The book of tomorrow
© Cecelia Ahern 2010
© Volodarskaya L., translation into Russian, 2010
© Cheremnykh N., design, 2010
© Edition in Russian. LLC "Publishing Group "Azbuka-Atticus", 2016
Publishing House Inostranka ®
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Cecilia Ahern's books are super bestsellers, translated into fifty languages. Debut book “P.S. “I love you” brought Cecilia worldwide fame and formed the basis of the famous film.
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Dedicated to Marianne,
which moves very quietly
and which makes a lot of noise
To my readers
with gratitude for believing in me
Chapter first
buds
They say that with each retelling my story becomes less and less interesting. If this is so, then it’s okay, because here I told it for the first time.
My readers will have to take my word for it. True, if everything that happened to me did not happen to me, I would not believe it.
I hope that it will not occur to everyone to doubt my veracity, at least it will not occur to those whose minds are open to everything unusual, unlocked by the key that opened it to faith. Such people are either free from birth, or even in childhood, when their mind was like a bud, it was cherished and cherished so that the petals would slowly open and he would give himself up to the will of nature. It rains, the sun shines, and it grows, grows, grows. Such a mind is always ready for something unusual, it sees light in the darkness, finds a way out of a dead end, celebrates victory while others mourn defeat, asks questions while others take everything in life for granted. He's a little less jaded and a little less cynical. He doesn't want to give up. Sometimes people become this way under the influence of tragedy or triumph. Any event can become the key to a locked box in the head of an all-knowing person, so that he perceives the unknown with curiosity and says goodbye to practicality and straightforwardness.
However, there are also those who gradually collect a whole bouquet of buds in their heads - one for each discovery - which never open their petals and remain buds forever. Such people perceive only capital letters and periods, and for them there are no question marks and ellipses...
Just like my parents. For some reason, they are stubborn. Like, if this is not in the books or no one has officially reported about it, don’t be stupid and don’t talk nonsense. They have complete order in their heads and a lot of lovely, colorful, fragrant, ideally shaped buds that never blossomed, didn’t feel light and tender enough to dance in the fresh breeze. The stems are, as expected, straight and strong, and the buds remain buds, no matter what, until the very end.
However, mom is not dead yet.
She hasn't died yet.
But not in a medical sense, because just because she's not dead doesn't mean she's alive. Mom looks like a walking corpse, although from time to time she hums something, as if checking whether she is still alive or no longer alive. If you don’t look too closely, you can assume that everything is fine with her. But as soon as you are close, you will immediately notice the uneven line of bright pink lipstick, dull eyes in which the soul does not shine, as if it were a studio house from a TV show - one facade, and nothing behind it. Wearing a robe with wide, flowing sleeves, she wanders around the house, moving from room to room, like a Southern belle in a luxurious mansion from Gone with the Wind, putting off thoughts of trouble until tomorrow. Despite her swan-like graceful passages from room to room, she is furious, struggling to hold her head high, giving us fearful smiles to let us know she is still there, although it is not very convincing.
Oh, I don't blame her. What a blessing it would be to disappear the way she disappeared, forcing others to remove the rubble and save the remains of our lives.
But I still haven't told you anything, and you're probably confused.
My name is Tamara Goodwin. "A real victory." I can't stand such terrible words. There is either a victory or there is not. Like “severe loss”, “hot sun” or “completely dead”. Two words are connected by chance, although everything that needs to be said has already been said by one. Sometimes, when introducing myself, I swallow the second syllable, and it turns out: Tamara Good - which in itself sounds funny, because I have never been “good.” And sometimes I swallow the first syllable, and it turns out Tamara Vin. This is a real mockery, because victory and luck are not my element.
I'm sixteen years old, or so they say. And it's weird because I feel like I'm twice my age. At the age of fourteen, I felt like I was fourteen years old. I acted like an eleven-year-old child and dreamed of the time when I would be eighteen. But over the past few months I have matured by several years. Would you say this is impossible? Agreeing with you, the buds would shake their heads negatively, but a free mind would answer: why, in fact, not? They say anything can happen. But some things don't happen.
You can't bring dad back to life. I tried when I found him on the floor in the office - completely dead - with a blue face, and an empty bottle of medicine lay nearby, and a bottle of whiskey stood on the table. I don’t know why, but I pressed my lips to his and began to give him artificial respiration. To no avail.
And then, when at the cemetery my mother, with a howl, scratching the wooden lid, threw herself on his coffin, which was sinking into the ground - by the way, so as not to particularly injure us, covered with artificial green grass, as if it were not real earth with worms - the coffin was still... they were lowered into the pit forever and ever. To be honest, I enthusiastically accepted my mother’s attempt, but she did not return my father to us.
And countless “who knew George best” stories about his father, which relatives and friends vied with each other to tell at the wake, as if keeping their finger on the signal and trying to get their word in. “Do you think this is funny? No, listen to me...” “One time George and I...” “I’ll never forget George’s words...” As a result, the guests got so overexcited that they all started talking at once, interrupting each other, splashing out passion and wine on Mom’s new Persian carpet. Do you think they wanted the best? Well, dad really as if was in the room, but these stories did not bring him back to us.
Even when mom found out that dad's financial situation was not the best, it didn't help either. Dad turned out to be bankrupt, and the bank had already decided to take away our house with all the property that belonged to him, so mom had to sell everything else - every last bit, - to pay off debts. But even then dad didn’t come back and help us. I finally realized that he is no longer there and will not be. I even thought: if he wanted us to go through everything alone - artificial respiration, my mother’s hysteria in front of everyone in the cemetery, our lack of money - then it’s good that he left.
Without all this, it would be more pleasant to remember him. The circumstances of our lives turned out to be as terrible and humiliating as, I have no doubt, he foresaw.
If the buds in my parents' heads had opened their petals, then maybe, just maybe, they could have avoided all this horror. However, the buds remained buds. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, but even if there was, it would have been blocked by the oncoming train. There were no other possibilities, no other way of doing business. My parents were practical people, but even for them there was no solution that suited the situation. Faith, hope and some sort of conviction could have saved my father. But he didn't have the first, or the second, or the third, so he practically dragged us down with him by doing what he did.
It's amazing how death sheds light on a person's character. Over the course of several weeks, I heard many touching and even beautiful stories about my dad. They consoled me, and I liked listening to them, but, to be honest, it is very doubtful that there was truth and only truth in them. Dad was not a nice person. Of course I loved him, and yet, as far as I understand, he was not good. We rarely spoke to each other, and when we did, we usually argued about something; or he silently gave me money so that I would not pester. Very often he was irritable, intolerant, flared up instantly, always insisted on his own and showed outright impudence. People were lost in his presence, he suppressed them and enjoyed it. At the restaurant, my father returned the steak to the kitchen three or four times, just out of a desire to torment the waiter. When ordering expensive wine, to annoy the restaurateur, he declared that it smelled like cork. If we weren't invited to a party, he would complain to the police about the noise, even though the noise didn't really bother him, and would get the party stopped.
At the funeral and then at the wake at our house, I didn’t say anything like that. I drank one bottle of red wine, after which I vomited on the floor near my father’s table, in the very place where he died. Mom found me and slapped me in the face. She said I ruined everything. I don’t know if she meant the carpet or the memory of her father, but in any case, he ruined everything himself and I had nothing to do with it.
No, I’m not at all going to blame all the evil on my father. I myself was no better. It’s probably hard to even imagine a worse situation than your daughter. My parents gave me everything, but I constantly forgot to say thank you. If she spoke, it was as if in passing, thinking about something else. I don't think I understood what this word meant. But thank you is a sign of gratitude. Mom and Dad kept talking about African babies starving to death, as if that would make me grateful for them. Looking back, I understand that it would have been best for my parents to leave me without gifts, and then they probably would have made me think.
We lived in Killiney, County Dublin, Ireland, in a seven thousand square foot modern house with six bedrooms, a swimming pool, a tennis court and our own place on the beach. My room was on the opposite side of the house, far from my parents’ room, and the balcony had a view of the sea, but for some reason I didn’t like going out onto the balcony. We had a shower and a jacuzzi and a plasma TV - or rather, a wall imager - in the wall above the bathroom. The closet in my room was filled with designer bags, and I also had a computer, a games console, and a four-poster bed. I'm lucky.
