Lanny

by Max Porter

I can usually see a way to understand terrible things; Satanic worship, decaffeinated coffee, cosmetic surgery, but Renoir’s portrait of Madame de Bonnières? No. It cannot be understood or forgiven. And framed in gold plastic and spot-lit from above? No offence intended, Charlotte, there is not a chamber of hell hot enough for a woman of your taste.

I can’t sleep. Robert’s breathing sounds like a small door catching the carpet as it opens. Click. Scuff. Somebody enter. Click. Scuff. Somebody leave.

What if we, the too-polite sons and daughters of these old fuckers, actually started picking them up on their warped world-view, on their grotesque self-interest and petty entitlement?

Like the last speaker of any language he has had to forget in order to survive, but some knowledge of it lives in his marrow.