41
" Conobbi Ilan e Jacob per caso. Erano seduti al tavolo di fianco al mio, in un piccolo caffè marocchino nell’Upper West Side, e parlavano a voce troppo alta di Cime tempestose, il genere di dialogo zeppo di riferimenti che purtroppo riesce sempre ad attirare la mia attenzione. Jacob sembrava sui quarantacinque; era sovrappeso, ruminava ossessivamente quei biscottini verdi e poco invitanti a forma di foglia, e continuava a dire «ovvio». Ilan era bello, e diceva che la tragedia di Heathcliff era, per via della sua mancanza di diritti di proprietà, quella di essere sostanzialmente una donna. Jacob omaggiò Catherine che proclamava: «Io sono Heathcliff!» Poi fecero un qualche commento sulla passione. E sullo scavare tombe. E un ragazzo con la barba vicino a loro si spostò a un tavolo piú lontano. Jacob e Ilan continuarono a parlare, per nulla offesi, e a lodare la Brontë, e a un certo punto Ilan aggiunse: – Ma dato che in virtú delle quote rosa di solito è Jane Austen a finire nei piani di studi universitari, è comprensibile che lo studente medio stenti a liberarsi dell’idea che le donne siano delle idiote mosse solo dal terrore che un uomo possa essere meno ricco di quanto sembra. "
― Rivka Galchen , American Innovations
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" Alcuni direbbero che Jacob è un fisico, altri potrebbero definirlo un filosofo, o semplicemente un «esperto del tempo», io invece tendo a considerarlo in termini meno reverenziali. Non di odio, però. Ilan chiamava Jacob «mio cugino della Svevia Esteriore». Quella battutina criptica, che gli avevo sentito fare spesso, probabilmente senza che si accorgesse di quante volte l’aveva già ripetuta, mi aveva sempre dato la sensazione di implicare una vaga parentela tra loro. Dovevo avere l’impressione (all’epoca) che Jacob e Ilan fossero lontani cugini di un qualche tipo. In seguito però arrivai a pensare, a momenti, almeno, che in realtà si trattasse al tempo stesso di un depistaggio e di una specie di indizio che alludeva a un segreto enorme, un segreto che non avrebbero mai condiviso con me. Non il solito segretuccio personale, come una tresca o un reato di poco conto o, che so, un testicolo in meno: no, un segreto di natura scientifica, quel raro tipo di segreto che ancora oggi, nella nostra epoca, riesce a farci inchinare al cospetto di qualcuno. "
― Rivka Galchen , American Innovations
53
" I was having so much fear," the simulacrum said, kissing my eyelids and I couldn't help but think about the eyelid kissing, and how this is a thing Rema always liked to do, and though I understand that eye lid kissing is a fairly standard part of any amatory repertoire, I remember how it really needled me at the beginning, needled me for being a sort of learned behavior, which therefore pointed to that whole world that was Rema before I knew her, and pointed to all those people who were not me who had gone into the creation of her as she was, and-well, in that way she was like some alien sedentary rock forma tion, some meteor fallen to my planet, and it seemed a violation of me to have no choice but to love some charred castaway, with all its strata-I guess I am very jealous and possessive_I just found it very diffi cult those moments, like eyelid kissing, when I couldn't help but perceive her duplicity, her triplicity. "
― Rivka Galchen , Atmospheric Disturbances
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" The baby had an orange plastic baby spoon, and on the mixer for her food there was an orange splash cover, and an orange implement for lifting the basket of steamed food safely out. All these items were purchased fairly thoughtlessly, just in searching for “plain.” Then I noticed the same orange as the trim accent color on the blue-and-white striped onesie she had received at birth and was finally growing into, and the same orange for the safety guard case around the iPhone 4 without Siri which her mother had bought post-Siri for $69.95 and had then on the first day of ownership cracked the screen of and so had unthinkingly chosen the accent color orange for the “protector.” It eventually began to be difficult to not be bothered by how nice and how orange the baby’s objects were. And yet also it was difficult to not want to surround the baby with objects that had been deemed, by my wedge of the zeitgeist, nice. As if taste culture could keep the baby safe. Which in some ways it could: people would subconsciously recognize that the baby belonged to the class of people to whom good things come easily, and so they would subconsciously continue to easily hand over to her the good things, like interesting jobs and educational opportunities and appealing mates, that would seem the baby’s natural birthright, though of course this was an illusion. Something like that. It was an evil norm, but, again, one that it was difficult to not want to work in favor of rather than against one’s own child. I would say you can see where this is going, but I feel it insufficiently gets at how much orange was arriving into the home, and how much warmth and approval these orange objects were received with by the well-educated fortunate people who encountered them. (Notably, my mother was charmed by none of it.) "
― Rivka Galchen , Little Labors
