Dressing-Up Box , livre ebook

Comma Press - David Constantine

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105 pages

English

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Description

The characters in David Constantine's fifth collection are all in pursuit of sanctuary; the violence and mendacity of the outside world presses in from all sides - be it the ritualised brutality suffered by children at a Catholic orphanage, or the harrowing videos shared among refugees of an atrocity 'back home'. In each case, the characters withdraw into themselves, sometimes abandoning language altogether, until something breaks and they can retreat no further. In Constantine's luminous prose, these stories capture such moments in all their clarity; moments when an entire life seems to hang in the balance, the past's betrayals exposed, its ghosts dragged out into the daylight; moments in which the possibility of defiance and redemption is everything.

Sujets

Short story

Catholicisme

Informations

Publié par	Comma Press
Date de parution	12 septembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912697243
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	4 Mo

Extrait

Praise for David Constantine

‘ The Dressing-Up Box does the deepest work of fiction – it tells us strange, hard, beautiful truths for our time. Constantine offers a quietly furious and moving collection packed with undefended children and lost adults, personalities grown eccentric under stress and raging for mercy. Nightmares shift, blood flows in rivers and humanity responds with strange mercy, humour and a desperate appetite for love.’
– A. L. Kennedy, author of The Little Snake

‘David Constantine’s fifth collection of stories is a fierce and tender meditation on our struggle to live – a lyrical and plainspoken portrait of humanity at its pernicious worst and its suffering, creative, resilient best.’
– Carys Davies, author of West

‘Profoundly a book for our time, full of despair, sorrow, terror, hope and tenderness… The Dressing-Up Box confirms what Constantine's readers have suspected for a long time: that he may be the greatest living English short story writer.’
– Gregory Norminton, author of The Devil’s Highway

‘Precise in their intensity, unsettling, suddenly and unexpectedly luminous, these stories will stay with you and unfurl within you.’
– Lucy Caldwell, author of Multitudes

‘A beautifully crafted tender, evocative collection. Full of wisdom and light.’
– Irenosen Okojie, author of Speak Gigantular

‘David Constantine is fearless. His work is dark and daring while, at turns, also humorous and tender.’
– Paul McVeigh, author of The Good Son

‘One of the short story-writers who matter, poetic, passionate and humane.’
– Maggie Gee, author of The White Family

‘Constantine’s writing is addictive. Every sentence is another shot of beauty, of mystery and mastery.’
– Lara Pawson, author of This is the Place to Be

‘A brilliant collection’
– Ian McMillan, author of Talking Myself Home

‘Every sentence is both unpredictable and exactly what it should be. Reading them is a series of short shocks of (agreeably envious) pleasure.’
– A.S. Byatt, The Guardian

‘The beauty of Constantine’s writing lies in his extraordinary patience and precision with every whorl of consciousness, his unabashed fascination with every leaf and branch of the inner life. His emotional intelligence is as abundant as his linguistic gifts, and as necessary to the story he’s telling...’
– The New York Times

‘Constantine’s writing is rare today… unafraid to be rich and allusive and unashamedly moving.’
– The Independent

‘David Constantine is one of Britain's most underrated writers… his balance of the lyrical and the sparse echoes John Williams, James Salter and John McGahern.’
– Huffington Post
Also by the same author
SHORT STORIES
Back at the Spike
Under the Dam
The Sheiling
Tea at the Midland
In Another Country: Selected Stories

NOVELS
Davies
The Life-Writer

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Comma Press.
www.commapress.co.uk

Copyright © remains with David Constantine and Comma Press, 2019
All rights reserved.
The moral rights of David Constantine to be identified as the author of this Work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
‘The Diver’and ‘bREcCiA’ were first published in The Reader (67, 2017; and 70, 2018) ‘Rivers of Blood’ in Protest (Comma Press, 2017); ‘La rue de la Vieille-Lanterne’ in Paris Street Tales (OUP, 2016); ‘What we are now’ by Guillemot Press/ The Word Factory (2018); ‘Ashton and Elaine’ in The Red Room (Unthank Books, 2013); and ‘Autumn Ladies Tresses’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 4 November 2016.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10 1912697211
ISBN-13 9781912697212
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England
For the children and their children, in hope…
Contents
The Dressing-up Box
Midwinter Reading
Siding with the Weeds
The Diver
Rivers of Blood
Seeking Refuge
bREcCiA
Autumn Lady’s Tresses
When I Was a Child
A Retired Librarian
Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne
Neighbourhood Watch
The Phone Call
What We Are Now
Wrestling with the Devil in the Run-up to Christmas
Ashton and Elaine
The Dressing-up Box

