/karen/

The transparent traceries of angels dancing

Saturday, 04 June, 2005

On Monday I tried to go and see a counsellor. However, I had the wrong address of the place and when I rang them up to find out the correct address, I discovered they had booked me in for the wrong person. The place is actually a medical centre with lots of female doctors and so apparently I had an appointment with a lady who was GP. I hate to say it but I sort of went to pieces because I'd been psyching myself up for the appointment all day and kept apologising to the lady I saw for going to pieces. She was very understanding though and gave me tissues and did all she could to make things easier for my next visit, should I decide to come back. I said I've got an appointment with the lady I used to see next week (who is very graciously seeing me outside of work hours) so I'll see how I feel then.

I cheered myself up by walking around the area—in and out of the funny little stores—looking at secondhand books and CDs, doing a little bit of digging to see if I could find any treasures. Patience and a keen eye paid off—I found The Book of Ballads illustrated by Charles Vess and containing stories adapted by Jane Yolen and Neil Gaiman (among others) in hardcover for $24. And I also found a secondhand copy of Oscar and Lucinda for $3 in a bargain bin and, thankfully, it was the UQP edition that doesn't have that hideous picture of Oscar and Lucinda trying to hide behind playing cards (which put me off reading the book for many years) but a detail from “The Transept of the Crystal Palace” by G. Hawkins.

So, without further ado, I present to you the excerpt I was trying in vain to remember before (but slightly abridged to match Ralph Fiennes' reading of it on the soundtrack):

“Shall I tell you my idea?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes, do, please.”

“It involves glass.”

“A subject close to my heart.”

“How does Hassset enjoy his living in Boat Harbour?”

“She straightened her cutlery. She said: “Well enough.”

“And does he have a church built yet?”

She thought: Fool, fool, do you think I care for Hasset?

She said: “They hold service in a room above a cobbler's.”

“And what would his feelings be, do you imagine,” he said, “if, when Mr Hasset awoke one morning, he looked out of his window and saw a church?”

Lucinda opened her mouth to reply.

“Made of glass,” said my great-grandfather.

It was at this point that the waiter brought the flounder. They said yes or no to tartare sauce, watched vegetables being spooned on to their places, accepted spinach, rejected squash and hardly knew what they were doing. All their emotions were fused together in this glass vision i which they saw that which cannot be seen—wonder, joy, the transparent traceries of angels dancing.

“But what would one intend?” she asked. “What would one intend with such a gift?”

He hardly knew what he intended. That he be a perfect friend to her, that he show himself above jealousy.

“It would be a lovely thing,” he said.

“But it is hardly practical, Mr Hopkins.”

“It is a dangerous word,” he said, smiling, entranced by her upper lip.

“And there woudl be nothing personal in its intention?”

“Do I appear a rogue?”

“No,” she smiled, “you do not,” and because he made her smile she did not think it a puzzling answer to her question. “Your fish ...” She emant that his fish was cold, uneaten.

“My fish does not matter. My fish is dead, but we are alive. We are gamblers in the noble sense. We believe all eternity awaits us. And am I wrong in supposing that you could pack a church in crates and transport it by cart? It is like the stairs at the library. It is what they call prefabricated. It comes in pieces. It has nuts and bolts and so on.”

“Or by ship.”

“You could transport an entire catehdral and assemble it across the mountains. Can you imagine a glass cathedral?”

She could. She saw its steeples, domes, its flying buttresses, motes of dust, shafts of light. “Mr Hopkins, we are made to think of it.”

“Not mad, I pray not mad. But the sheer joy of contemplating it is hard to contain.”

She thought: I cannot separate love from glass; I must be just a little mad.

“Can you imagine Hasset's face?”

“But it is you, dear lady,” Oscar said, “who must see his face. For it is you, surely, who must deeliver it to him.”

“Oh no, I cannot leave the works.”

“Then I shall, ” cried Oscar, “on your behalf.”

“It is approached by sea,” she said. She remembered, although she had no wish to, his behaviour in the storm aboard the Leviathan.

“Then I shall go by land.”

“But, Mr Hopkins, I do not think you understand.”

“I wager you I can do it. You may nominate the date.”

“Mr Hopkins, I like you too much to encourage you to injury.”

“I must,” he said quietly. “It would mean a great deal to me

It was then that she knew that he loved her.

“You are doing this for me?”

“Yes.”

“I am prepared to wager you I can have the glass church in Boat Harbour by, say, Good Friday.”

“And what can you bet?” she asked.

“Ten guineas.”

“It is not enough.”

“What is enough?”

“Your inheritance.”

“And you would bet?”

“The same. My inheritance.”

“You wager all that?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are mad,” said Oscar. “You are mad, not I.”

“Sleep on it,” she said.

“I am not sleepy,” he said. He was awed by her. He loved her.

“Then come home with me,” she smiled, “and we will play penny poker until you are.”

She could marry this man, she knew, and still be captain of her soul.

(Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1988, pp. 386-393. Read by Ralph Fiennes on the Oscar Lucinda original motion picture soundtrack.)

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