He got a terrible pain in his left eye, and if his arms had not been locked around his wife, he would have clapped a hand to his face. It was painful, like being stabbed, and painful because it brought with it searing, lucid remembrance. Just for an instant, Tomo knew it was not Gob who had died at Chickamauga. His wife, he was sure, must take his screaming as a manifestation of unbearable pleasure.
But the knowledge, like the pleasure, passed in an instant, and he collapsed, still crying out softly, against his wife. There was a confused mess of flame where his mind ought to have been, and he did not know why he was crying. “There now,” his wife said, putting her hand on the back of his neck, and stroking him there. “It wasn’t all that bad, was it, my love?”
“No,” Tomo said. And then he said it over and over, “No, no, no.”
“Go to sleep, now,” his wife said in reply to his continued protest. Tomo became quiet, but the word still echoed in his head. He rolled onto his side and held her even closer, thinking how she was undying, and how he himself was undying, how Heaven waits for the faithful, how a man is such a piece of work that there can be no end to him, and how he wanted to believe that.
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 2002
Copyright © 2000 by Chris Adrian
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
A portion of this book appeared in slightly different form in The New Yorker.
The novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living and dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Broadway edition as follows:
Adrian, Chris, 1970–
Gob’s grief / Chris Adrian—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.D75 G64 2000
813′.6—dc21 00-057912
eISBN: 978-1-4000-7582-9
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Part 1 - Every Night for a Thousand Years
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part 2 - The Glass House
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 3 - The Wonderful Infant
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Copyright