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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 64 из 286You wouldn’t believe how many times he got lostin them fields and almost fell into the torrent and folks had to go find him in the dark with flashlights. Well, his kind might be decent folk, I can’t say, but they’re not like us."
I recited silently to myself:
And I looked toward the valley: it was gone , utterly vanished! A vast flat sea remained , gray , without waves or beaches; all was one. And here and there I noticed , when I strained , the alien clamoring of small , wild voices: birds that had lost their way in that vain land. And high above , the skeletons of beeches as if suspended in the sky , and dreams of ruins and the hermit’s hidden reaches.
But for now, the ruins and hermitages I was seeking, if they existed, were right there in broad daylight, yet no less invisible, for the fog was within me. Or perhaps I should be looking for them in the shadows? The moment had come. I had to enter the central wing.
When I told Amalia that I wanted to go alone, she shook her head and gave me the keys. There were a lot of rooms, it seemed, and Amalia kept them all locked, because you never knew when there might be a ne’er-do-well about. She gave me a bunch of keys, large and small, some of them rusty, telling me that she knew them all by heart, and if I really wanted to go on my own I would just have to try each key in each door. As if to say, "Serves you right, you’re just as headstrong now as when you were little."
Amalia must have been up there in the early morning. The shutters, which had been closed the day before, were now partly open, just enough to let light into the corridors and rooms so you could see where you were going. Despite the fact that Amalia came from time to time to air the place out, there was a musty smell. It was not bad, it simply seemed to have been exuded by the antique furniture, the ceiling beams, the white fabric draped over the armchairs (shouldn’t Lenin have been sitting there?).
Never mind the adventure, the trying and retrying of the keys, that made me feel like the head jailer at Alcatraz. The stairway led up into a room, a sort of well-furnished antechamber, with those Lenin chairs and some horrible landscapes, oils in the style of the nineteenth century, nicely framed on the walls. I had yet to get a sense of my grandfather’s tastes, but Paola had described him as a curious collector: he could not have loved those daubs. They must have been in the family, then, maybe the painting exercises of some great-grandparent. That said, in the penumbra of that room they were barely noticeable-dark blotches on the walls-and maybe it was right that they were there.
I recited silently to myself:
And I looked toward the valley: it was gone , utterly vanished! A vast flat sea remained , gray , without waves or beaches; all was one. And here and there I noticed , when I strained , the alien clamoring of small , wild voices: birds that had lost their way in that vain land. And high above , the skeletons of beeches as if suspended in the sky , and dreams of ruins and the hermit’s hidden reaches.
But for now, the ruins and hermitages I was seeking, if they existed, were right there in broad daylight, yet no less invisible, for the fog was within me. Or perhaps I should be looking for them in the shadows? The moment had come. I had to enter the central wing.
When I told Amalia that I wanted to go alone, she shook her head and gave me the keys. There were a lot of rooms, it seemed, and Amalia kept them all locked, because you never knew when there might be a ne’er-do-well about. She gave me a bunch of keys, large and small, some of them rusty, telling me that she knew them all by heart, and if I really wanted to go on my own I would just have to try each key in each door. As if to say, "Serves you right, you’re just as headstrong now as when you were little."
Amalia must have been up there in the early morning. The shutters, which had been closed the day before, were now partly open, just enough to let light into the corridors and rooms so you could see where you were going. Despite the fact that Amalia came from time to time to air the place out, there was a musty smell. It was not bad, it simply seemed to have been exuded by the antique furniture, the ceiling beams, the white fabric draped over the armchairs (shouldn’t Lenin have been sitting there?).
Never mind the adventure, the trying and retrying of the keys, that made me feel like the head jailer at Alcatraz. The stairway led up into a room, a sort of well-furnished antechamber, with those Lenin chairs and some horrible landscapes, oils in the style of the nineteenth century, nicely framed on the walls. I had yet to get a sense of my grandfather’s tastes, but Paola had described him as a curious collector: he could not have loved those daubs. They must have been in the family, then, maybe the painting exercises of some great-grandparent. That said, in the penumbra of that room they were barely noticeable-dark blotches on the walls-and maybe it was right that they were there.