And what do I do, except not thinking and not reading? I swim every day, many times, and I snorkle around the rocks. (Mother thinks the word is snorgle, which I think is better. There is more water in it than snorkle.) The water is as clear as air, and I am in it for hours, putting my hands towards fish that rush away. I swim, they go, far far away through the airy water. I must tell you the truth: I am becoming bored with this bit of sea. I am floating, a big starfish in a bikini, looking down on the sand, at a bit of weed, an urchin, a medusa, a little fish, and I am bored. I look at a fish and a fish looks at me, and then we swim away.
What else to tell you? In the evening we eat at a restaurant that has opened since we came here last year. It is very nice – very simple – and the people are kind. So that is my day: I snorgle and I eat and I snorgle and I eat and then I sleep. (And I think of you. I am swimming in the beautiful clear water, with the sun on my back, staring at my fish but thinking of my Englishman. But I should not say this, should I?) Now I must go. A girl and her horrible brother want to use this computer. She is only six or seven, but she is wearing a T-shirt that says on it ‘Love Team. Gone For It’. What does this mean? Her brother has been standing beside me for five minutes, chewing gum with his mouth open and complaining because I have taken his computer from him. He is staring at me, making a disgusting noise with his mouth, like glue stirred in a bucket. He has a very ugly nose, with two big wide nostrils. I can see all the way up to his tiny brain. Perhaps I will give him a knock on the head and I will go to prison for some time. Then you can think more. I go now. Goodbye. Think think think, Edward. I go. I will come to your place from the airport. The other key is in my bag. If you don’t want me to do this, you must e-mail, I am sorry. I truly go. Juana la Loca.
Again he contemplates Perugia, the process of learning the city, the arduous, endless process of accumulating and structuring the memories he would need to live there, memorising its streets and buildings, its gradients and angles and obstructions, its voices and sounds, being helpless, being dependent, in a place he does not understand, never speaking English to anyone but Claudia. He thinks of Eloni and Malcolm Caldecott, of Malcolm and his estranged daughter, and of the ridiculous old man, the contemptible old man, the irrelevant old man, kneeling in supplication on the wet stone floor. Every day he would hear names that mean nothing to him, stories that mean nothing, words he does not understand. He considers the frustrations of incomprehension, and the pleasures of perplexity, the pleasure of perplexities resolved, of always learning, of the perpetual emergence of clarity. He imagines a new, a richer loneliness, and another taxi is coming into the street. It is stopping; it is stopping in front of the house. ‘Thank you,’ a woman says. The door of the taxi slams; the front door slams. As the key slips into the lock he gets up from his desk. ‘Hello?’ Claudia calls from the hall. ‘Edward?’ she says, and her voice is a kiss.
About the Author
JONATHAN BUCKLEY is the author of three previous novels, The Biography of Thomas Lang, Xerxes and Ghost MacIndoe. He lives in Brighton.
By the same author
The Biography of Thomas Lang
Xerxes
Ghost MacIndoe
Praise
‘a poetic musing on the strangeness of human ties and the tenuousness of intimacy…vividly drawn, quietly melancholy’
Daily Telegraph
‘Buckley rises impressively to the challenge…a wise and subtly balanced exploration of human relationships, a compassionate tale in which love, if not exactly triumphant, nevertheless contrives to have the last word’
Guardian
‘real depth and power…a fascinating and beautifully written book in which you’re genuinely moved’
Irish Independent
‘Invisible explores a number of themes – isolation, exile, the treacherous brevity of the present, the sweet irretrievability of the past – handling them so lightly that they scarcely seem like themes at all. It is a deceptively simple novel, so patient in its observations and so natural in its rhythm and texture, that it makes more dramatic novels look needlessly contrived’
TLS
‘full of subtle, emotional dramas…thoughtful, accomplished and beautifully written’
Mail on Sunday
‘This is a novel to luxuriate in…to absorb the minutely crafted images, the sensitively drawn relationships, the melancholic beauty of the atmosphere…Invisible is a pleasure that must not be rushed’
Sunday Business Post
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by Fourth Estate in 2004
Copyright © Jonathan Buckley 2004
Jonathan Buckley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 9780007390656
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