‘Trapping,’ said Lone, knowing that this would be sufficient.
He ate. From where he sat he could see Jack’s room. The bed was gone. There was a new one in there, not much longer than his forearm, all draped with pale-blue cotton and cheesecloth with dozens of little tucks sewn into it.
When he was finished they all sat around the table and for a time nobody said anything. Lone looked into Prodd’s eyes and found He ’ s a good boy but not the kind to set around and visit. He couldn’t understand the visit image, a vague and happy blur of conversation-sounds and laughter. He recognized this as one of the many lacks he was aware of in himself—lacks, rather than inadequacies; things he could not do and would never be able to do. So he just asked Prodd for the axe and went out.
‘You don’t s’pose he’s mad at us?’ asked Mrs Prodd, looking anxiously after Lone.
‘Him?’ said Prodd. ‘He wouldn’t have come back here if he was. I was afraid of that myself until today.’ He went to the door. ‘Don’t you lift nothing heavy, hear?’
Janie read as slowly and carefully as she could. She didn’t have to read aloud, but only carefully enough so the twins could understand. She had reached the part where the woman tied the man to the pillar and then let the other man, the ‘my rival, her laughing lover’ one, out of the closet where he had been hidden and gave him the whip. Janie looked up at that point and found Bonnie gone and Beanie in the cold fireplace, pretending there was a mouse hiding in the ashes. ‘Oh, you’re not listening,’ she said.
Want the one with the pictures, the silent message came.
‘I’m getting so tired of that one,’ said Janie petulantly. But she closed Venus in Furs by von Sacher-Masoch and put it on the table. ‘This’s anyway got a story to it,’ she complained, going to the shelves. She found the wanted volume between My Gun Is Quick and The Illustrated Ivan Bloch, and hefted it back to the armchair. Bonnie disappeared from the fireplace and reappeared by the chair. Beanie stood on the other side; wherever she had been, she had been aware of what was happening. If anything, she liked this book even better than Bonnie.
Janie opened the book at random. The twins leaned forward breathless, their eyes bulging.
Read it.