A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel - Hardcover

Westerbeke, Douglas

 
9781668026069: A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1668026066 ISBN 13: 9781668026069
Verlag: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

“Imagine The Life of Pi, The Alchemist, and The Midnight Library rolled into one fantastical fable.” —The New York Times Book Review * “An epic adventure…rich with all the possibilities the world can hold.” —People

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A dazzlingly epic debut that charts the incredible, adventurous life of one woman as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving.

Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.

When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days—nor return to a place where she’s already been.

From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live. But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s...

Fiercely independent and hopeful, yet full of longing, Aubry Tourvel is an unforgettable character fighting her way through a world of wonders to find a place she can call home. A spellbinding and inspiring story about discovering meaning in a life that seems otherwise impossible, A Short Walk Through a Wide World reminds us that it’s not the destination, but rather the journey—no matter how long it lasts—that makes us who we are.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Douglas Westerbeke was a librarian at one of the largest libraries in the US. He has spent the last decade on the local panel of the International Dublin Literary Award, which inspired him to write his own book. He lives in Ohio.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: A Marketplace 1 A Marketplace
The paper is clean and white—she hasn’t drawn her first line—so when the drop of blood falls and makes its little red mark on the page, she freezes. Her pencil hovers in her hand. Her heart, like it always does, gives her chest an extra kick. She drops the pencil. Hand, like a reflex, goes to her nose. She feels the wetness creeping through her sinuses, tastes the brine in the back of her throat. It’s a trickle now, no more than a nosebleed, but in moments it will be much worse—and here, of all places, just as she’d sat down.

It’s too soon. It’s bad luck. She’d hoped to sleep in a real bed tonight, not hammocks or hard ground, and in the morning have a bath, a proper bath in warm water, with soap. She’d hoped to add more entries to her book, like tinder or flint or paper—but how to draw a piece of paper on a piece of paper so that others will look at it and say, “Oh, I see. A piece of paper.”

She’d hoped to try the food. Look at this market—taro preserves, steamed crab claws, curried prawns wrapped in sheets of bean curd. No, this will have to wait, too, for another time and another market. The list of things she won’t do is even longer than that—what list isn’t?—but there’s no time to dwell. The bath can wait. She’ll find a bed somewhere else. The list is gone. Now is the time to get the hell out.

But the marketplace is alive, the people friendly, and the river right there, a shiny tearstain through the green, clogged with colorful skiffs and fishing boats that can whisk her away, no effort at all. This is Siam, a watery part of the world, all jungle, seasons measured by rainfall. She knew as soon as she set foot here that rivers would be her mode of escape.

That old man, selling fish—such a kindly face, weather-beaten, but a glint in his eye still. He will help. Quickly, she slings her bag over her shoulder and cradles her book in the crook of her arm. She picks up her walking stick, as tall as she is, and moves through blue hairs of incense smoke and burning charcoal. She moves past fishmongers and cloth merchants and tables made of bamboo. The old man smokes a long, thin opium pipe, surrounded by racks of dried fish, dried squid, and dried octopus—anything that was once wet now hangs dry, the old man perched among the racks like a caged bird. She doesn’t know the local language, but the French have colonies to the north and the British have influence to the south.

“Please,” she asks in her accented English, “a boat? Do you know where I might find a boat? I need a boat.”

The old man doesn’t understand. He hadn’t noticed her before, just looks up and there she is, the tallest person in the market, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes, looming over him. The walking stick in her hand, long and straight, makes her look regal, like a venerable Buddhist nun or an emperor’s daughter. Nothing about her suggests the West—no corsets, no bows, no high lace collars, only local fabrics and a laborer’s straw hat—but she will never blend in here, not in this market, not in this country, where she’s at least a head taller than everyone else.

She sees the baffled expression on the old man’s face. She smiles so that he might lower his guard. She rarely blends in anywhere. It’s more rare that she tries. Her appearance invites curious looks and lots of questions. It’s the best method she has of meeting people, but it’s not working on this old man.

He begins chattering in a language she can’t understand. There’s a shift in his demeanor. It happens all the time. He’s mistaken her for a rich foreigner instead of a poor one, instead of someone who has slept in the tops of the jungle canopy and bathed in hidden rivers for the past three weeks. He tries to sell her a stick of dried pomfret. The way he’s gesticulating he might be trying to sell her his whole stand. She raises a single alarmed eyebrow. She’s wrong about this man. Her instinct has failed her. It rarely happens, but when it does it’s downright unnerving. It’s her instinct, her ability to size up a stranger with a glance or two, that’s kept her alive until now.

And then the pain strikes—a terrible, venomous pain—a weeping pain, like an ice pick through a rotten tooth. It drives straight down her spine, from the base of her skull to the small of her back. She shudders as if electrified, then stiffens up, crushing all the slack out of her body. The old man stops his chattering, watches her face turn cold and pale, watches her lips form soundless words. He’s afraid she might topple over in front of him. But she doesn’t topple. She doesn’t even cry out. She clenches her jaw, her body, and shuffles toward the next stall, a jagged limp in her step.

“A boat!” she calls out to anyone. Many turn to hear. None understand. “A boat, a boat, a boat…” She chants the words as she limps past vendors and their stands, as if tossing lifelines from a sinking ship to those onshore. Another stab of pain and the first sparks of panic fly through her brain.

She approaches a woman by a firepit, stirring a yellow curry in an iron wok. She opens her book to the page newly decorated with a drop of blood. Not easy, with all her muscles twitching.

The pages are full of little drawings, hundreds of them, a collection of useful things—bananas, beds, parasols, horses and carriages, needles and thread, locomotives, clockfaces, and candlesticks. She flips through pages with rattled hands until, finally, she finds the little pencil sketch of a boat, of several different kinds of boats—sailboats, steamboats, luxury liners, and canoes, so there can be no mistake.

“A boat? Bateau?”

No response from the woman. Do they know Cantonese here? China is not so far. She’d been in China only a month ago, or so it seemed, cutting through the jungle with a worn-down machete. Now she’s here, south, begging for her life on a riverbank.

“Syún?”

Still the woman doesn’t respond, only stares. Does she know the local word? She’d picked up a few. She’d thought that much ahead. Touk? Was that it?

“Touk?”

But instead of answering her, instead of engaging in some kind of pantomimed conversation as people usually do, the woman drops her big wooden spoon into the curry and silently backs away.

And now she knows she must look very bad. She looks at the handkerchief in her hand. It’s entirely red. The noises of the market have, bit by bit, gone mute, as if she’s underwater, which could only mean that she’s bleeding from the ears, too, and, of course, her mouth is full of blood. She can taste it. She licks her teeth and it pools over her lips and then, to her shame, she knows it’s been dripping down her chin the whole time. She must be a terror to behold.

The pain advances; her entire head is an exposed nerve, a jagged blade scraping the inside of her skull. A terrible pressure builds up against her eyeballs and the ice pick that skewers down the small of her back drives straight into her left leg. She stifles a scream. When she walks, her leg drags behind her like a dead animal.

She wipes her face with her sleeve....

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Verlag
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668026066
ISBN 13 
9781668026069
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
390
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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