Dean Koontz: Odd Interlude

Dean Koontz kertoo Odd Thomasin seikkailuista pienessä sivupolussa varsinaisten Odd-romaanien rinnalla: Odd Interlude (Bantam Books, 2013; ISBN 978-0-345-53659-4).



Koontzin tapa kertoa Oddin tarinoita on mukavan jutustelevaa. Näin alkaa tämä teos, kautta rantain mutta hiljalleen kohti varsinaista aihetta liikkuen:

They say that every road leads home if you care to go there. I long for home, for the town of Pico Mundo and the desert in which it blooms, but the roads that I take seem to lead me to one hell after another.

In the front passenger seat of the Mercedes, through the side window, I watch the stars, which appear to be fixed but in fact are ever moving and perpetually receding. They seem eternal, but they are only suns that will burn out one day.

...

I wasn't born to kill. Like all of us, I was born for joy. This broken world, however, breaks most of us, grinding relentlessly on its metaled tracks.

Tässä tarinassa Oddilla on matkakumppanina Annamaria, raskaana oleva nainen jolla tuntuu olevan jopa enemmän salaisuuksia kuin Oddilla, ja erityisen kehittynyt taito pitää salaisuudet omana tietonaan. Näin Koontz kirjoittaa dialogia:

As we reach the foot of the ramp and halt at a stop sign, I say, "You feel it, too?"

"I'm not gifted as you are, odd one. I don't feel such things. But I know."

"What do you know?"

"What I need to know."

"Which is?"

"Which is what is."

"And what is this what-is that you know?"

She smiles. "I know what matters, how it all works, and why."

The smile suggests she enjoys tweaking me by being enigmatic - although there is no meanness in her teasing.

I don't believe there is any deception in her, either. I am convinced she always speaks the truth. And she does not, as it might seem, talk in code. She speaks the truth profoundly but perhaps as poets speak it: obliquely, employing paradox, symbols, metaphors.

Sen verran hyvin kirjoitettu tämä lyhyt kertomus oli, että lainasin saman tien kirjastosta kaksi muuta Odd Thomasista kertovaa kirjaa.