Landscape: Memory by Matthew Stadler, Columbia University. Writing Division Page B
Book: Landscape: Memory by Matthew Stadler, Columbia University. Writing Division
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supposed, for bubbles or blood, or the bobbing head of the dead birdman. There was nothing, the deep blue waters surging and lapping as on any other day.
I looked across the water to the steep green hills and up into the sky, empty and blue. I imagined how cold it must be high above the bay, how small and sad everything must seem from up there. A noisy flock of gulls hovered high above the esplanade, wheeling and squawking, waiting for more garbage to be dumped into the waters.
"Think now, boys. Fix in your minds what it is you will be feeling," Mr. Taqdir urged.
My mother, her chin up, stared out across the bay and nodded in solemn agreement. "Very wise, Mr. Taqdir, very wise. We mustn't bury our sadness. It's important, I think, pumpkin, to put pen to paper when we return home. I know how much this young aviator has meant to both of you." And she took Duncan's hand in her own, pulling me close with her other.
Dear Robert,
We're dug in deep near Le Touquet, doing what we can to keep the walls from tumbling in. Conditions have gotten a good sight worse as winter has come. Walls collapsing and cigarettes soaked, fires unthinkable and no prospect of exercise lest one's got a talent for dodging bullets and fancies a little stroll along the wire.
Do you recall Portsmouth? The week Father rented that bungalow with a rotted moss roof and dirt floor? It's been raining nearly that hard for two weeks now. If Mother had strafed us constantly with machine-gun fire you'd have had something a little like my current condition. God, how innocent we were.
Some terrible offensive is on, it seems. Tolland and I've been stretched to eleven- and twelve-hour shifts the last two days. Cut and sew, cut and sew. The work is disturbingly simple. The numbers are mind-boggling.
Do send books, I'm in need of distraction. How is the cinema? Do they show films of the war in America? I've seen crews set up here, but never in close. I've another "rest" in a few weeks but not back in Blighty. It'll be months before I'm off the Continent.
18 MARCH 1915
I got in a fight at school over the war. I said the way we fight war is stupid and we'd best take a lesson from the insects. They work in organized battalions, in direct confrontations. We used to but now we have sophisticated methods. Alphonse Bull wants to fly aeroplanes in the war and he punched me when I claimed aviators were cowards because they wouldn't fight face-to-face but resorted to tricks like flying over and dropping gas bombs.
26 MARCH 1915
We presented Frankenstein this evening to an audience of two, Father and Flora. Duncan ran the Victrola and lights, did all the sound effects, and played all the women in minor roles. I was the narrator, little William, an old blind man and the horrified Scotsman. Mr. Taqdir was Dr. Frankenstein and Mother played the monster.
We made Mother up beautifully, dainty and sweet like the most proper Gibson Girl, sweeping about in her best floral party dress. She was instructed to speak sweetly, with no hint of gloom or growl, and to walk firm and erect. Dr. Frankenstein, however, was more ghoulish. We made his complexion pale and darkened big bags below his eyes. I wanted a bit of stage blood to drip from his teeth but Duncan convinced me not to.
Mother murdered me near the end of Act Two.
It was a difficult scene. I insisted that she not limp or stagger or steal about like a criminal, yet she needed to appear plausibly murderous. Judging from the audience, the effect was more comic than tragic, this upstanding Gibson Girl stepping briskly across the room and strangling a rosy-cheeked boy at play in the flower box. She smiled through the killing, which was unnecessary, and released my limp body to tumble to the floor. The lights went dark as she crept offstage. Dr. Frankenstein gave vent to his agony with doglike howling. All around him his family was being ravaged by the monster. An encounter was inevitable.
"There in the starry darkness of the
I looked across the water to the steep green hills and up into the sky, empty and blue. I imagined how cold it must be high above the bay, how small and sad everything must seem from up there. A noisy flock of gulls hovered high above the esplanade, wheeling and squawking, waiting for more garbage to be dumped into the waters.
"Think now, boys. Fix in your minds what it is you will be feeling," Mr. Taqdir urged.
My mother, her chin up, stared out across the bay and nodded in solemn agreement. "Very wise, Mr. Taqdir, very wise. We mustn't bury our sadness. It's important, I think, pumpkin, to put pen to paper when we return home. I know how much this young aviator has meant to both of you." And she took Duncan's hand in her own, pulling me close with her other.
Dear Robert,
We're dug in deep near Le Touquet, doing what we can to keep the walls from tumbling in. Conditions have gotten a good sight worse as winter has come. Walls collapsing and cigarettes soaked, fires unthinkable and no prospect of exercise lest one's got a talent for dodging bullets and fancies a little stroll along the wire.
Do you recall Portsmouth? The week Father rented that bungalow with a rotted moss roof and dirt floor? It's been raining nearly that hard for two weeks now. If Mother had strafed us constantly with machine-gun fire you'd have had something a little like my current condition. God, how innocent we were.
Some terrible offensive is on, it seems. Tolland and I've been stretched to eleven- and twelve-hour shifts the last two days. Cut and sew, cut and sew. The work is disturbingly simple. The numbers are mind-boggling.
Do send books, I'm in need of distraction. How is the cinema? Do they show films of the war in America? I've seen crews set up here, but never in close. I've another "rest" in a few weeks but not back in Blighty. It'll be months before I'm off the Continent.
18 MARCH 1915
I got in a fight at school over the war. I said the way we fight war is stupid and we'd best take a lesson from the insects. They work in organized battalions, in direct confrontations. We used to but now we have sophisticated methods. Alphonse Bull wants to fly aeroplanes in the war and he punched me when I claimed aviators were cowards because they wouldn't fight face-to-face but resorted to tricks like flying over and dropping gas bombs.
26 MARCH 1915
We presented Frankenstein this evening to an audience of two, Father and Flora. Duncan ran the Victrola and lights, did all the sound effects, and played all the women in minor roles. I was the narrator, little William, an old blind man and the horrified Scotsman. Mr. Taqdir was Dr. Frankenstein and Mother played the monster.
We made Mother up beautifully, dainty and sweet like the most proper Gibson Girl, sweeping about in her best floral party dress. She was instructed to speak sweetly, with no hint of gloom or growl, and to walk firm and erect. Dr. Frankenstein, however, was more ghoulish. We made his complexion pale and darkened big bags below his eyes. I wanted a bit of stage blood to drip from his teeth but Duncan convinced me not to.
Mother murdered me near the end of Act Two.
It was a difficult scene. I insisted that she not limp or stagger or steal about like a criminal, yet she needed to appear plausibly murderous. Judging from the audience, the effect was more comic than tragic, this upstanding Gibson Girl stepping briskly across the room and strangling a rosy-cheeked boy at play in the flower box. She smiled through the killing, which was unnecessary, and released my limp body to tumble to the floor. The lights went dark as she crept offstage. Dr. Frankenstein gave vent to his agony with doglike howling. All around him his family was being ravaged by the monster. An encounter was inevitable.
"There in the starry darkness of the
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