—TROUBLE SEEMS TO KNOW MY NAME 

 

HAMNET  /  Maggie O’Farrell

 

 

 

There is, she had found, great power to be had in silence.

 

And then he realizes, with a sharp undertow of shame, Agnes will see how matters stand and she will see him for what he is; a man with his leg caught in the jaws of a trap.

 

She is like a painting on the wall, eyes missing nothing.

 

A glover will only want the skin, the surface, the outer layer. Everything else is useless, an inconvenience, an unnecessary mess.

 

The branches of the forest are so dense you cannot feel the rain.

 

It means business this pain. It will not leave her be. It means to force her out of herself, to turn what is inside outside.

 

How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child?

 

You see, she says to him, you cannot change what you are given, cannot bend or alter what is dealt to you.

 

Time runs only one way.

 

She lays there, sleeping, like a woman who had swallowed the moon.

 

He must hold himself separate in order to survive. If he were to go under, he would drag them all with him.

 

Is this what it feels like to die, to sense the nearness of something you can’t avoid?

 

How easy is it, Agnes thinks, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in.

 

It is both a joy and a curse.

 

“I’m here. Are you?”