And here's the real truth: I was a terrible daughter. Firstly, I was a rude person who didn't mince words, but what was much worse, I believed that I deserved all these benefits simply because my friends had them. Not for a second did it occur to me that they didn’t deserve anything either.
Then I figured out how to disappear from the house at night. Going out onto the balcony, I went down the pipe to the roof of the pool, and from there it was not difficult to jump to the ground, and now I was already in the company of friends. There was a corner on our private beach where we used to drink. The girls drank the so-called "Dolly Mixture" 1
A set of sweets of different shapes and different colors. (Hereinafter approx. Transl.)
That is, the remnants of everything that was in the parents’ wine cabinets poured into a plastic bottle. They took several inches from each bottle - and the parents did not suspect anything. The boys drank whatever they were lucky enough to get. And they grabbed onto any girl who wouldn’t refuse them. Usually it was me. And I stole the boy Fiacre from my best friend Zoe, because his father was a famous actor. To be honest, this was the only reason I allowed him to crawl under my skirt every night for half an hour. I dreamed of meeting his dad. But what didn’t happen didn’t happen.
My parents believed that I needed to see the world, to see how other people live. And they kept reminding me that I was very lucky that I lived in a big house on the seashore, and so that I could appreciate another world, we spent the summer in our villa in Marbella, Christmas in our chalet in Verbier, and went to Easter to New York for shopping and stayed at the Ritz Hotel. A pink Mini Cooper with a convertible top and my name was waiting for my seventeenth birthday, and my father’s friend, who had his own recording studio, wanted to audition me and, possibly, record me. Although I patiently took his hand off my bottom, I did not have the slightest desire to be alone with him even for a moment. And for the sake of future glory too.
Mom and Dad constantly attended charity events. As a rule, Mom spent more money on a dress than on an invitation card, and, in addition, twice a year she made unplanned purchases so that she could then send the unworn dresses to her daughter-in-law Rosaleen, who lived in the village, in case Rosaleen wanted to milk a cow in sundress from Emilio Pucci 2
Marchese Emilio Pucci (1914–1992), Florentine fashion designer and founder of the Emilio Pucci fashion house, favored patterns of fluid, outlined stripes of color that formed abstract designs. He introduced the brightest designs into the fashion world and turned sportswear into an elegant suit, conquered America and taught women to relax in such clothes.
I know now - having been thrown out of the world we lived in before - that neither of us were good people. Probably, somewhere deep down, despite all her irresponsibility, mom knows this too. We weren't bad, but we weren't bad either. good were not. Without giving anything to anyone, we took a lot for ourselves.
Not much deserved.
Before, I never thought about what would happen tomorrow. Lived for one day. It's a pity, now it's impossible, it's a shame. The last time I saw my dad alive, I screamed at him, declared that I hated him, and left, slamming the door right in his face. It never occurred to me to return. My little world was enough for me, and I didn’t want to think about how my words and deeds affected other people. I shouted to dad that I didn’t want to see him anymore, and I never saw him alive again. Why did I need to think about tomorrow or that these were my last words spoken to my father, and indeed my last conversation with him? Then I was interested in something else. I still have to forgive myself for a lot of things. And this will take time.
I lost my dad. He will no longer have a tomorrow, and he and I will no longer have a tomorrow either. You probably understand that now I appreciate every new day. And I want each of them to become better than the last.
Chapter two
Two flies
Before the ants determine a safe path for themselves in search of food, one of them goes first, leaving an odorous trail along the path. Once you step on an ant chain or trample a odorous path, which is psychologically less terrible, the ants seem to lose their minds. In panic, they rush back and forth, unable to find the right road. I like to watch how at first they are completely disoriented, they take off in a disorderly flight, bumping into each other, trying to pick up the trail again, but as time passes, they regroup, reorganize and get back on their path as if nothing had happened.
