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The Story of the Lake: A Novel - Hardcover

Chester, Laura

 
9780571198610: The Story of the Lake: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0571198619 ISBN 13: 9780571198610
Verlag: Faber & Faber, 1995

Inhaltsangabe

Beginning with Victorian times, the lives of four families are played out in the resort area of Wisconsin's Nogowogotoc Lake, summer refuge of Milwaukee's wealthy beer barons, in a panoramic saga rich in Midwestern history. IP.

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The Story of the Lake
PART ONE
When the light on the water spreads like liquid gold leaf, I am reminded of one of the great pleasures of my childhood - standing by this window with my grandmother and watching the sun go down. At that moment I am filled with a visual elixir of sun-burning water and feel the desire to be nowhere else.
My grandmother moved swiftly and was known to drive fast - "There goes fearless Helen in her Peerless," one of the first cars made - and nothing seemed to stop her from anything athletic. She even played tennis in a long white dress and led the field on horseback. Still, she had a kind of patience with me as a child that never put me in a rush. Her energy wasn't filled with anxiety, and she always had time to talk or read a book. I believe through her manner she taught me to behold, and that everything should be done for beauty.
I loved to sit with her in the blue-green study at the far end of the house. The wall curved and the room reminded me of a ship. A convex mirror bent the dimensions even further, and the watchful eyes of Great Grandmother Felton in her oval frame followed me about the room as I touched the spines of the leather volumes or spun the giant globe that looked as ancient as the Constitution, flame-burnt brown - it stood on its pedestal and whirled at an angle in actual imitation of the earth.
In this room I felt aware of our own planet turning, that we were indeed in orbit as the globe rumbled round. It seemed amazing to spot our exact location in southern Wisconsin - that this was the land of black earth, where glaciers had deposited their richest treasure of topsoil and lush vegetation was unequaled.
My grandmother spent time every day at her desk, for she believed in the nature of correspondence. Those were the days when etiquette began with the fountain pen and written expression was honored. She still wrote to school friends from Rosemary Hall and to others as far away as Zurich or the Dordogne. I loved the fine cream-colored paper she used, her shiny black pen with the golden tip, and the expert slant of her script.
Because I was the oldest granddaughter, I had certain unspoken privileges - my grandmother took me into her confidence and told me the stories of the lake. But sometimes it was even better when we were very quiet, whenshe would do her work and I'd do mine. I didn't have to ask her to unlock the middle drawer of her desk or to remove the flat leather box. She simply handed it to me without admonishment, and I carried it over to the rose-colored love seat, then pressed the brass button that opened it up.
The box was lined with a dark purple velvet, and the seven precious gems were each sunk into place. Gazing at the glitter of the gems all together put me in another world, as if an essence had been released and I was under its spell, as if I could hear the planets revolving, each one on a different note in the cosmos, like the sound of our glasses filled with water - rubbing round the rim, making the crystal sing out at each level.
I took up each gemstone and held it to the light, entranced by the individual color and cut -- amethyst, citrine, garnet, alexandrite. My grandmother taught me their names, just as she taught me each leaf as we rode - black oak, elm, maple, and poplar. I liked the splashy aquamarine best, then the tourmaline and smoky topaz. Holding each one I felt a different sense of mystery, and sometimes, when I dared hold all the gemstones together, listening to the sound of her pen as she wrote, I became as quiet as if we were in church.
I remember the pile of letters that arrived after Papa's death. Only then did I feel the oppression of her correspondence, for she felt she had to answer each one - sympathy cards, outlined in black. It was my very first funeral, the first time I'd seen my father cry.
Now both grandparents are gone and the generations seem to blend together, but it's as if the good qualities have thinned or crudeness has thickened, as if each generation has gotten weaker, less aesthetically tuned. The house is basically the same. A few portraits have been replaced by lesser works that don't harmonize with the architectural dimensions, and throw the big room slightly off balance. The furniture, the Oriental carpets are still there, only the mood is different - that reverence, that gracious mood of calm is gone, or perhaps my own capacity for wonder has lessened, making me long to have that box of gemstones back in my hands.
I asked Aunt Carol about it. She knew I'd been particularly close to her mother, and I mentioned how Gramma had once casually promised the box of them to me, but this made my aunt appear rattled. She went into her study, no longer used for quiet correspondence or for the study of ancient Greek myths, but for family business transactions. Where there had once been order, my grandmother's desk was now piled high with magazines and catalogues, postcards stuffed in all the slots.
Then my aunt remembered that she had found that old box of semiprecious gemstones a while ago, but she had passed them on to my cousin Vernon, for his boys to play with - "You know how children enjoy that sort ofthing. I don't think I could ask for them back now. They have such a good time playing marbles with them."
Marbles, I thought. They play marbles?
I had loved those gemstones because they were beautiful, beautiful and useless, a private treasure, certainly nothing to be tossed about the rug.
"But maybe we can find some other memento," she went on, rummaging through the desk, though I wanted to get out of there. I didn't want to witness any more of this now. But then, opening a side drawer, she seemed to find something, and turning, she produced my grandmother's black fountain pen.
CHAPTER ONE
"Open up another deck of cards," Jon Bloodgood called out to his partner, Merrick Wells, as he entered the Nogowogotoc Cannonball, a private red and yellow club car that would take these commuters by rail back out to their summer lake homes. In the one hour and ten minutes it took to get from Milwaukee to the Wahcheetah Station, these gentlemen would manage to get in a few fast card games for fairly high stakes, and the fresh pack guaranteed no marked cards. Though none of this select group would suspect any other, it was the custom of the commute to let the old pack fly, rippling out the window along the gravel and steel rails still hot from the mid-August sun.
 
Back home at Broadoaks, Merrick's daughters, Helen and Isabelle, were washing down the statue of a waterboy that stood in the center of their mother's English garden -- larkspur, dahlias, roses, phlox. It was a robust little statue with hard tufts of hair, tirelessly holding out his shell filled with water - the girls tried to get him completely wet, no dry marks on him, but slick all over like a seal.
Isabelle, five years older, was more careful in the way she wiped the liquid over the waterboy's torso. He seemed almost alive to her, and she imagined her touch might offend him. Perhaps he was trapped within the limits of his form and had to put up with their attention. But just then, Isabelle's chow appeared with another half-dead chicken from Vintry's. Helen turned on the dog, "Oh no! You're a bad, bad girl, Tai Fung. This time you're going to get it."
Isabelle also knew what Mr. Vintry had threatened, but she didn't know how to prevent Tai's raids without caging her pet and making a true beast out of her. Then up came Helen's pug, Pompeii, carrying a dirty old sock in his mouth. The faun-colored pug looked stupid as well as knowing, embarrassed as well as very proud.
As soon as the shiny black brougham turned in at...

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Verlag
Faber & Faber
Erscheinungsdatum
1995
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0571198619
ISBN 13 
9780571198610
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Uwe Hübener
26632959738
uhuebener@gmx.de

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