"faster!" cried costermayne, "faster! did i teach you nothing in our long ago happy school days?" and he roared with laughter. "when the challenges come , you must rise to meet them!" and he strode ahead of me, unheeding.
i stopped.
costermayne grew smaller in the distance.
fenwick vanished from my sight.
the enormity of what had transpired suddenly overwhelmed me.
but i was no stranger to enormity.
or to suddenness.
above all, i was no stranger to being overwhelmed.
enormity - had not my whole life been one enormity after another? from the enormity of my so-called birth (which i had no memory of and always taken on faith) to the hideous enormities of mute and bewildered childhood (which i remembered only too well and had no need to take on faith) to the blizzard of petty indignities (i concede i can hardly call them enormities) of my schooldays and finally to the dribbling dregs of desperation, which, laid end to end, made up my "life" - had not enormity been my mother, brother and guardian angel?
or suddenness? could i ever forget the terrible day when i realized that i existed?
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2 comments:
At the risk of sounding like a corrupt audio file: brilliant.
No stranger to enormity! That is just a perfect thing. Thanks as always for the reading and viewing pleasure: I have been absent from here for far too long, and have missed enough to keep my whole evening busy.
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