Looking at their hectic movements, I think about how similar my mother and I are to them. We were stopped, our leader was taken away, our path was trampled, and chaos reigned in our lives. I believe - I hope,– that in time we will get back on the right path. One person must lead the rest. Looking at my mother, I understand that she is not suitable for this role and that I will have to lead her along.
Yesterday I saw a fly. She tried in vain to get out of the living room, fought against the window, and again and again hit her head on the glass. Then she stopped pretending to be a rocket, but, without ceasing to buzz, as if in the last deadly attack, she crashed into the frame under the open window. I was disappointed, because if she had risen a little higher, she would have been free. But no, she hit the glass again and again. I can imagine her despair when she saw trees, flowers, the sky and could not get out to them. Several times I tried to help her, put her out the window, but she flew away from me and again began circling around the room. Ultimately, she will return to the same window again, and, probably, I will even be able to hear: “Again this window that I fell into ...”
It’s interesting that, sitting in a chair and watching a fly, I seemed to myself to be God, if, of course, there is a God. That’s right, he sits in the sky and seems to be watching a movie, just like I myself watched a fly crawling up to break free. She didn't fall into a trap, she was just looking in the wrong direction. I wonder if God knows a way out for me and my mother? If I see an open window for a fly, then God knows what tomorrow will be like for us. This thought calmed me. That's how it was until I went somewhere, and when I returned a few hours later, I found a dead fly on the windowsill. Maybe it was a different fly, but still... Then, talking about my thoughts, I burst into tears... And then I got angry with God, because in my thoughts the death of the fly meant that my mother and I would never get out of the chaos in which we hit. What is the point of being in a distant place where you can see everything and do nothing to help?
And then I realized that I myself had played the role of God. True, I tried to help the fly, which did not work for me. Then I felt sorry for God, because I understood his disappointment. It happens that a person extends a helping hand to someone, but he is pushed away. Still, first of all, people think about themselves.
I had never thought about anything like this before: neither about God, nor about flies, nor about ants. It’s better to die than to be caught on Saturday with a book, and even watching a dirty fly that hits the window. Probably, my dad thought about the same thing in the last minutes of his life: it’s better to die than to experience humiliation when everything is taken away from me.
I usually spent my Saturdays with my girlfriends in Topshop, trying on everything and laughing nervously while Zoe stuffed as many accessories into her pants pockets as she could fit. If we didn’t want to go to Topshop, we sat at Starbucks all day, sipping coffee with ginger balls from a large glass and biting into a honey bun with bananas. I'm sure they are doing the same thing now.
A week passed after my arrival here, and I stopped receiving information about my friends because my phone was turned off; except that Laura managed to report a lot of gossip, and the most important thing was that Zoe and Fiachra got together again and did it at Zoe’s house when her parents went to Monte Carlo for the weekend. Her father has a gambling problem, which neither Zoe nor we regretted at all, because it meant that her parents were home much later than the other parents. Anyway, Zoe said that sex with Fiachra was worse than having sex with the lesbian on Sutton's hockey team, who hit her between the legs with a stick, and it really hurt; believe me - I believe, – she won’t do that again. And Laura also warned me not to talk, but she also met with Fiachra on the last weekend, and they were doing it. Like, she hopes that I don’t mind, and really asks me not to tell Zoe. As if I could, being here, gossip with someone, even if I really wanted to.
Once here... However, I haven’t talked about this yet. I already had to mention my mother's sister-in-law Rosalyn. This is the one with which my mother usually sold off her god-knows-why-bought and unworn clothes, stuffing them into black bags. Rosaleen is the wife of Uncle Arthur, my mother's brother. They live in a village house in Meth County, where there is nothing and no one. We visited them only a couple of times in my life, and I remember both times I was dying of boredom. The road to them took an hour and a quarter, and the visit was a complete disappointment. I thought that only fools lived in such a wilderness, and called my relatives a “soul-saving duo.” As far as I remember, this was the first and last of my jokes that made my dad laugh. He was not with us when my mother and I went to Rosalyn and Arthur. I don’t think they quarreled, they were just incompatible, like penguins and polar bears, and could not be together. And now we live in their house. We live in the village house of a “soul-saving duo”.
