Illustrious beef obsceneIT IS NOT WITHIN VIEW of my native Puy-de-D?me that I am speaking to you, this evening, it’s in St Moritz, overlooking the Bernina Pass; it’s not in our gloomy house where, one day, a proud and inscrutable little girl was taken in, without affection or warmth, that I begin telling you the story of my past life; it’s in a brightly lithotel, where the rich take their pleasure and their laborious rest. But for me, in the Switzerland of today just as in the Auvergne of yesteryear, I have only ever found loneliness. No one knows precisely where the crater is, precisely where the lava spews up out of the earth. It’s impossible to pinpoint, like the craters in the volcanic zones of our souls. He studied her. The hint of defiance in her voice was something new. She was watching Jessica, who now sang an old Scottish droving song as she carried a bar of lye soap and a long-handled brush into the shed.“Jess has family there, among those Susquehanna Scots,” Sarah added, then cocked her head toward Conawago, who had lit his clay pipe and was watching the shed with unexpected, though weary, amusement. I travelled with both the Sert households (firstly, with Misia, then, after his divorce, with Russy Mdivani); two consecutive and very different wives; but Jojo—or Maidi, a simian nickname that Russy gave him—was always a wonderful companion. Sert was not a dandy; he was not interested in gossip; he lived so that he could express a personality that his monumental, colossal, colourful rococo paintings were not entirely able to do. He only liked things on a vast scale, kilometres of frescoes, palaces that could be assaulted by a busy, frivolous paintbrush; he was very eager for commissions, extremely clever at soliciting them, and he would begin again three times, as he did at Vich, working on a cathedral whose decorations failed to satisfy him. He threw himself at life with a voraciousness that did not exclude subtlety. He leant inside and struck a match. The corpse, shaken into an untidy heap, lay between the seat and the suitcases. “Because you’re jealous of her?” Shut up, you old cow, says Edda. Duncan stared at him in frustration. He was the messenger who never understood his messages. Duncan opened the box again, puzzling once more over the contents. Surely men weren’t dying for some ancient petrifications. He noticed now a sheet of paper that had fallen to the side of the box. It was addressed not to Franklin butTo My Noble Friends, followed by three Latin words,Audentes fortuna juvat, and signed, with a flourish familiar to Duncan,Sir William.Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune assists the daring. I know. “You shouldn’t be so nosy.” The first cop turned me around and took off the cuffs. I resisted rubbing my wrists— I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. “Can I trust you, Mr. Townsend?” Duncan asked. “Daddy?” “Damn y’er eyes!” Before Duncan could react, Morris moved with lightning speed, shouldering Larkin aside and slamming his fist into Duncan’s belly. “We know the bastards’ tricks! If they can’t beat it out of us they try to scare it out of us!” As Duncan staggered, two others seized his arms to hold him for his assailant. The furious sergeant had landed a third blow before Duncan was able to summon his strength, bracing against the men who held him and landing a kick on Morris’s belly that sent him reeling backward. The boy gave a solemn nod, then pushed the flour sack looped over his shoulder to his back, and bent to help lift Woolford.. |