After the boiling fury of the summer sun, we have been wafted with a few strong prevailing winds into an early autumn. A glacial humidity lies in the air, the evening light has turned from a fiery glow into a golden touch on the still-green leaves of a distant cottonwood, and the crescent moon in the sky tonight had a pensive air.
This summer has been one of thunderstorms that were forecast but failed to appear, often just (at most) being a low rumble or two that was practically swallowed in the frequent masses of pale grey cloud, and a decent quantity of rain. Yesterday, large silvery drops of rain.
***
I have taken advantage of the raininess to read a lot of books. My eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach, and one of my reading projects hit a stumbling block when I tried to find one book from a Spanish author about Spain, and yet failed to find just one that satisfied me. With Don Quijote de la Mancha, I am still stuck in the prefaces and acknowledgements; the story I read by Juan Marsé and the abridged Juan Ramón Ramirez failed to really grip me; a crime novel by Dolores Redondo was more lurid than what I'd usually read and in my view rather a TV crime episode in book form than anything more real and engaging. But in my perplexity I finally decided to ask a colleague from Barcelona, whom I don't know very well, if he had any books he'd recommend. He was, surprisingly and reassuringly, delighted, and based on what I said my tastes were, sent me this list:
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Mortal y rosa, by Francisco Umbral
Berta Isla, by Javier Marías
La sobra del viento, by Carlos Ruis Zafón
CLASSICS
Benito Pérez Galdós - Fortunata y Jacinta
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez - Cañas y barro
Camilo José Cela - La colmena
Carmen Laforet - Nada
...apart from El Quijote, of course
***
It has come at an excellent time.
On Friday I got a minor 'coronavirus scare.' Someone I met this past week mentioned then that they had been advised by a doctor to have themselves tested for the virus. I was too busy working for the news to sink in, but the moment Feierabend arrived, I had much too think about.
It was all indefinite, but I decided that in all prudence I had to distance myself from my mother and brothers. Just shutting myself up in my room seemed grim and overreacting, so I'm afraid I've gone for a lighter, 2-metre distancing and frequent ventilation arrangement. (As well as excusing myself from sports I'd planned to do with colleagues today. And repressing a sudden urge to go grocery-shopping, which became far more tempting once it became forbidden fruit.)
As a result, a comedy routine has been staged in our household. I yelp in shock if I accidentally find myself close to someone, but generally manage to avoid this by listening for voices and craning my neck to look through doorways.
I keep the window open to let in the inhospitable warm balminess of the day and the nipping chill of night, in defiance of normal rules of common sense, just so that my room is well-ventilated. And I touch light switches, sink handles and doors with my elbow.
A general choreography of movement and placement has taken place during breakfasts and lunches. I eat dinner on a 'naughty step' in the corner of the kitchen, unfortunately too far away to pinch someone or jab someone with the elbow if they deserve retribution for a cheeky remark. And my mother, Ge. or J. put a cup or a plate at the end of the table, and then like an unsociable cat reluctantly approaching its tin of cat food, I come forward when they have backed away, to pick it up.
Anyway, it is hilarious, and of course the person whom I was in contact with has far more to complain of than I.
But I am especially grateful to my colleague now, because I have a new pile of Spanish books to take my mind off things.
— In addition to audiobooks, I have also turned to my old friend, the piano. Today I immersed myself in Schubert, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Brahms again, excerpts of Rachmaninoff and Granados in between; yesterday I think it was Beethoven sonatas.
Because Gi. played Chopin regularly for a while, the clothbound pale-brick edition of his mazurkas and polonaises was gone from the music room. Now it's back, and I love the mazurkas so much. (The polonaises are, of course, not bad either.)
Posts