To be honest, the house is very nice and, by the way, it’s about a quarter the size of our old house, which isn’t bad at all. And it also reminds me of the house from the movie "Hansel and Gretel" 3
Black fantasy film directed by Yim Pil-Sung (2007).
It was built of limestone, and the decorative wooden strips around the windows and on the roof were painted yellowish-green. There are three bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen and a living room downstairs. Mom has her own toilet, and Rosaleen, Arthur and I share the other one, on the second floor. Naturally, having become accustomed to my own toilet, I considered it vulgar, especially if I had to use it after Uncle Arthur and his reading of the newspaper in this very place. Rosaleen is a cleanliness fanatic; always running around the house. Rearranges, cleans, sprays cleaner and talks all the time about God and God's will. One time I told her that God would have acted better not to take dad with him. Then she stared at me in horror, and then ran away to wipe off the dust somewhere.
Rosaleen's brains made the cat cry. Everything she says is unnecessary or simply doesn't make sense. Weather. Sad reports of misfortune on the other side of the earth. And then there is a girlfriend who broke her arm on the road, another girlfriend who has a father and he has no more than two months to live, and someone’s daughter who jumped out to marry a guy who left her with two children. In general, the end of the world with a saying about God, like, “God loves them,” or “God is merciful,” or “God help them.” It's not that I'm trying to put on airs, but I always want to get to the bottom of a problem, and Rosaleen is completely incapable of doing that. She just wants to speak out about something bad, but there’s no need to figure out what and why. She shuts my mouth, remembering God, and I feel as if I have not yet matured enough to have adult conversations and am not yet able to correctly assess the world around me. But I think there is another reason. Rosaleen pretends that she doesn't want to sidestep the problems, so once they are settled, she doesn't think about them anymore.
Mar 9, 2017Magic diary Cecelia Ahern
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Title: Magic Diary
About the book “The Magic Diary” by Cecilia Ahern
Today, perhaps, there is not a single young girl or adult woman who would not know about such a writer as Cecilia Ahern. Her new work, entitled “The Magic Diary,” captivated many literally immediately, and once again became proof of the talent of the young representative of modern literature.
The story tells the story of a young girl Tamara Goodwin, the daughter of wealthy parents, who, due to a tragedy in the family, must move with her sick mother to the village to live with relatives.
The sad situation is “brightened up” a little thanks to the mobile library and the magical diary that was given to her. With his help, the heroine finds herself, grows up and acquires important life values.
“The Magic Diary” can be safely called a very bright book, which the fair sex of absolutely any age will enjoy reading. Many girls aged 24-29 did not think that a story about a 16-year-old teenager could captivate and interest so much. The point is also that Tamara Goodwin impresses the reader, because she is a smart and strong girl who, despite all the heavy load of responsibilities, will be able to resist, withstand everything and come out of this fight as a winner. Cecilia Ahern is an excellent psychologist, and it’s not for nothing that her books are incredibly successful. She displays in the characters of her works the main features and characteristics of human nature, thereby allowing readers to identify themselves with some of the heroes.
Even though “The Magic Diary” is not the author’s “stellar” work, this novel managed to win more than one woman’s heart, give a lot of positive emotions and enjoy the writer’s surprisingly competent and easy-to-read style. In a word, Cecilia Ahern creates far from typical women's novels; she writes truly high-quality literary creations that contain elements of a wide variety of genres and evoke a new wave of delight and “literary satisfaction” among fans of her work.
Therefore, absolutely all connoisseurs of light, pleasant, deep and beautiful stories should read the above book. The idea of a magic diary is unique, because such a technique has never been seen anywhere before. We can say with confidence that the novel “The Magic Diary” will be an ideal choice for those people who sincerely believe in goodness and see magic in everyday life.
On our website about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “The Magic Diary” by Cecilia Ahern in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.
Quotes from the book “The Magic Diary” by Cecilia Ahern
Each person has his own book. It’s as if the books know in advance whose life they are about to enter, how to guess their person, how to teach him a lesson, how to make him smile, and just when it’s needed.
