city lay a charnel house built multi-layered bones centuries older lay — P.D. James, Private Patient

Norway Timelapse
PlayPlay

previous arrow
next arrow
Norway Timelapse
Budapest Timelapse
Iceland Timelapse
Berlin Timelapse
London Timelapse
previous arrow
next arrow

The city which lay below was a charnel house built on multi-layered bones centuries older than those which lay beneath the cities of Hamburg or Dresden. Was this knowledge part of the mystery it held for her, a mystery felt most strongly on a bell-chimed Sunday on her solitary exploration of its hidden alleys and squares? Time had fascinated her from childhood, its apparent power to move at different speeds, the dissolution it wrought on minds and bodies, her sense that each moment, all moments past and those to come, were fused into an illusory present which with every breath became the unalterable, indestructible past. In the City of London these moments were caught and solidified in stone and brick, in churches and monuments and in bridges which spanned the grey-brown ever-flowing Thames. She would walk out in spring or summer as early as six o'clock, double-locking the front door behind her, stepping into a silence more profound and mysterious than the absence of noise. Sometimes in this solitary perambulation it seenmed that her own footsteps were muted, as if some part of her were afraid to waken the dead who had walked thse streets and had known the same silence.

P.D. James, The Private Patient

Related Authors: P.D. James | The Private Patient

Related Topics: history, london, past, time

Topics:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *