She said she felt like maybe writing again, getting back to her essays and poems. She handed the list to me at the Alitalia counter at Kennedy, before her flight to Rome and then on to Naples and, finally, Sicily and Corsica. This was the way she had worked it out.
Her intention was to spend November and December shuttling between the Italian islands, in some off-season rental, completely alone. She was traveling heavy. She was taking with her what seemed to be hundreds of books and notepapers. Also pads, brushes, tiny pastel-tinted sponges. Too many hats, I thought, which she wore like some dead and famed flyer. A signal white scarf of silk. Nothing I had given her. And maps. Here was a woman of maps. She had dozens of them, in various scales.
Topographic, touristical, some schematic—these last handmade. Through the nights she stood like a field general over the kitchen counter, hands perched on those jutting hip bones, smoking with agitation, assessing points of entry and encampment and escape.
Her routes, stenciled in thick deep blue, embarked inward, toward an uncharted grave center. A messy bruise of ink. She had already marked out a score of crosses that seemed to say You Are Here. Then, there were indications she was misreading the actual size of the islands. Her lines would have her trek the same patches of rocky earth many times over.
Overrunning the land. I thought I could see her kicking at the bleached, known stones; the hard southern light surrendering to her boyish straightness; those clear green eyes, leveling on the rim of the arched sea. She took to bearing the heaviest of her bags. But at some point I panicked and embraced her clumsily. She tried to smile. I asked if she had enough money. She said her savings would take care of her. When they started the call for boarding she gave me the list, squeezing it tight between our hands.
In a steely voice she told me to read it when I got back to the car. I put it away. I walked with her to the entrance. Her cheek stiffened when I leaned to kiss her. She walked backward for several steps, her movement inertial, tipsy, and then disappeared down the telescoping tunnel. Native speaker Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance.
As a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both -- and belongs to neither. There are no reviews yet. Be the first one to write a review. Please see your browser settings for this feature. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! Topics Chang-rae Lee , writer , author , novelist , the surrendered , native speaker , kansas city , kansas city public library.
Award-winning novelist Chang-rae Lee discusses his new novel The Surrendered , a spellbinding story of how love and war echo through an entire lifetime, on April 22, , at the Central Library, 14 W. The book has been called a profound meditation on the nature of heroism and sacrifice, the power of love, and the possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering oneself to another.
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