he was fully absorbed by the to and fro , the messages and tales of wrists and elbows , shoulders and fingernails , a host of scrapings , drummings and inclines to speak of beer and boast of women and assignations ... on returning to the community he immediately sought out a broad variety of vegetables , carrots , leeks , potatoes and a quantity of oil , long-beans and cabbage and mushrooms to stew with the beef , the liquid a soup for his ailing mother , her pallid flesh in need of support , jerian himself chewing the meat for her to swallow , feeding her , head propped against a sack of apples , the breathing of the fruit to calm her chest , from his own bowl with his own spoon , that which his father had carved on his son 's birth , his coming into the world that was his the everlasting day , his father past , drowned , his mother taken sick having survived the flood the child recalled via the memory of snapping trees , his frail young body saved by its closeness to hers , sucking at her nipple through the storm .