День: 16 апреля 2020

AFTER ABBA PREVO

The last book which I have read during the last period is Manon Lesko after Abba Prevo. I was interested in this book when I watched the film »LAST TEACHER» on TV. I liked the teacher’s approach to the student and when during a lesson he briefly told them about this love story I decided to read it.
The story was about Manon Lesco and Knight de Grieux. The 17-year-old young man fell madly in love with Manon at first sight. She was so young and so beautiful…. The young man, blinded by passion, renounces happiness and willingly indulges in extreme misery. He was sure that his family would never approve his choice but however decided to renounce his bright future and ran away with the Manon to Paris, but soon having returned home earlier than usual, de Grieux learns of Manon’s betrayal with a well-known farmer Mr. de B…who lived in the neighborhood and It was not the first time when he paid a visit to her girl in his absence.
The next day his father’s servants bring him to his father’s house by force where de Grieux tried to forget Manon’s treason and start a new life for a half year. When he returned to Paris to continue training to take the tonsure, he again met Manon. They rented a house in Chaillot and started to live together but soon their house burned down, and during the fire, the chest with their money disappeared. To solve financial problems Manon again decided to »earn» money with old means, only this time she decided to trick her old »victim» but this time she could not deceive him and as a result, they were arrested and sent to prison. From there Manon was sent to America with other 11 girls like her and de Grieux decided to go with her.
At the end of the book, Manon died in the desert. Having buried her, de Grieux laid down on the grave and waited for his death.
The book was easy-read on. It was a nice love story but to be honest I can’t say that I am fascinated by this book. Маybe because I couldn’t understand de Grieux. The betrayal of beloved girl is unforgivable for me but as to say love blinds a person so I can say that I felt sorry for him.

I’m going to tell you about my Aunt Helen’s house. It’s not her main house, that’s in the city. No, this house is by the lake. There was a small town by the lake called Miller’s Ford, but all the people moved away when the fishing and mining stopped about sixty years ago. But the houses stayed, of course. My Aunt Helen uses that house as a vacation home and she goes there for a few weeks every year to relax.

But staying in that house isn’t a relaxing experience. I think the house is haunted! I think there’s a ghost there from many many years ago. Helen says I’m silly and that I’ve got an over-active imagination. But there are many things that happen in that house that cannot be easily explained.

One day, shortly after getting up, I went to find my Aunt Helen to say «good morning» and I heard her talking in a room that she usually never uses. I think it used to be the nursery of the house when Miller’s Ford was a busy town in the 19th Century. I listened at the door and could hear Helen reading something out, or perhaps she was dictating a letter. I couldn’t hear any other person in the room with her so it wasn’t a normal conversation. I didn’t want to disturb my aunt, so I went back downstairs and went to make breakfast in the kitchen, which I ate on the porch that overlooked the lake. It was a beautiful sunny morning. Half an hour later, I heard my aunt’s car arriving. She had been to the local store to buy some bread and milk. I couldn’t believe it!

«What are you looking so shocked for?» she asked me.

«I thought you were in the old nursery, working on your letters, Auntie,» I replied.

«I never go in that room,» she said. «I haven’t been in that room for fifteen years.»

A few other things like that happened over the next few visits I made to that house and I grew to dislike it very much. Then, one day in my local library, I found a story in an old newspaper with the title «The Constant Babysitter». The story was that a baby had died in one of the houses by the lake at Miller’s Ford and the babysitter was blamed, a woman of 37 who was a family friend and had offered to look after the baby. But she spent all her time in the kitchen writing her letters and didn’t know that someone had climbed in the baby’s window and taken her. The baby was never found. The woman killed herself through depression after the baby’s disappearance and local people then said her ghost stayed very close to where the baby was left by the parents — in the nursery.

I never went back to that house, despite my Aunt Helen’s many invitations.

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