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4.5 out of 5 stars
The Elegance of the Hedgehog was a challenge to read, in the most delightful of ways. Discussions of Japanese cinema, Anna Karenina, and the meaning of life and Art bloom upon the pages, but never slow the book or its characters’ developments, which gain a careful momentum, unfolding perfectly. [...]
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3.5 out of 5 stars
Here is a book that tackles a difficult subject from history, the Vél’ d’Hiv’ roundups of French Jews during WWII, weaving together the story of one of the children of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ with the story of a middle-aged journalist. The shared ground of their lives is the apartment where [...]
Six lanes of highway and two kids in the car. A fat river of cars pushed her along smooth and fast. They were traveling through Atlanta, the Sun hot overhead, glinting off the cars.
The motorcyclist came so quick and close to her car she nearly swerved, but then he was gone. If her window had been down she could have reached out and touched him ever so gently as he raced past, her hand praying, her fingers spread. She watched him weave through the current of cars ahead, her heart in her throat.
And then there was another, and another, and another. A whole troupe of motorcycles, roaring past, dodging bumpers and racing down the highway. She watched them come up in her rear view mirror, then disappear into the cars ahead, leaning and swerving this way and that.
Her sons reacted with excitement, but she could barely catch her breath. “They are dancing with death,” she told her boys, and she felt that, she felt the dark shadow that chased them, hot on their heels, felt it reach out and grab at her, tearing her breath from her body for one hot and terrible second.
His daughter smiled up at him weakly, her face pale and beaming. Her boyfriend handed the bundled sleeping creature to him, its face shut tight against the world. He saw with disappointment that the babe had inherited his nose.
The lights flickered a bit, and his hands spread with their own wisdom to cradle the child. The bones of a memory sprung to life, of his own grandfather, the one he could barely remember, the one that was so great, so big-hearted that his passing left a gaping hole in the lives of everyone he had loved, a hole that pulled at them with an insatiable gravity. Try as they might, they could not hold themselves together without him, his grandmother flying after him after a few terrible years of bewilderment, his father trembling with a grief no drink could quell, his uncles stumbling through life.
He could remember his grandfather holding him in his large hands, the strength that filled his own small body from the wide and rugged fingers, the smoke of his breath and grizzle of his cheek. In the space of a breath he felt his grandfather there, with him, the magnitude of his presence filling his own body, coursing in his blood, filling his hands and radiating over the child.
He closed his eyes, a little unsteady, then looked at his daughter, the child he had not loved enough, who had raged at him for his failings, over and over again, then finally, blessedly, had turned her face away from him to leave him in his own shadows. Somehow she had found her way into light.
“He is beautiful,” he said, in almost a whisper, his voice shaking a bit, “and blessed to have you as a mother.” Her eyes were open, without their usual and righteous resentment, rare and loving.
A tear surprised the dry wrinkles of his skin, slid through the cracks along his eyes before drying up. Had she seen it? he wondered with slight embarrassment. He could not wipe it away. He handed the child back to his father, then stepped forward to his daughter, his rough cheek scraping her soft face as he kissed her. “Perhaps I will be better as a grandfather,” he whispered in her ear.
“I love you anyway, Dad,” she said, without hesitation, her eyes looking straight into his.
He stood up, humming with love, loose and lifted at the same time. He said his good-byes and congratulations, tripping over the words a little, smiling all the same. He walked out the door, the small weight of the child in the memory of his hands.
The tent was set up, the sleeping bags rolled out. They had eaten macaroni and cheese and sausage. The other campers, of which there were only a few, had turned in, but they kept the fire fed, and they drank their wine as the complexity of a summer night in the Great Smokies wove around them.
Really, she was tired. She was making excuses for going to bed. They were sitting at the picnic table. Everything was damp, especially her eyelids.
At first it did not seem real. A thin high sound, far off. He held up his hand, and their eyes met in disbelief, in awe as the eerie howls of the wolves–red wolves–touched their ears, their ear drums beating to this wolfsong, carrying that wild message deep into their brains.
She looked away from him, into the darkness, the chorus of wailing unhinging her, knots and bindings slipping, her heart memorizing this thrill, this ache of a beauty so rare, this song born in the throat of a small wolf, then thrown into the air, this song that had driven men to gather their guns and their traps, there are no words for the beauty of it, so deep it touches you.
And as quickly as the song had begun, it ended. The night became a scattering of crickets. They looked at each other, but said nothing. The night was finished for her. She went to bed.
But she made a place in her body that held the memory of that sound. She could enter that place, if she walked carefully in her thoughts, as one might enter a temple. It was near the center of her chest, with tendrils spreading to her throat.
There are very small things that change you. There are things so–beyond–that when you experience them they pull you into a place you could have never imagined. What could make her body rejoice like that? What sound had ever made her feel so alive? It was as if the wolves had sang her into creation.
She walked along the trail, her dog pulling so hard on his leash that her gait was a dance between pulling back and moving forward. Every so often she would tire of this game and jerk hard on the leash with a harsh demand to her dog. It changed nothing.
