TIME
We can find a lot
of adverbs and expressions showing the duration of a time or the time the fact
had place though being not concrete; tonight,
soon, at the last moment, now it’s midnight, since one this afternoon, fifteen
minutes ago, still, until, a few weeks, over immediately, when, already, later
in the week, that first day, during those weeks, every other day or so, eventually, never, since last spring, the other
day, for the first time, etc.
Another thing that
has called my attention is that the author knows how to represent short
portions of time which express a moment full of feelings as this one, so you,
the reader, can imagine the moment exactly as if you were part of the situation
itself. As an example we can use the sentence “Until their masked noses almost touch.”
However, there
also some phrases and sentences that mention particular times although we don’t
know what day, week, month or year they belong to:
“Eight forty-one, the circulating nurse
calls” we don’t know the day it belongs to.
“Even
at the beginning of October, Margot believed that Val's inappropriate behaviour
indicated an attention disorder.”
“He sends Val long letters on Mondays and Saturdays.” It’s
Beck who sent that letters.
“The cool print of your kiss melted from my
cheek in the October breeze.” When Dan is with Bou
drinking wine it’s October.
“After a moment the air smelled like
summer” so we can imagine that moment the main character was
talking with Margot happens in summer.
Beck
Margot and Zubir used to play in a band. We know they
played every Thursday. “They needed a
drummer, and the trio, christened The Tone Wizards in time for the first of
their Thursday gigs at the Tahonga, would have been a
quartet.”
There are also
expressions that deal with time in a different way, pointing out time but even
less specific than the former one, as it follows:
“Aquarius, I told her.” When Dan is
talking with Madame Lagache. So we knew the
birth of the main character was in January.
“Her hair hung in black curlicues over the navy sweatshirt she wore
three days out of four.” When Dan is
describing Margot.
The writer also talks about
the time he’s writing;
“Joel's my fellow fourth-year subintern.”
We
know he’s been working at that hospital for four years.
“She's been in the hospital since one this
afternoon.” Says Dan about the woman who is
going to have a baby.
There
are other sentences which can show more exact dates, as when Daniel is talking
with Madame Lagache citing a lot of books and talking
about history among others.
“Ars Moriendi, The Art of Nourishment,
first published in
“The first one she opened for me was Bourrit's account of the first ascent of
“The Masons are the Lost Tribe of
“Dozens of planets were diagrammed in
their orbits on the morning of September 5, 1638, at 2:38.” Talking
about Louis XIV birth.
“The Franco-Dutch War, the Great Winter of
“And why had she
asked me about my father when we were in the end of the seventeenth century?”
“I'd say the hospital is now hovering in
the late '50s”, says Dan while thinking on the hospital where he
works. Here we find an exact time despite I think this date functions more as
an adjective than as a real date.
“I’m not in October 1992, and I haven't
even decided if I want to be.” Now Dan is explaining why he is
going to write these letters.
There are other
examples of retrospection inside the retrospection itself, that is to say, when
Dan is writing the letter he’s making a retrospection in which a lot of feelings
and thoughts drive us to a further time;
The main character also talks
about his mother’s death although we don’t know when it exactly happened we can
observe, through the context, that he was a child then.
. “I didn't have to ask him where she
was. I knew I wasn't going to see her anymore, but I also knew that I'd never
be without her.” Here, ‘him’ refers
to his father.
We also know that
Beck’s brother died 11 years ago from the time Dan is writing the letters. Margot shrugged. “Nathan had been dead for
seven years.”
Dan also points
out; “I didn't meet Margot until I'd
finished college, and I was fifteen months older than she was.” We know she is older than him, but not the age.
Margot says to Dan
“You know she
did ballet when she was little, before she started riding all the time.” They
are talking about Bou.
“There you were again, an eight-year-old
rider in a hard cap, boots, tiny jodhpurs, like a young Princess Anne.” Here Dan is
describing Bou at the same letter he addresses to her
and we find the exactly time she rode horses.
“When she was six, Mam
took her down to
“His guilt over Ralph Powers, the boy in
his fourth grade class whose lost eye he felt responsible for, though it had
never been conclusively established that it had been Beck's jump from the sled
that had sent Ralph into a fire hydrant.” The main character talking
about Beck.
“She
was just there the first week.” We can
also now that Valerie (Beck’s girlfriend or a kind of friend) was in the flat
with Margot the first week.
Margot told him
that one of her teachers wanted to get a divorce so the teacher said he loved
her. Margot thinks they could have had nice years until she graduate. Then she
was 16 as Dan says “You were sixteen”,
to what Margot answers “We would have
been cool for a few years, until I graduated”.
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Thalia Mar Asensio Cuevasanta
tacue@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press