{"id":745,"date":"2019-01-16T14:02:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T22:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/?page_id=745"},"modified":"2019-01-25T10:49:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T18:49:06","slug":"excerpt-stormy-cove","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bernadettecalonego.com\/eng\/books\/stormy-cove\/excerpt-stormy-cove\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt: Stormy Cove"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

He hardly speaks at breakfast. His forehead, eyes, eyebrows, and lips\n look pinched\u2014like his head is in a vice. He\u2019s worried. She knows it.
\nThat night, she\u2019d been jolted out of her sleep again, her heart feeling \ntight and swollen, like a boxing glove. Her silk pajamas clung to her \nskin, and a damp chill to her forehead.
\nShe sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for air.
\nSuddenly his face right against hers; she\u2019d startled him.
\nNot for the first time.
\nHe brushed her unruly hair out of her face.
\n\u201cI heard it again,\u201d she said.
\nThe howling. That terrible, incomprehensible, bone-shattering whine that seemed to come from nowhere.
\nHe pressed her to his chest.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s gone,\u201d he whispered. \u201cNobody\u2019s going to hurt you.\u201d
\nThen he caressed her until she fell asleep in his arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She steals a glance at him.
\nPretending to be sorting pictures on the computer, she watches him out \nof the corner of her eye as he sits there, bent over the table, his chin\n resting in a hand as big as a shovel. He reads the newspaper from cover\n to cover; it\u2019s just the local rag but he doesn\u2019t skip over a thing, not\n even the classifieds. He\u2019s never learned to skim. In his world, there\u2019s\n no place for skimming. Everything must be observed: wind direction, the\n movement of the tide, wave action, fish movements, what men in the \nharbor are saying, news and rumors. Especially rumors. If you miss \nsomething, or don\u2019t care what\u2019s going on in the village, then you\u2019re \nsoon on the outside looking in. And that can be fatal.
\nShe\u2019s only known that since she came into his life.
\nHow did we manage to survive?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here he is, far from the grave of his boat, the Mighty Breeze. Far \nfrom the North Atlantic and the steep cliffs, the killer storms and \ncurrents. Far from the disaster that pulled him down in its wake.
\nHe\u2019s an outsider in Vancouver. A man who doesn\u2019t want to be anywhere but\n on his boat or in his squat little house with green trim. He couldn\u2019t \neven restack the firewood the storm scattered\u2014that\u2019s how fast everything\n happened. He must replay things in his mind over and over, neat and \ntidy as he is. In the chaos of emotions and threats, he is a man who \nclings to order.
\nSo all he can do now is read the entire paper. He can\u2019t throw out \nleftovers. He calls it wasteful, making a face every time he says the \nword. His shed by the ocean is stacked with pails, old ropes and tools, \nrusty winches, used nails, lumber from demolished houses, worn-out \nknives. A man who always expects hard times needs these things.
\nBut he didn\u2019t expect the disaster that befell him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He suddenly looks up, and she feels caught in the act.
\n\u201cDid you read this?\u201d he asked. \u201cThe letters to the editor? People with \nocean-front houses are complaining that people walking on the beach keep\n peeking in their windows.\u201d
\nShe smiles, happy that he\u2019s found something he finds funny. Nobody in \nhis village has any problem with people constantly looking in their \nwindows. They see everything anyway, never miss a thing. Through trusty \nbinoculars, they surveil the houses on the opposite side of the cove. \nThey know when it\u2019s lights out and when somebody comes home late.
\nBut she\u2019d shut her eyes to what she really ought to have seen.
\nHe stretches across the table to study the classifieds. She never tires \nof looking at him. A back as round as the leatherback turtle\u2019s that \nwashed ashore one day, dead. The morning after they first made love, her\n fingers felt for his vertebrae and couldn\u2019t find them. As if he\u2019d \nmorphed from a sea creature into a human.
\nIf someone saw the way she was watching him now, her fascination would be taken for love.
\nBut it\u2019s more like wonder. Silent amazement that they\u2019re both here. Together. That he followed her, all this way.
\nHow did we manage to get away!
\nDid we get away?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s always been so afraid of the city. The cars. The crowds. The \npace. Traffic lights everywhere. Eyes that look right past him. Mouths \nthat don\u2019t say hello. Losing himself in the sea of people on the \nsidewalks.
\nBut now, after everything that happened, he feels secure here. Nobody \nknows him in Vancouver. Nobody knows anything. His name means nothing.
\nIt\u2019s been ten months now. He never talks about going back. Not even \nabout the Mighty Breeze. Or the kitchen with its loud, ticking clock. \nNot one word about the cove or the dock with the rotting planks he\u2019d \nlong wanted to replace.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t you want to call?\u201d she asks him occasionally.
\nHe just shakes his head, raises his eyebrows, and looks out the window, \nchecking the sky over the neighboring apartment towers. Then he wants to\n go for a walk before it rains. His route always leads to the ocean. Not\n to his ocean but to this other, Western ocean, the Pacific. Water that \nnever, to his astonishment, freezes over in winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She hasn\u2019t taken any pictures of him since they came to Vancouver. As\n if photographing him were cursed. As if her pictures would reveal \nsomething she wasn\u2019t prepared for. The way he\u2019s sitting at the table, \nturning the pages, his brow furrowed, back arched like a bridge over \nwater, lips pressed together\u2014she doesn\u2019t have to capture this moment \nwith her camera. It\u2019s already burned into her mind. Exactly like the \nsecret that she must never reveal.
\nDo visions of what happened haunt him as they do her? She\u2019s afraid to ask.
\nOut of nowhere, the memories appear before her eyes, and they\u2019re not always the most terrifying ones.
\nThe wall hanging, for instance, in a stranger\u2019s living room, of a band \nof caribou at sunset. Blackish-brown shapes backlit with kitschy neon \ncolors. The caribou stiff, as if blinded by the garish orange and yellow\n and red.
\nA wild animal frozen in the headlights\u2019 glare, fearfully undecided between safety and doom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text copyright \u00a9 2015 Bernadette Calonego
\nTranslation copyright \u00a9 2016 Gerald Chapple
\nAll rights reserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval \nsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, \nmechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express \nwritten permission of the publisher.
\nPublished by AmazonCrossing, Seattle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions for a book club discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n