The low places in the sidewalks filled up
with water and people out walking made split-second decisions about whether to
go around puddles or whether to splash right on through them.
May gazed from the window of the bookshop
where she worked part time. The
wet street looked silvery and corrugated through the glass. Because May felt like weeping, the
raindrops halting down the window looked like tears. Like everybody weeping at once.
She turned away, thinking that Barbara was
going to get awfully wet and was it worth it, really, to take her umbrella and
walk all the way to Little Italy just to buy them a couple of squares of
tiramisu to go with their tea?
Barbara did this often. Too
often, May thought. She wanted her
cup of green tea, but she didn’t need a great slab of something sweet to go
with it. Well, it was Barbara’s
store, after all.
As she turned away from the window, her
eyes fell upon a huge brick-like book she hadn’t noticed on Wednesday, a giant
one-volume paperback edition of Richardson’s Clarissa, published by Penguin Books. She pried it from the shelf and riffled
through it. Fourteen hundred
pages. All in letters. An
epistolary novel, she thought to herself.
A novel made of epistles.
And for some reason, the ungainly book
seemed suddenly remarkably appealing to her. She read the back cover: “How Clarissa, in resisting
parental pressure to marry a loathsome man for his money, falls prey to
Lovelace, is raped and dies, is the bare outline of a story that blossomed in
all directions under Richardson’s hands”.
The outline, thought May, is decidedly
more lurid than it is bare. But there was something so absurdly funny—and
deeply appealing—about the author’s story having “blossoming in all directions”
under his hands. May felt
strangely attracted to the book.
It promised to be a huge edifice of words, a wash of milky, repetitive,
undemanding language that she suddenly knew would be just what she was looking
for.
The bell over the front door jangled and
Barbara came in from the rain, bearing the white cardboard box May knew would
contain the desserts.
“How’s everything been?” Barbara asked,
shivering out of her raincoat and leaning her sodden umbrella in the corner.
“Quiet?”
“Very,” May replied, clutching her Clarissa.
“What’s that?” asked Barbara. May held the book out to her.
“Clarissa?” Barbara lifted the tiramisu carefully from its box
and lowered it onto plates. “What for?”
May gazed at the big book and felt
defensive. “I feel it could help
me with my English”, she replied.
“How?” asked Barbara, thinking it strange
that a young law student from Hong Kong should find anything helpful about such
a juggernaut of a book.
“I don’t know”, said May quietly, looking
glumly at her Tiramisu and accepting a cup of tea. Barbara reached for the book, held it up in the dusty light
and glanced at the back cover.
“Nobody back home is pressuring you to
marry a loathsome man for his money, are they?” she asked gaily, giving the
book back.
“No”, May replied quietly. They ate their tiramisu and drank their
tea and looked out at the rain.
May opened the book again.
“I was still silent, looking down, the tears in my eyes”, she read to
herself. This was what she
wanted. An endless rush of clear
language, animated to no purpose, eventful without incident, soft and sheeted
and continuous as the rain against the window.
