Painter of Silence
Georgina Harding
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1408830426
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012 Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page. The memories are Safta's also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook at the manor house which was Safta's family home. Born six months apart, they grew up with a connection that bypassed words. But while Augustin's world remained the same size Safta's expanded to embrace languages, society - and a fleeting love, one long, hot summer. But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist regime, and nothing would remain the same.
Walking the South Coast of England
His eyes are closed, either because he is asleep or because he has chosen to cut out the world. How complete the blackness must be when a deaf man closes his eyes. The world exists then only by touch and smell: the smell of the hospital that tells him what kind of place he is in; her shadow falling on him; her finger now so lightly touching the hand that clasps the edge of the sheet. He opens his eyes but there is no sign in them that he remembers her. Of course he will not know her in the.
‘There must be thousands of yards like that. There will be a yard like that in every village in the country.’ ‘Yes, but he might do more now that he’s begun. Don’t you think so? He might do other pictures from memory like that. This is a breakthrough, don’t you see?’ He has made the picture for Safta, not for Adriana, but Safta has given it barely a glance. He has a story to tell her and he is for a moment sharply aware of his incapacity to tell it. She is remote from him. She will not see.
Paraschiva’s food any more?’ She was so cool, her mother. There was something still and carved about her, as if she was a fine piece cut out of marble and you knew before you touched her that she would be cooler than her surroundings. And because of that you didn’t touch her or tell her things, and she became ever cooler and more still. Her mother wanted everything to do with Andrei to be over, never mentioned again. But it wasn’t all over. Safta could never have told her that. It was still.
Here. They are within riding distance of the house. She will remember, if not too much has changed. There is a place in the forest where they could camp, if they don’t reach it today. She doesn’t know how long it will take on foot. It occurs to her as they start to walk again that it is possible that they are already on land that her family once owned. They might camp on what used to be their land, and get up and walk the rest of the way in the morning on what used to be their land. The thought.
From the yard and across the grass. Everything is so overgrown that it is hard to find the place. It was at the edge of the wood but the wood has moved in towards the house. He looks for a tree that he recognises, a big beech that stood out from the wood. He thinks that he finds it at last, but it is changed. While the other trees about it have grown this one has lost a great branch that lies broken on the ground before it. From this point he begins a close search, parting the grass with his.