1

That evening Elsa was front sentry. They sat her on the bottom stair. Keep watch, they said. Run up and tell us if anything happens. Elsa folded her arms, sat very still, fixed her eyes on the letter box. Early January, already dark outside, but the light in the hall wasn’t bad, she could see well enough. She watched. Nothing happened. She fell asleep.
The younger children were always tired and could fall asleep even in uncomfortable places. They slept, they dreamed, bad things, strange kinds of happiness. Still, Elsa was not the worst sentry in the world. She woke when the letter box rattled. Something was happening. A hand came through, a small right hand, not clean but not especially dirty. Elsa watched it. Its fingers moved as though they were exercising or signing, very quickly, very slowly, then halted, open, showing the palm, then began again, all manner of clever movements, fast and slow, with stops and starts. Elsa took a pace towards the door. Stay there! she shouted. And ran upstairs to tell one of the bigger children. They were all busy, they sent her back down with a command: Show me your eyes! The hand withdrew, then its forefinger reappeared and with it the forefinger of the left hand, together holding open the metal flap, showing a pair of eyes. Stay there! Elsa shouted, and ran upstairs, to report. It’s got blue-grey eyes, she said. It’s not fierce. Ask it its name, said a big girl getting a toddler into his pyjamas. Elsa ran down again. They said ask, What’s your name?
The flap fell shut. Silence. Elsa sat on the bottom stair, watching the letter box. Nothing. So sleepy. Her eyes were closing again. But suddenly there was action. A soft brown head with big ears shoved through into the light, quite a squeeze, quite an effort, then two paws, and after that, with a gasp, a face, a monkey’s face, it lifted up and smiled very cheerfully at Elsa. The head waggled, the arms waved, the paws even managed to clap. Elsa was entranced. She sat quite still on the bottom stair, elbows on knees, her chin in her hands. It was the happiest thing she had seen in a long while. The arms and paws seemed to be conducting a band. She could almost – but not quite – hear the music. The head nodded in time but the eyes and the smile concentrated on Elsa.
Abruptly the performance ceased. The head drooped, the arms flopped and a sort of struggle seemed to be taking place. Monkey was trying to get back through the letterbox. Now Elsa was as distressed as, two minutes before, she had been delighted. She felt the creature’s panic. And then the worst thing happened. Monkey got quite stuck, the wriggling hand could not withdraw nor even hold him. He fell headfirst on to the doormat where the post had lain in a damp heap when the children moved in. And there he lay, on the horrible doormat, crumpled. Bare tips of fingers still showed, feeling around hopelessly. They vanished, and the metal flap fell shut. Elsa went to the door and, not looking at Monkey lying lifeless between her feet, she put her ear to the letterbox, and listened. Fast as she could then she ran back upstairs. Its monkey fell on the mat, she said. It’s crying.
Nadeen, the oldest girl, and Ahmed and Billy, two boys big for their age, came downstairs with Elsa to sort the matter out. Ahmed held Elsa by the hand. You’re OK, he said. Nadeen listened at the letterbox. Still there, she said. Still crying. We’ll have a look. They slid back all three bolts, turned the key in both deadlocks and, leaving the chains on, opened the heavy door a hand’s breadth. The child, not more than six or seven and very bizarrely dressed, stood in the slit of light, shivering and crying. Friend or foe? Billy asked through the crack. But the boy only shivered and cried. Billy said again, Friend or foe? And added: You’re one or the other, mate. But still the little stranger made no answer, only nodded and shook his head and with his small right hand, that he could not hold steady, pointed downwards through the gap. And then he put his hands together, closed his eyes and raised his weeping face to the highest of the faces there in the warmth and shelter where he wished to be. He wants his monkey, said Elsa. That’s why he’s crying. Please, Nadeen, can I give him his monkey? Nadeen nodded. Elsa lifted up the crumpled creature from the doormat and with the greatest care held it out through the narrow opening into the cold.
Fast as a lizard’s tongue, the small boy grabbed the monkey. Hugged it against his heart, then gloved his right hand with it. He stopped crying, the tears glazing his cheeks like ice. Then, stepping close, he lifted up the monkey’s gleeful face between the chains into the light and warmth indoors. Clear as an icicle striking a wind-chime, a voice said: Friend. Enter, said Nadeen. The both of you, said Billy, taking off the bottom chain and hooking the top two back to their maximum, plenty wide enough for the monkey-puppet and his little minder to slip through sideways.
Ahmed and Billy locked and bolted the door. Then all stepped back and contemplated the newcomer who stood there in silence on the doormat while the monkey smiled and bowed and raised his paws, showing their pale open palms. You look like an ostrich, mate, said Billy. Well, the top half of you does, said Ahmed. Except your head’s like a bull. The bottom half of you, I don’t know what it’s like. Dustman, said Billy. Down-and-out butler, said Nadeen. Prince, said Elsa. And he has come through fire and flood. What’s your name, kid? Billy asked. Monkey, said the small clear voice. That’s him, said Billy. Who are you? Monkey, said the same small voice. Elsa took the child’s left hand. They’re freezing cold, she said. Please, Nadeen, can we go upstairs now where it’s warm? Nadeen nodde