – Dominique!’ She keys in the new code he gives her. The door clicks open and she hesitates. There’s a frantic shadow at the top, attached to a lead, and she can hear whimpering, but he darts back in without realising she’s seen him. She leaps up the short flight of stairs.
His apartment door is ajar and there he is – small, thin, in silk pyjamas and a bronze paisley dressing gown. She shakes his hand. He hugs her, pressing himself against her body. It gives her an electric shock. It’s too soon for hugging. She notices the plastic tubes dangling from his nostrils, and how breathless he is. He is taking short desperate gasps before he can speak.
‘Come in. It’s a jungle!’ he grins, waving around his room.
There is nowhere for her to sit. The room is tiny and chock-full of furniture and heaped boxes. She takes a narrow pathway through the clutter, as she has taken jungle paths. She is wearing her angelveil and through it everything looks misty.
Dominique pulls out a hard-backed chair from under a pile of old newspapers and sits facing him. He hauls himself into his red armchair; a pink pillow propped behind his back. Between them there’s a small table piled with cooking appliances and medicines. To her right is his narrow bed by the corridor wall.
‘Let’s eat,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have lunch because I was waiting for you and I’m about to faint! You’re very late.’
She glances at her watch and realises she forgot about Paris being one hour ahead. He obviously needs to eat. She’s hungry too, but not yet ready to eat with him. She wants to sit and talk. But all he says as he serves the microwaved meal is, ‘Wait …’ and tries to catch his breath. This is what he will always say when she asks a question, but she does not yet know this. For now, she thinks he is going to talk until everything comes right.
While he is panting for air, she becomes aware of a pumping noise, she can’t yet tell where from, it vibrates through her chair and up her spine. Later, she will locate the oxygen recycler – a machine inside his door-less toilet just by the front door.
He offers her vintage pink champagne and tells her he has had three crates delivered to celebrate her arrival. His eyes sparkle as he leans back to say, ‘I didn’t know if you’d come or not. I thought you might be cross with me. Are you angry?’
‘Yes. But it doesn’t matter now,’ she reassures him. ‘I’ve always wanted to have a father.’
He struggles with the cork, stopping every few seconds to pant, but won’t let her help him. She waits patiently then asks what his days are like. Can he go out? He looks so alone, like a wolf in a forgotten corner of a zoo. It’s hard to hear him say he hasn’t left his flat for two years. She could have been visiting him all along! Every three months an ambulance takes him to hospital to see his consultant. These are his only outings. ‘I can see...