You know, there are such things that you just have to look at, and they immediately connect you with home - in general, with something or someone dear.
A funeral, no matter how terrible it may be, is like a kind of game. We must remember the rules, say platitudes and, God forbid, not break down until the end of the ceremony.
I have no idea how much he understood how important this moment was for me. After all, he saved me from myself, saved me from complete despair.
It is unlikely that a person who speaks extremely little can be as simple as it seems to others. You gain something while you are silent, because when you are silent, you think a lot.
Sometimes we have no idea where we are, and therefore need the smallest clue to understand how to look for the beginning.
Every family has its own problems. Nothing is perfect. And it probably never happened.
Sometimes good things come out of losses. You just need to grow up.
Probably, lonely people tend to cuddle up to something in order to forget about their loneliness.
"She's just a friend." Four words that could very well kill any woman, but I just smiled.
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Cecelia Ahern
Magic diary
Dedicated to Marianne, who moves very quietly and makes a lot of noise
To my readers with gratitude for believing in me
Chapter first
They say that with each retelling my story becomes less and less interesting. If this is so, then it’s okay, because here I told it for the first time.
My readers will have to take my word for it. True, if everything that happened to me did not happen to me, I would not believe it.
I hope that it will not occur to everyone to doubt my veracity, at least it will not occur to those whose minds are open to everything unusual, unlocked by the key that opened it to faith. Such people are either free from birth, or even in childhood, when their mind was like a bud, it was cherished and cherished so that the petals would slowly open and he would give himself up to the will of nature. It rains, the sun shines, and it grows, grows, grows. Such a mind is always ready for something unusual, it sees light in the darkness, finds a way out of a dead end, celebrates victory while others mourn defeat, asks questions while others take everything in life for granted. He's a little less jaded and a little less cynical. He doesn't want to give up. Sometimes people become this way under the influence of tragedy or triumph. Any event can become the key to a locked box in the head of an all-knowing person, so that he perceives the unknown with curiosity and says goodbye to practicality and straightforwardness.
However, there are also those who gradually collect a whole bouquet of buds in their heads - one for each discovery - which never open their petals and remain buds forever. Such people perceive only capital letters and periods, and for them there are no question marks and ellipses...
Just like my parents. For some reason, they are stubborn. Like, if this is not in the books or no one has officially reported about it, don’t be stupid and don’t talk nonsense. They have complete order in their heads and a lot of lovely, colorful, fragrant, ideally shaped buds that never blossomed, didn’t feel light and tender enough to dance in the fresh breeze. The stems are, as expected, straight and strong, and the buds remain buds, no matter what, until the very end.
However, mom is not dead yet.
She hasn't died yet. But not in a medical sense, because just because she's not dead doesn't mean she's alive. Mom looks like a walking corpse, although from time to time she hums something, as if checking whether she is still alive or no longer alive. If you don’t look too closely, you can assume that everything is fine with her. But as soon as you are close, you will immediately notice the uneven line of bright pink lipstick, dull eyes in which the soul does not shine, as if it were a studio house from a TV show - one facade, and nothing behind it. Wearing a robe with wide, flowing sleeves, she wanders around the house, moving from room to room, like a Southern belle in a luxurious mansion from Gone with the Wind, putting off thoughts of trouble until tomorrow. Despite her swan-like graceful passages from room to room, she is furious, struggling to hold her head high, giving us fearful smiles to let us know she is still there, although it is not very convincing.
Oh, I don't blame her. What a blessing it would be to disappear the way she disappeared, forcing others to remove the rubble and save the remains of our lives.
But I still haven't told you anything, and you're probably confused.
My name is Tamara Goodwin. "A real victory." I can't stand such terrible words. There is either a victory or there is not. Like “severe loss”, “hot sun” or “completely dead”. Two words are connected by chance, although everything that needs to be said has already been said by one. Sometimes, when introducing myself, I swallow the second syllable, and it turns out: Tamara Good - which in itself sounds funny, because I have never been “good.” And sometimes I swallow the first syllable, and it turns out Tamara Vin. This is a real mockery, because victory and luck are not my element.