The air was cool, and the moisture from the rain was lifting, swept up from the dark firs. The low clouds were thinning enough in places to show the last blue of the day. She was glad for her sweater, and for the movement of her body. She pulled the mountain air into her lungs in long, slow breaths, relishing the scent of the firs mingled with rain-soaked earth. No wonder Boris pulls so hard on the leash, she thought, this forest is thick with new smells for his fine nose.
The trailhead sign said the hike to the overlook was 1.2 miles. She had grabbed a little flashlight, just in case. She had considered not stopping, continuing on to her aunt’s house some two more hours down the road, but it was so rare that she came this way, through these mountains, so rare that she visited her aunt anyway, that she couldn’t pass up the opportunity. The storm was clearing and the light was fading. She guessed she had forty-five minutes before dark.
The clouds continued to lift, the dog continued to pull. The trail went over ledges of rock that jutted out of the earth, and there were puddles everywhere, on the trail, even in the little dimples in the gray rocks. Some of these caught the turning light like jewels. Behind the clouds the sky was turning yellow, and everything that could hold light seemed to want a piece of this sunset.
She began to quicken her step. She thought it would be marvelous to reach the overlook in this light. Her shoes were wet, and her toes were catching the cold. Boris’ slick red coat quivered with excitement. They began to run together, two animals, their breathing quickened, their bodies alert to the changes in the terrain, the movement of air across their faces stimulating. They had found their music.
The trail steepened, their gate slowed. They began to climb up the rocks, the dog clambering up, his claws scraping at the rock, she searching for footholds. Their eagerness did not dissipate. The light had become golden, and a cathedral of clouds opened up above them. The air was imbued with reverence. She breathed deep and hard, pushing herself to reach the pinnacle of the trail.
And then she was there. The trees thinned, and the wild blueberry bushes that had lined the trail parted. She was standing at the edge of a cliff, looking out onto dark green slopes stretching out far beneath her, licked with remnants of clouds, that shifted over the trees, then rose before dissipating in the clearing breeze. The Blue Ridge mountains stood as giants on the horizon. And everywhere there was golden light and above clouds holding the gold and laced with pink. The last drops of rain, caught on pine needles and grasped by the points of blueberry leaves, hung like tiny orbs of sun. The air was alive with light. Its cool movement kissed her cheeks.
She would not think. She would not try and photograph it. She just stood there, breathing the beauty into her body.
Will was tired, his head was full, and it was only lunchtime. He decided to walk to get lunch. The Greek restaurant down the road was not really that great, but it was March, the Sun was brilliant, and the air was warm. All of this might help clear his head a little.
Work had become impossible. The new girl mangled every thing her hands touched, but Peter, his recently divorced supervisor, was absolutely smitten with her. When Will mentioned that perhaps the long list of blunders Amanda had committed might mean something, Peter had responded that it meant Will hadn’t trained her properly. Later Peter had taken Amanda out to lunch, and this made things achingly clear to Will.
Now one of his most important clients had lost money because of Amanda’s bungling of phone messages–the simplest of tasks! He would have to figure a way around it. He rubbed the back of his head, ruffling his hair and massaging his scalp with his long, nimble fingers, as if his hand could sort out the thoughts in his head. But lately nothing had this skill. Everything was a tangled heap of rubbish.
Things were even more complicated at home. His teenage son seemed to be getting into some kind of trouble. The boy had only just sprouted the first prickles of a beard when an unquenchable rage had stirred within him, boiling over at the slightest of disturbances. His wife seemed to only make matters worse, digging her heels in and engaging with this snarling animal their son had become. It seemed to Will that the best thing might be to give the boy some space. Let him turn his music up, let him slam the door, punch the wall even. But his mother kept harping on him, letting nothing slide, until the boy wouldn’t even look either of them in the eye.
Will just wanted some easy distraction from all the conflicts of his life. Yet even these minor storms kept his eye off something bigger, something deeper, that watched him from the shadows. He’d felt it in the center of his chest for a long time, this lurking presence, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Sometimes he thought a drastic change would fix things, something that would make him feel alive again. But then he realized he had no idea what might make him feel alive. This sent him into a despair that he’d rather pretend didn’t exist. His life had become a painful exercise in maintaining mediocrity.
He turned the corner, and walked along the edge of the park. There were a few walkers on the paved trail, and a mother with two small children in the swings. The air smelled slightly of daffodils and green. He remembered being sixteen, that wild and restless hunger for sex, food, and danger. The overwhelming pleasure of having a girl. He wished he could bring all that desire back into his body. He did not blame his son for hating him.
A fire truck wailed in the distance. He could see it storming down the long stretch of road. He stopped and watched it grow larger, until it was right there beside him, a massive rush of air, the sirens pressing against his heart, ringing in his ears, the thunder of the engine moving through the soles of his feet. He turned and watched it go past him, then disappear around the bend, a red and hungry monster seeking out the fire.
