Northern Lights
The acclaimed novel from the award-winning author of ‘If I Die in a Combat Zone’, ‘Going After Cacciato’ and ‘In the Lake of the Woods’.The action in ‘Northern Lights’ takes place not in Vietnam but back in the USA, as Tim O’Brien explores the after-effects of that war – on those who served, and those they left behind.Set in the frozen wilderness of north Minnesota, it concerns two brothers, one who served in Vietnam, and has returned tough, cynical and world-weary; and the other who stayed at home. When they take off on a long skiing trip together through the frozen woods, they quickly get lost in a blizzard, and are tested to their limits as they face a battle against the elements and each other.
Читать Northern Lights онлайн беплатно
TIM O'BRIEN
Northern Lights
Fourth Estate
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by Flamingo 1998
First published in Great Britain by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd 1976
Copyright © Tim O’Brien 1975
Tim O’Brien asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780006551485
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2015 ISBN: 9780008133146
Version: 2015-09-10
With gratitude
to the Arrowhead people,
who will know perfectly well that
there is no such town as Sawmill Landing,
that Grand Marais doesn’t sponsor ski races,
that these characters are purely fictitious
and that this is just a story.
For Ann
… and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places … For the day of his wrath is come. And who shall be able to stand?
REVELATIONS
Contents
Wide awake and restless, Paul Milton Perry clawed away the sheets and swung out of bed, blood weak, his fists clenching and closing like a pulse. He hadn’t slept. He sat very still. He listened to the July heat, mosquitoes at the screen windows, inchworms eating in the back pines, the old house, a close-seeming flock of loons. What he did not hear, he imagined. Timber wolves and Indians, the chime of the old man’s spoon in the spit bucket, the glacial floes, Harvey hammering at the half-finished bomb shelter, ice cracking in great sheets, the deep pond and Grace’s whispering, and a sobbing sound. He sat still. He was naked and sweating and anaemic and flabby. Thinking first about Harvey, then about the heat, then the mosquitoes, he’d been sailing in a gaunt nightlong rush of images and half-dreams, turning, wallowing, listening like a stranger to the sounds of his father’s house.
He sat still.
Harvey was coming home.
There was that, and there was Grace, and there were the mosquitoes crazy for blood against the screen windows.
‘Lord, now,’ he moaned, and pushed out of bed, found his glasses, and groped towards the kitchen.
He returned with a black can of insecticide. Then he listened again. The bedroom was sullen and hot, and he was thinking murder. Carefully, he tied the lace curtains to one side. He ignored Grace’s first whisper. He pushed the nozzle flush against the screen window. Then, grinning and naked, he pressed the nozzle and began to spray, feeling better, and he flushed the night with poison from his black can.
He grinned and pressed the nozzle. His fingers turned wet and cool from condensed poison, and he listened: mosquitoes and Junebugs, dawn crickets, dawn birds, dragonflies and larvae and caterpillars, morning moths and sleeping flies, bear and moose, walleyes and carp and northerns and bullheads and tiny salamanders. It was dark everywhere. The black can hissed in the dark, ejaculating sweet chemicals that filled the great forest and his father’s house. He sprayed until the can was empty and light, then he listened, and the odour of poison buoyed him.
He sat on the bed. Harvey was coming home, and he was dizzy.
‘Bad night,’ Grace whispered.
‘Lord.’
‘Poor boy.’
‘Poor mosquitoes.’
‘Shhhhh,’ she always whispered. ‘Shhhh, just lie back now. Come here, lie back. You’re just excited. Phew, what a stink! Come here now. Lie back.’
‘Killed a billion of them.’
‘Shhhh, lie back.’
‘No use. What a night. Lord, what a crummy awful night.’
‘Relax now. I heard you all night long.’
‘Mosquitoes, the blasted heat, everything.’ He sat on the bed. He was still holding the defused can of insecticide. Poison drifted through the dark room.
‘Poor boy. Come here now. Here, lie back. Lie back.’ Her hand moved to his neck. ‘Here now,’ she whispered. ‘Lie back and I’ll rub you. Poor boy, I heard you tossing all night long. Just lie back and I’ll give you a nice rub and you can sleep and sleep.’