I'm sixteen years old, or so they say. And it's weird because I feel like I'm twice my age. At the age of fourteen, I felt like I was fourteen years old. I acted like an eleven-year-old child and dreamed of the time when I would be eighteen. But over the past few months I have matured by several years. Would you say this is impossible? Agreeing with you, the buds would shake their heads negatively, but a free mind would answer: why, in fact, not? They say anything can happen. But some things don't happen.
You can't bring dad back to life. I tried when I found him on the floor in the office - completely dead - with a blue face, and an empty bottle of medicine lay nearby, and a bottle of whiskey stood on the table. I don’t know why, but I pressed my lips to his and began to give him artificial respiration. To no avail.
And then, when at the cemetery my mother, with a howl, scratching the wooden lid, threw herself on his coffin, which was sinking into the ground - by the way, so as not to particularly injure us, covered with artificial green grass, as if it were not real earth with worms - the coffin was still... they were lowered into the pit forever and ever. To be honest, I enthusiastically accepted my mother’s attempt, but she did not return my father to us.
And countless “who knew George best” stories about his father, which relatives and friends vied with each other to tell at the wake, as if keeping their finger on the signal and trying to get their word in. “Do you think this is funny? No, listen to me...” “One time George and I...” “I’ll never forget George’s words...” As a result, the guests got so overexcited that they all started talking at once, interrupting each other, splashing out passion and wine on Mom’s new Persian carpet. Do you think they wanted the best? Well, dad really seemed to be in the room, but these stories didn’t bring him back to us.
Even when mom found out that dad's financial situation was not the best, it didn't help either. Dad was bankrupt, and the bank had already foreclosed on our house and everything it owned, so Mom had to sell everything else—every last one—to pay off the debts. But even then dad didn’t come back and help us. I finally realized that he is no longer there and will not be. I even thought: if he wanted us to go through everything alone - artificial respiration, my mother’s hysteria in front of everyone in the cemetery, our lack of money - then it’s good that he left.
Without all this, it would be more pleasant to remember him. The circumstances of our lives turned out to be as terrible and humiliating as, I have no doubt, he foresaw.
If the buds in my parents' heads had opened their petals, then maybe, just maybe, they could have avoided all this horror. However, the buds remained buds. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, but even if there was, it would have been blocked by the oncoming train. There were no other possibilities, no other way of doing business. My parents were practical people, but even for them there was no solution that suited the situation. Faith, hope and some sort of conviction could have saved my father. But he didn't have the first, or the second, or the third, so he practically dragged us down with him by doing what he did.
It's amazing how death sheds light on a person's character. Over the course of several weeks, I heard many touching and even beautiful stories about my dad. They consoled me, and I liked listening to them, but, to be honest, it is very doubtful that there was truth and only truth in them. Dad was not a nice person. Of course I loved him, and yet, as far as I understand, he was not good. We rarely spoke to each other, and when we did, we usually argued about something; or he silently gave me money so that I would not pester. Very often he was irritable, intolerant, flared up instantly, always insisted on his own and showed outright impudence. People were lost in his presence, he suppressed them and enjoyed it. At the restaurant, my father returned the steak to the kitchen three or four times, just out of a desire to torment the waiter. When ordering expensive wine, to annoy the restaurateur, he declared that it smelled like cork. If we weren't invited to a party, he would complain to the police about the noise, even though the noise didn't really bother him, and would get the party stopped.
Dedicated to Marianne, who moves very quietly and makes a lot of noise
To my readers with gratitude for believing in me
Chapter first
buds
They say that with each retelling my story becomes less and less interesting. If this is so, then it’s okay, because here I told it for the first time.
My readers will have to take my word for it. True, if everything that happened to me did not happen to me, I would not believe it.
