Excerpt of On Beauty by Zadie Smith
(Page 3 of 8)
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Love and peace in abundance,
Jerome xxxxx
P.S. in answer to your ‘polite query’, yes, I am still one . . .
despite your
evident contempt I’m feeling quite fine about it, thanks . . .
twenty is
really not that late among young people these days, especially
if
they’ve decided to make their fellowship with Christ. It was
weird
that you asked, because I did walk through Hyde Park yesterday
and
thought of you losing yours to someone you had never met before
and never would again. And no, I wasn’t tempted to repeat the
incident . . .
To:
HowardBelsey@fas.Wellington.edu
From:
Jeromeabroad@easymail.com
Date: 19 November
Subject:
Dear Dr Belsey!
I have no idea how you’re going to take this one! But we’re in
love!
The Kipps girl and me! I’m going to ask her to marry me, Dad!
And I
think she’ll say yes!!! Are you digging on these exclamation
marks!!!!
Her name’s Victoria but everyone calls her Vee. She’s amazing,
gorgeous, brilliant. I’m asking her ‘officially’ this evening,
but I
wanted to tell you first. It’s come over us like the Song of
Solomon,
and there’s no way to explain it apart from as a kind of mutual
revelation. She just arrived here last week – sounds crazy but
it
true!!!! Seriously: I’m happy. Please take two Valium and ask
Mom
to mail me ASAP. I’ve got no credit left on this phone and don’t
like to use theirs.
Jxx
‘What, Howard? What am I looking at, exactly?’
Howard Belsey directed his American wife, Kiki Simmonds, to
the relevant section of the e-mail he had printed out. She put
her
elbows either side of the piece of paper and lowered her head as
she always did when concentrating on small type. Howard moved
away to the other side of their kitchen-diner to attend to a
singing
kettle. There was only this one high note – the rest was
silence.
Their only daughter, Zora, sat on a stool with her back to the
room,
her earphones on, looking up reverentially at the television.
Levi,
the youngest boy, stood beside his father in front of the
kitchen
cabinets. And now the two of them began to choreograph a
breakfast
in speechless harmony: passing the box of cereal from one to
the other, exchanging implements, filling their bowls and
sharing
milk from a pink china jug with a sun-yellow rim. The house was
south facing. Light struck the double glass doors that led to
the
garden, filtering through the arch that split the kitchen. It
rested
softly upon the still life of Kiki at the breakfast table,
motionless,
reading. A dark red Portuguese earthenware bowl faced
her, piled high with apples. At this hour the light extended
itself
even further, beyond the breakfast table, through the hall, to
the
lesser of their two living rooms. Here a bookshelf filled with
their
oldest paperbacks kept company with a suede beanbag and an
ottoman upon which Murdoch, their dachshund, lay collapsed in a
sunbeam.
‘Is this for real?’ asked Kiki, but got no reply.
Levi was slicing strawberries, rinsing them and plopping them
into two cereal bowls. It was Howard’s job to catch their frowzy
heads for the trash. Just as they were finishing up this
operation,
Kiki turned the papers face down on the table, removed her hands
from her temples and laughed quietly.
‘Is something funny?’ asked Howard, moving to the breakfast
bar and resting his elbows on its top. In response, Kiki’s face
resolved
itself into impassive blackness. It was this sphinx-like
expression
that sometimes induced their American friends to imagine a more
exotic provenance for her than she actually possessed. In fact
she
was from simple Florida country stock.
Excerpted from On Beauty, (c) 2005 Zadie Smith. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved.
