When he speaks he wears a large and firm smile. He has to push his words past it so they come out misshapen and terse. He fights not to raise his voice over the sounds he knows you cannot hear.
"Yeah no problem but that supporting wall's powdering," he says. If you watch him close you will see that he peeps quickly at the earth, again and again, at the building's sunken base. When he goes below, into the cellar, he is nervy. He talks more quickly. The building speaks loudest to him down there, and when he come up again he is sweating below his smile.
When he drives he looks to either side of the road with tremendous and unending shock, taking in all the foundations. Past building sites he stares at the earthmovers. He watches their trundling motion as if they are some carnivore.
Every night he dreams he is where air curdles his lungs and the sky is a toxic slurry of black and black-red clouds that the earth vomits and the ground is baked to powder and lost boys wonder and slough off flesh in clots and do not see him or each other though they pass close by howling without words or in a language of collapsing jargon, acronyms and shorthands that once meant something and now are the grunts of pigs.
He lives in a small house in the edges of the city, where once he started to build an extra room, till the foundations screamed too loud.
— from "Foundation," in Looking for Jake, by China Miéville.
3 comments:
This has the sound of quite a "deep" read.
And how are you enjoying Elizabeth Hay's book? I liked it. Also I have read her Garbo Laughs which was quite good. Helped that it takes place right here in my town.
Hi, Cip. Not sure about "deep" -- are you being sarcastic? It's a book of short stories, some are stronger than others, but they're all very creepy. I like this author cuz the language is so rich, even while the entertainment factor is high.
I am liking Late Nights, but since I'm listening to an audio podcast (click on the book image in the sidebar) I think of it more as a passive entertainment than as a book. Having had this taste, though, I'll consider picking up more Hay.
No, no, I wasn't being sarcastic, I think what I meant is more along the lines of how you said it, "the language is so rich."
And again, I am not being sarcastic.
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