I hope that it will not occur to everyone to doubt my veracity, at least it will not occur to those whose minds are open to everything unusual, unlocked by the key that opened it to faith. Such people are either free from birth, or even in childhood, when their mind was like a bud, it was cherished and cherished so that the petals would slowly open and he would give himself up to the will of nature. It rains, the sun shines, and it grows, grows, grows. Such a mind is always ready for something unusual, it sees light in the darkness, finds a way out of a dead end, celebrates victory while others mourn defeat, asks questions while others take everything in life for granted. He's a little less jaded and a little less cynical. He doesn't want to give up. Sometimes people become this way under the influence of tragedy or triumph. Any event can become the key to a locked box in the head of an all-knowing person, so that he perceives the unknown with curiosity and says goodbye to practicality and straightforwardness.
However, there are also those who gradually collect a whole bouquet of buds in their heads - one for each opening - which never open their petals and remain buds forever. Such people perceive only capital letters and periods, and for them there are no question marks and ellipses...
Just like my parents. For some reason, they are stubborn. Like, if this is not in the books or no one has officially reported about it, don’t be stupid and don’t talk nonsense. They have complete order in their heads and a lot of lovely, colorful, fragrant, ideally shaped buds that never blossomed, didn’t feel light and tender enough to dance in the fresh breeze. The stems are, as expected, straight and strong, and the buds remain buds, no matter what, until the very end.
However, mom is not dead yet.
She hasn't died yet. But not in a medical sense, because just because she's not dead doesn't mean she's alive. Mom looks like a walking corpse, although from time to time she hums something, as if checking whether she is still alive or no longer alive. If you don’t look too closely, you can assume that everything is fine with her. But as soon as you are close, you will immediately notice the uneven line of bright pink lipstick, dull eyes in which the soul does not shine, as if it were a studio house from a TV show - one facade, and nothing behind it. Wearing a robe with wide, flowing sleeves, she wanders around the house, moving from room to room, like a Southern belle in a luxurious mansion from Gone with the Wind, putting off thoughts of trouble until tomorrow. Despite her swan-like graceful passages from room to room, she is furious, struggling to hold her head high, giving us fearful smiles to let us know she is still there, although it is not very convincing.
Oh, I don't blame her. What a blessing it would be to disappear the way she disappeared, forcing others to remove the rubble and save the remains of our lives.
But I still haven't told you anything, and you're probably confused.
My name is Tamara Goodwin. "A real victory." I can't stand such terrible words. There is either a victory or there is not. Like “severe loss”, “hot sun” or “completely dead”. Two words are connected by chance, although everything that needs to be said has already been said by one. Sometimes, when introducing myself, I swallow the second syllable, and it turns out: Tamara Good - which in itself sounds funny, because I have never been “good.” And sometimes I swallow the first syllable, and it turns out Tamara Vin. This is a real mockery, because victory and luck are not my element.
I'm sixteen years old, or so they say. And it's weird because I feel like I'm twice my age. At the age of fourteen, I felt like I was fourteen years old. I acted like an eleven-year-old child and dreamed of the time when I would be eighteen. But over the past few months I have matured by several years. Would you say this is impossible? Agreeing with you, the buds would shake their heads negatively, but a free mind would answer: why, in fact, not? They say anything can happen. But some things don't happen.
You can't bring dad back to life. I tried when I found him on the floor in the office - completely dead - with a blue face, and an empty bottle of medicine lay nearby, and a bottle of whiskey stood on the table. I don’t know why, but I pressed my lips to his and began to give him artificial respiration. To no avail.
And then, when at the cemetery my mother, with a howl, scratching the wooden lid, threw herself on his coffin, which was sinking into the ground - by the way, so as not to particularly injure us, covered with artificial green grass, as if it were not real earth with worms - the coffin was still... they were lowered into the pit forever and ever. To be honest, I enthusiastically accepted my mother’s attempt, but she did not return my father to us.
And countless “who knew George best” stories about his father, which relatives and friends vied with each other to tell at the wake, as if keeping their finger on the signal and trying to get their word in. “Do you think this is funny? No, listen to me...” “One time George and I...” “I’ll never forget George’s words...” As a result, the guests got so overexcited that they all started talking at once, interrupting each other, splashing out passion and wine on Mom’s new Persian carpet. Do you think they wanted the best? Well, dad really seemed to be in the room, but these stories didn’t bring him back to us.
