Emma Richler Quotes

Rachel believes in it, the laws of of pattern formation and how they are universal: whatever she sees, crystallizing, a landscape of fractals, of emergence and symmetry, her world falling happily into shape where he must forge it, a pioneer of industry, sooty and scarred. For Rachel Wolff, quite simply, there are patterns everywhere, she can't help it; she is an illustrator, naturalist, cartographer - and her eye, a kaleidoscope.

It is perfectly scientific,' Lev protests, rising to draw the heavy dining room curtains against the streetlamp light, reducing it to a glow that bleeds amber round the edges and between the panels of plum brocade. Lev turns back into the room but stays by the window a moment to observe the new play of light, the chandelier casting shards of glitter upon mahogany and bold shadows across the high brow and long sharp plains of Katya's timeless face. Oh my wife.

How one can never truly leave. And never quite return. Do you understand?

Hell! His beard grows fast as blazes, like a damp wicket in springtime sun, green, and Rachel's skin is so fine, his bristles can score her red the way a new ball marks a bat, English alum on English unbleached willow, finest quality, special selection, Rachel-grade. Zach, my man, you have cricket on the brain! Thomas has asked him to play on Sunday. Bring Rachel, he said. Thomas 'All Souls' Aubry, gentleman, corinthian at heart, and half French yet more English than a true-born.

You know how there are words that never really - they are never really quite right. You can't quite trust them. Use them. You know. Without pause.'

'There are words I stare at,' Zach says. 'Strange. Every time. Misled, that's one. I see mizzled. And unshed. I read unched.'

'Me too! But that's a different thing - except, now you mention it, it's odd about unshed, that it's only for tears. Mostly. Hardly ever blood, for instance, you don't see unshed blood. Unched. Not really.'

'Not in my case anyway. Mine sheds all over the joint! I'm a bleeder all right.

Even very great things, he meant, can't last forever. Or beautiful things, I suppose. Those too. Things that don't really need replacing except because they fall apart.

She watches her mother drink, then sits by her again before the picture window to watch the snow fall, watching closely until she can hear it.

. . . Rachel listens to snow. And beyond snow.

Come and kiss me, my darling.

A fighter, muses Rachel, is a fighter through and through, consistently irregular, a fighting man on every scale. Fractal, fractious, with a rough complexity! Nothing she can do. A fractal, Papa once told her, is a way of seeing infinity.

In Zachariah, she sees infinity.

Mandelbrot famously wrote a paper called 'How Long Is the Coast of Britain?,' the answer to which, of course, is that it depends how you look at it. The closer one looks, the larger it is. And more and more intricate, on an infinite scale.

There is a template for all things.

Hopes are so well constructed, so monstrously dashed!

I love your loins, that's all,' Rachel says quietly. 'And now I love the word itself, and how words change, I love that too. And all the parts of you, I love them. That's all. And I'm not sad,' she whispers, gasping a little at the shock of her own tears, hot and extravagant, tears that catch the light in her lashes before they drop and roll across Zach's thighs, sparkling capsules, kaleidoscopic, the flow dynamic.

She pursued his lips,' Zach laughs. 'Another one I misread! Pursued for "pursed." You know. She pursed her lips. So whenever you do that now, reach out and touch my lips to shut me up? I think, she pursued his lips.'

'That's so silly,' smiles Rachel.

'I know that. Now I'm pursuing your lips,' he adds.

When Zach kisses her, Rachel is often aware of the pulse in his lower labial, a small heartbeat there. She is aware of a pulsing and a slight thickening of tissue. How many times has this boy bled from his mouth? How many times.

Zachariah, Zachariah,' whispers Rachel, casting a practised eye over the back of his head and down the length of him, from the shoulder blades where his wings once grew, epochs ago, in some other guise: angel - guardian, avenging - or great vagrant bird - Daurian Jackdaw, Chimney Swift, Pacific Loon!

Go home, Rachel. She so likes to to be there for his return. Zachariah is coming, Zachariah is coming! Rachel is all gravity now, nudged from dreams, a swift transition. Rachel dreams much and often. She is not hunted.

Marry me, Rachel.'

'Not yet.'

'Tomorrow, Rachel. Marry me.'

'Maybe tomorrow.'

'There is no common blood between us. Say it,' pleads Zachariah.

'There is no common blood between us,' murmurs Rachel.

'I am not your brother.'

'I know.'

He traces her face with his swollen fingers, across the brow bones and down the zygomatics, and along the jaw from earlobe to chin, sweeping away the brine as he goes.

'I am your Wolff,' he says.

'And I am your Wolff,' she replies.

Let the day begin.

We'll be up in a minute,' states Katya, speaking from a particular stillness, in sudden recognition of a dream made real, a dream annulled, so she had thought, by long words of the womb - 'endometriosis,' 'hyperplasia' - and now made true, this vision of a boy on a staircase answering to his name, coming to her call. My son. She raises one arm slightly in front of Lev at her side, in gentle impediment. Not yet. Wait here. Let me see. This was always preordained.

I need to tell you a story.'

What about?

Zachariah, Zachariah, my foundling boy. 'A boy. A boxer, a fighting man. A brother. No. About brothers, sisters. Foundlings, laid-in-the-streets. Fights, fighting. A boy, it all begins with the boy. My love. A wolf. Peter and the Wolf! Oh dear! I am very crazy! Let me - I must tell you this story.'

Why?

'I'm frightened.'

Of?

'Fractals. Patterns.'

Ah, says the fish, looking at Rachel with his wise eyes. Chaos!

'Yes,' thinks Rachel. 'Chaos. Fearful symmetry.'

Go home, says the fish, flipping over, flashing in light, and diving down into the great blue sea.

This is not a sweet skein of thought. Unthread it, Rachel.

I know so little, she tells herself again, searching her mother's face. In the end, we know so little.

But it's so silly, Mama!' pipes Zach, protesting with all the might of his twelve-year-old bellows and leaping to his feet, chest puffed, to fling a proprietary arm around his sister who fits so neatly in the crook of him, as if wrought for this place. He speaks for them both, though Rachel is some months his elder.