Read The Autobiography of Red for Free Online Page B

around here
     
    I guess my grandmother wants
     
    the house painted said she’d pay me I can probably get a couple guys
     
    from town to help.
     
    Geryon was thinking hard. Flames licked along the floorboards inside him.
     
    I am quite a good painter myself,
he said.
     
    But the word
good
cracked in half. Herakles watched him.
Geryon you know
     
    we’ll always be friends.
     
    Geryon’s heart and lungs were a black crust. He had a sudden strong desire
     
    to go to sleep. Herakles slid to his feet
     
    smooth as a monkey.
Hurry up and get dressed Geryon we’re going to show you
     
    a volcano today I’ll be
     
    on the porch my grandmother wants to come too.
     
    In Geryon’s autobiography
     
    this page has a photograph of some red rabbit giggle tied with a white ribbon.
     
    He has titled it “Jealous of My Little Sensations.”
     
     

XX. AA
     
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    Geryon fell asleep seven or eight times on the way to the volcano.
     
     
    ————
     
    The other two were talking about feminism then life in Hades then unstable bitumen
     
    or was that from
Britannica?
All
     
    the sentences mixed around in Geryon’s drifting drowsing head
men
     
    had to be taught
     
    to hate women for foot massage pumice and ballast on railroad sure
     
    they know how eruption
     
    takes place his little elementary courtesies darting out like a tongue but
     
    how can I talk
     
    to people who don’t know the European experience
—now
     
    jolted awake Geryon
     
    glanced out. The world had gone black and bulbous. Shiny ropes of old lava
     
    rose and fell in every direction
     
    around the car which had come to a halt. Most volcanic rock is basalt.
     
    If it is dark and blocky that means
     
    very little silica in the composition (so the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
).
     
    Very little silica in the composition,
     
    said Geryon as he climbed out. Then the rock silenced him.
     
    It pitched away on all sides
     
    utterly blank except for one crazed blackish unit of intraplate light
     
    bouncing from rock to rock
     
    as if looking for lost kin. Geryon put his foot out to take a step.
     
    The lava emitted
     
    a glassy squeak and he jumped.
Careful,
said Herakles’ grandmother.
     
    Herakles had lifted her out of the back seat,
     
    now she stood leaning on his arm.
The lava dome here is more than ninety percent
     
    glass—rhyolite obsidian they call it. I find
     
    it very beautiful. Has a kind of pulse as you look at it.
She began to move
     
    forward with a tinkling sound
     
    over the black billows.
They say the reason for all these blocks and rubble on top
     
    is strains produced when the glass
     
    chills so rapidly.
She made a little sound.
Reminds me of my marriage.
She
     
    stumbled then and Geryon
     
    caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong.
     
    When is it polite to let go someone’s arm
     
    after you grab it?
     
    Just for an instant balancing on the vitreous surface he went to sleep and awoke
     
    still gripping her arm, Herakles was saying
     
     … in crossword puzzles. It’s the word for blocky lava in Hawaiian.
     
    How do you spell it?
     
    Just like it sounds
—aa. Geryon dozed off, awoke again, they were in the car
     
    already driving away
     
    from the terrible rocks. Up front Herakles and his grandmother had begun
     
    “Joy to the World” in harmony.
     
     

XXI. MEMORY BURN
     
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    Herakles and Geryon had gone to the video store.
     
     
    ————
     
    Full moon sends rapid clouds dashing past a cold sky. When they came back
     
    they were arguing.
     
    It’s not the photograph that disturbs you it’s you don’t understand what photography is.
     
    Photography is disturbing,
said Geryon.
     
    Photography is a way of playing with perceptual relationships.
     
    Well exactly.
     
    But you don’t need a camera to tell you that. What about stars?
     
    Are you going to tell me
     
    none of