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withdrawn. Ahead was the desk. He walked toward it, the tall man behind him. Mikkelson? It was a heavy voice from behind the desk, hoarse and mechanical as the grating of a spade on concrete. There s a guest, answered the tall man from behind Barin s shoulder, in his sad, tired voice. Beyond the counter of the desk, a cubbyhole reached back into obscurity. At the counter, a pale patch of light from the distant window fell on the grained wood and the stiff white pages of an open guest book just turned, evidently, to a new page, for there were no signatures upon it. There was the squeak of a chair from the darkness and the heavy, creaking steps of a large man; a thick form loomed up out of the cubbyhole to stand with belly pressed against the worn inner edge of the counter. Barin looked into a wide face, the face of a man past middle age, heavy-lipped and broad-nosed, above a thick, coarse body loosened only slightly from a younger strength. For how long? The hoarse voice was now directed at Barin. A couple of days maybe three. Again Barin thought he caught the trailing wisp of a sigh from the man behind him. He added quickly, to forestall questions, I m a photographer. A writer. I m doing a piece on the woods up here. I d like to explore a bit for a day or two. Sign. One thick hand swiveled the guest book toward him. Another passed him the stub of a pencil on the end of a string. He took it and signed. He laid it down and looked up into the face of the man behind the desk. I ll be eating my meals in town, he said. Any idea where He left the question hanging, but the man behind the desk did not take it up and a long silence drew itself out between them. Certainly you Rosach The voice of the tall man again. We can take care of you, said Rosach, abruptly. Not now. Too late. Breakfast. Oh, said Barin; and he tried to sound disappointed, although he did not feel Page 69 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html hungry. Any place else in town? No . Rosach reached under the counter and produced a key. Up there, he said, jerking a thumb to his left. Second door on the right. Barin turned and looked, seeing what he had not noticed before, a narrow stairway that led up and back from beside the desk. Thank you, he said, taking the cold metal of the key into the palm of his hand. He picked up the suitcase he had brought in with him and started up. At the turn of the stairs, he hesitated for a second and looked back. He could see the two faces, the heavy and the sad, upturned to him, caught in the patch of light from the desk and watching after him. He went on up the stairs, emerging at the top into a long, narrow corridor, lit at the far end by a window which still gave on the fading sky. He moved down it, his shoes giving off no sound against the hall carpet. And, as he went, a girl emerged from one of the rooms farther down the hall and came toward him. She was dressed in a simple, loose dress of some dark color and the blackness of her hair was gathered together in a bun at the back of her head. Although she could not avoid seeing him, she gave no sign of it and came toward him, looking through and past him, carrying some towels over her arm. He reached his door before he met her; and turned to insert the key in the lock. It was his intention to stop her as she passed, to ask her some small question about the bedsheets or the location of the bathroom. But her indifference to his presence made him hesitate; and he stepped back out of her way, as her dress passed him. In the light of the distant window her face stood out sharp and clear. It was unadorned and serious, the pale, white skin thinly stretched over the delicate bones of the face, the lips soft and straight and with two slight shadows under the narrow protrusion of her cheekbones. He saw her in profile as she went by; and his breath caught, because for a second the shadow below the near cheekbone was gone, the graceful line of the narrow jaw, the smooth, high forehead, outlined against the dark wall opposite and it was as if he gazed at his secret cameo. ========== He woke to lethargy, and gazed dully about the dingy room, wondering at himself and his whereabouts in that little uncertainty that always followed his wakening. He must have gone to bed immediately on entering his room the evening before, because all he could remember were the wild fantasies of his dreams his dreams about the girl who resembled exactly that cameo about which no one in the world had known, but himself. It was a cameo he had stolen from a house locked up for the summer, back when he had been a boy. He had kept it secretly to himself and woven about it dark dreams of a strange love of the flesh. He still had it, locked in his safety deposit box, back in the city. Not even Ellen knew about it Ellen, whom he had now decided to marry, just before he had slipped away on this final trip. It belonged to that dark side of him that he intended to bury forever. Now there was no thought of Ellen, or the magazine article he had come up here to do. A sullen fire burned in him. Before it, the life he had envisioned with Ellen, and his work, were darkly shadowed. He had come up here on a hint, a breath of rumor from the country about this village. The people outside it considered it to be haunted in some strange way haunted, in this day and age! He had laughed. But it had attracted him. A good chance, he had thought, for a humorous article on back-country superstitions. Now, he was no longer interested. It was the girl that demanded all his attention, the girl in the corridor. He washed and shaved himself quickly in the veined washbowl of the bathroom Page 70 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html down the hall, dressed and went downstairs. Behind the desk, the unchanging darkness seemed vacant of all life. He hunted by himself for the dining room and found it at the end of the passageway he had noticed when he had first stepped in. A small room with three square tables and a row of windows along one wall. He sat down and rang the little bell that stood with its dull silver gleaming the center of the white and threadbare tablecloth. The tiny tinkle sounded in the room and echoed away through the half-open door that led beyond, he surmised, to the kitchen. He lit a cigarette, and waited. It would, he thought, looking out the window, be another hot day. The haze was already stirring the air above the street; and the hot glare of the sun, reaching him through the glass, was no aid in rousing him from the lethargy with which he had awakened, but reached into him with smouldering sullenness and stirred something thick and hot within the animal part of him. He felt at once dull and eager, with the feverish urge to concupiscence induced by sickness and being long in bed. The smoke from his cigarette went nowhere, but coiled about him, hanging in the still air; and he waited impatiently for his service. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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