AudioBook Reading Sample - The Paris Wife
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
the Paris Wife, a novel by Paul in the Claim prologue. So I often looked for one. I finally had to admit there could be no cure for Paris. Part of it was the war. The world had ended once already, and could again at any moment. The war had come and changed us by happening. When everyone said it couldn't, no one knew how many had died. But when you heard the numbers nine million or 14 million, you thought impossible. Paris was full of ghosts and the walking wounded. Many came back to ruin. Or Oak Park. Illinois shot through and carrying little pieces of what they had seen behind their kneecaps, full of an emptiness they could never dislodge. That carried bodies on stretchers, stepping over bodies to do it. They had been on stretchers themselves on slow moving trains, full of flies and floating voices of someone saying he wanted to be remembered to his girl back home. There was no back home anymore, not in the essential way that was part of Paris, too. Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people, no matter what it ruined. Some of us had looked into the faces of the dead and tried not to remember anything in particular. Ernest was one of these, he often said he died in the war, just for a moment that is so had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there, after all, back in its place of saying to himself, if not to anyone else that he had seen with it seemed and felt those terrible things and live anyway that he had died but wasn't dead anymore. One of the best things about Paris was coming back after we'd gone away in 1923 we moved to Toronto for a year to have our son Bumpy, and when we returned, everything was the same. But more somehow it was filthy and gorgeous, full of rats and horse chestnut blossoms, and poetry with the baby or need seemed to double, but we had less to spend. Pound helped us find an apartment on the second floor of a white stucco building on a tight curving street near the Luxembourg Gardens. The black had no hot water, no bathtub, no electric lighting. But it wasn't the worst place we'd live now by a long shot across the courtyard. Sawmill buzz Definitely from seven in the morning until five at night. There was always a smell of fresh cut wood and sawdust filtered in under the windows, cells and door frames, and gotten our clothes and made us cough inside. There was a study report of Ernst Corona in the small room upstairs. He was working on stories. There are always stories or sketches, too, right, but also a new novel about the fiesta in Pamplona that it started in the summer. I wasn't reading the pages then, but I trusted it's feeling about them and trusted the rhythm of every day. Each morning he'd wake early and dress and then go upstairs to his room and again, the days writing if things weren't hitting him there, he take the notebooks and several well sharpened pencils, and we'll do the clothes Ary Delilah's for Kathy Graham, The marble table. He like this while Bumby and I breakfasted alone and then dressed for a walk or went out to see friends in the late afternoon I'd hit home, and if the day had gone well, Ernest would be there at that dining table, looking satisfied with some nice cold cell turns or brandy and seltzer and ready to talk about anything. Oh, we would go out together, leaving Bumby with our land lady, madam Shot are and find a plate of fat oysters and good talk at the select of the dome or the dome Ago, interesting people were everywhere. Just then, the cafe's among porn asked. Breathe the man and out French painters and Russian dancers. American writers. On any given night, you could see Picasso walking from San remain to his apartment in the rue the ground. Christine, always exactly the same route and always looking quietly at everyone and everything. Nearly anyone let feel like a painter walking the streets of Paris because the light brought it out on you and the shadows alongside the buildings and the bridges, which seemed to want to break your heart and the sculpture Lee beautiful women in Chanel's black sheath dresses, smoking and throwing back their heads to laugh. We could walk into any cafe and feel the wonderful chaos of it according per node or room sentia Bay until we were beautifully blurred and happy to be there. Listen, Jon Stewart said one night, we were all very jolly in front. This fish is of the select. What you and him have is perfect. No, no, no. He was slurring out and his face contorted with feeling. It's holy. That's what I meant to say. That's swell of you, Don, you're all right to, you know, a cup, his shoulder lightly. Freddie might cry. He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins. He also wasn't married yet, but there were prospects on the rise, and it was all very important to him to see that marriage could be done gracefully and well. Not everyone believed in marriage. Then to marry was to say, you believed in the future. And in the past two that history, tradition and hope could ST Nick together to hold. Yet the war had come and stolen all the fine young men and our faith to it was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever keep you from thinking there was liquor and an ocean's worth at least all the usual vices and plenty our rope to hang yourself with. But some of us a very few in the end, bet on marriage against the odds. Although I didn't feel wholly exactly, I did feel that we had what we had was rare and true. We were safe in the marriage we've built and we're building every day. This isn't a detective story. Not hardly. I don't want to say Keep watch for the girl who will come along and ruin everything She's coming anyway. Set on our course and a gorgeous chipmunk coat. Find shoes, A sleek brown hair, Bob said, close to her well made head. She seemed like a pretty otter in my kitchen. Her easy smile, her fast, smart talk while in the bedroom, scruffy and unshaven and laid flat out in the bed like a desperate king. Ernest will read his book and care nothing for her, not at first, and the tea will boil in the teapot and I'll tell a story about a girl she and I both knew 100 years ago in ST Louis. And if we'll feel like quick and natural friends well across the yard and saw mill. A dog will start barking and keep barking, and he won't stop for anything.