at once. “It looks like rain,” Delage wasabout to say, or better still, “It rains more in Vienna than Sydney,” but instead he opened and twisted his mouth, as if it was filled with water. Aside from drawing attention to the obvious (it had begun raining) it would only give the impression he was in awkward anticipation of the next few minutes. More and more he realized he stated the obvious in order to assist the other person, it’s better to say very little, or indicate a certain amount of reserve, which at least had the merit of not appearing hasty, and suggested a degree of wisdom, taking her arm crossing the street, she was at least ten years younger—which gave her the advantage. Often Delage was unsure of what expression to have on his face, especially when alone on a street or standing around waiting for somebody; not long ago his sister had caught him pulling faces in her kitchen, when he made the mistake of visiting her in Ashgrove, Brisbane, she said it showed he hadn’t grown up. Only a man who isn’t comfortable with himself pulled silly faces, as she put it, not stopping there as she rattled the pots and pans, most men she knew were infantile, they suffered from “infantile paralysis,” which was a nuisance, she added with a firmness Delage found irritating. She was prone to exaggerations. There was no reason behind most of the things she said. As far as he knew, she had little or no experience of men, it was a wonder she’d ever sat alone in a room with one. At least he had been married, “Victoria”—an initial starburst, it didn’t last. It became uneven, he could feel it loosening, a marriage with holes in it, so many he didn’t quite know where the marriage itself was, still it went on, two people together but turning away, whenthe design of the new piano was at its most intractable, as intractable as the problems of his marriage, which made it easier, he told himself, not to be there. Living alone had not been his sister’s choice, Delage could see, she swung her exaggerations around to him, her brother who managed to live in another city. Each morning Delage woke and enjoyed a sense of well-being, there was clarity, the whole day spread out before him. Delage didn’t mind living alone, it was something he never thought about, now here he was on a ship in a carpeted cabin with Elisabeth von Schalla, a woman at least ten years younger; she had more or less moved in without asking. “I’ve decided to take less interest in concert grands. I’m sick of them. I’m going to focus all my tremendous energies on people, beginning with people I already know,” he told Elisabeth, although he could have been talking to the sky. “What do you say? Forget it, I’m just thinking aloud.” Of course he wasn’t about to finish with the Delage piano, what with all its inventions (patents pend.), the various refinements, just because he’d come up against a few difficulties in Vienna. “You may have left it too late,” was her reply. Having crossed the street he wanted to know where they were going. It was here on Karolinengasse, she stopped in front of the building, where a piano being lifted through a window slipped out of its sling, cartwheeled five stories onto the footpath “this far from me,” she bent her arm at the elbow, aged seventeen, a student, the piano’s lid smashing into the windscreen of a parked car. She leaned against him, “I was only seventeen. I could have been killed.” “What we call a close shave,” Delage looking up at thewindow. A close call. “There’s more metal than people think in a piano. You’d end up being this high. You would have been splattered all over the place. Blood everywhere. Bones sticking out in all directions. Did it leave a hole in the footpath—or even a dent? They can cause a serious injury too.” Elisabeth had stopped walking. “I don’t think you are treating me seriously.” Exaggeration had brought them closer, although he was
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