Free The Black Snow by Paul Lynch Page B

on a hook. As he lifted the package off the bureau he noticed a trickle of thinning meat blood leak towards the floor. Fuckdog, he said. He hurried with it into the kitchen and walked past the shape of Eskra in the range chair, put the meat into the Belfast sink. Said to her, the meat’s leaking all over the place, goan get the mop for me.
    She did not answer, sat where she was. He saw she was sitting with her hands flat on her thighs, the way she was staring blankly at the wall. What’s the matter? he said. No answer came and she did not move her head to meet his eyes and he wondered then if she knew he had not visited the doctor. Billy not yet back fromschool. What’s the matter? he said again. He walked towards her but she averted her eyes from him and pointed. He looked towards the deal table and saw on it a letter opened, knew then what it was, felt his stomach sicken and the veer of an abyss unseen came suddenly towards him. He stood looking at the letter as if by not moving he could put a hold on time and the event in the room that was unfolding, but the mantel clock took opposition to that thought and began to unfold the mechanism for the bell that would chime for quarter past, a preparatory stretching sound and then it clicked and the clock made note of the time passing, and he knew he would have to say something.
    She spoke then. I wrote to them not knowing. Asking them for the forms. Writing to them all kindly like some kind of stupid woman I am. They must have laughed at that letter all right. Must have passed it around in there. Laughed at me like I was a fool.
    Eskra—
    You cancelled the insurance last year without telling me.
    His legs grew heavy like he was stood in manure to the waist and he turned slowly on the ball of his foot and his chest began to tighten, could feel the manure pooling towards his throat. He took a deep breath and his mind roamed but was unmet with answers and his eyes swung wildly to the brown-tiled floor, to a fly resting still against the window, to the place that was newly wallpapered, anything but the shape of her. The shriek of her eyes. He tried to speak and he had to clear his throat and then the words turned solid and he spoke. I never thought we would need it so I cancelled it. It was a waste of money at the time. We needed it for other things.
    And then she was coming at him out of the chair and he stood and met it, the flat of her hand that caught him on the cheek andthe slap made his eyes water, could feel the sting as if her hand had been left in the fire to brand him. She took off out of the room but her voice reached him bitter as she mounted the stairs.
    You thought everything could be good for ever. That you were made now, Mr Big Shoes. That all the work was done. In your mind nobody dies and nobody grows old and there is no sign of winter. What in your stupidity have you done to us?
    He stood looking at the door, blinked dumbly. A door slammed upstairs. In the sink a trickle of blood threaded slowly across the white enamel, made a small bubble, slicked across the metal flange and slipped slowly, silent down the dark drainhole.
    He slept self-imposed that night in the car and in the dream from which he has awakened he is asleep still in the Austin. He is parked somewhere he does not know for the windows are smeared against the greased light of the morning and he lies across the two front seats somewhat foetal, his knees tucked under the steering wheel and silence but for the leather that complains beneath him when he begins to sit up, his breath frosting the air, his arms tucked about his body for the cold has nestled into him while he was asleep and he can feel it now in his bones–old-man cold like a body about to be beaten–the window rivered with condensation so that he cannot see out and that smothering of grey light and something beneath it, distant like dark mountains, and he tries to start the car but it will not catch–the engine coughing like it is sick