Read Online In Red by Magdalena Tulli - Free Book Online Page B

before the war.
    â€œNice clock, it’s a pity to destroy it,” he declared. “But to weigh it the workings will have to be taken out.”
    â€œHe only knows the value of scrap metal,” put in Stefania. She stood abruptly from her armchair; her father’s unstitched frock coat fell from her lap to the floor. “I beg you, father, don’t listen to him. Send him away.”
    â€œThe collar’s all worn,” remarked Felek as he picked up the frock coat. “Are you really going to repair it yourself, Mrs. Stefania?”
    â€œThat’s none of your business, Felek,” said Stefania. The door slammed behind her, and that was the last he saw of her
that afternoon. Little golden angels bore the face of the clock beneath its bell glass; the pendulum swung, tick tock.
    â€œVery well, Mr. Neumann,” Felek murmured. “How much did you want for it?”
    And he paid cash, without haggling. Carrying the unwieldy clock with its angels and pendulum under his arm, he left by the kitchen stairs and came out onto the courtyard. There his head spun from the rainbow of gleaming pink, gold, and pale blue, and his precious new acquisition almost slipped from his grip.
    â€œDawn,” he whispered. He was so astounded he had a coughing fit. He never looked at the sky, and so he had no idea the sunrise could be so beautiful. Given wings by the sight of luminous satins beneath lace and English embroidery light as clouds, he had a yen for something more – but what? His heart suddenly ached from pink-and-gold-and-blue longing, before he realized it was the servants airing out the masters’ bedding. At that point he raised his eyes high up toward the third-floor windows where the curtains were drawn. Concealed somewhere behind them was a silk-wrapped item of furniture with a soft mattress upon which at that very moment Stefania lay sobbing in desperation.
    â€œHa!” said Felek. “You won’t get away from me now.”
    He had a huge mirror put in his hotel room. He was thinking about ordering a new suit; his attention distracted over the accounts, he took fabric samples from Loom’s warehouse out of his pocket. Now the warehouse belonged to him; he kept the
old signboards but sent the former suppliers packing with their prewar materials, for which they charged through the nose.
    â€œToo thick and too stiff,” he would complain, crushing in his fingers the samples from new consignments. “None of this will do.”
    He was also disappointed with the potatoes: whereas before they had brought him nothing but gain, now they rotted in the warehouses before he could turn them into rightful profit.
    â€œServes him right,” the women in line whispered vindictively. “Potatoes like that! At those prices! He got so greedy he must have forgotten that rot’s infectious.”
    In this way the potatoes still owed him something, till finally he realized they’d never quite pay for themselves. Biting his lip in powerless anger, Chmura summoned Adaś.
    â€œYou call these shoes clean?” he shouted, hitting him on his ruddy head with a rolled-up newspaper.
    But even then he never doubted his star. How could he, since it hung right over the town hall tower. The cause of his setbacks soon emerged: the circus banknote, bought for good luck, had in a moment of inattention gotten mixed in with his other hundred-crown bills. Once he realized this he laid them all out on the table like cards for solitaire and studied each one in turn by the light of a lamp, searching for one that was paler than the rest. He found four such notes. He picked them up and put them down again helplessly, continually comparing them one more
time and moving them around, till ash from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth fell on them.
    â€œHow do you like that, goddammit! Look!” he exclaimed, summoning Adaś Rączka with a wave of the hand. “Is there