trackless silences.docVIP

People yelled at each other anyway, but now they yelled all the louder. Nor were Jeff and Joe the only neighbourhood dogs who suffered from canine Tourette’s. The foul-mouthed pitbulls, the screeching cats, the grimily milling pigeons; only the fugitive foxes observed their code of silence. Diston, with its burping, magmatic canal, its fizzy low-rise pylons, its buzzing waste. Diston—a world of italics and exclamation marks. On his way to school Des slipped into the Public Library on Blimber Road. This was a place where you could actually hear yourself cough, sigh, breathe—where you could hear the points and junctions of your own sinuses. He made straight for the radiant Reading Room with its silvery motes of dust. First, naturally, he wrenched open the Sun, and thrashed his way to “Dear Daphne.” Worries about getting an erection, worries about keeping an erection, the many girls whose married boyfriends wouldn’t leave their wives, the many boys who loved the feel of women’s clothing: all this, but nothing about a fifteen-year-old and his nan. Eleven days had passed since he posted his letter. Why hadn’t Daphne printed it? Was it too terrible? No (or so a part of him still wanly hoped): it was too trivial. Des closed his eyes and saw himself in the granny flat at the age of thirteen. He was, as usual, weeping into his sleeve— while Gran stroked his hair and softly hummed along with that emollient melody, “Hey Jude.” Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, Take a sad song And make it better . The hugs, the hand-clasps, the vast and trackless silences. Gran said that grief was like the sea; you had to ride the tides (So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin), and then, after months, after years …