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crash died away into the clink and rattle of individual pieces of glass on the
cobblestones outside, and after a few moments Duffy could hear Bobo's gasping
groans wafting in with the cold breeze that now swept through the hole.
'If there is no one else interested in discussing the price of cattle feed,'
said the victor politely, 'I think I'll leave you after all.' There were no
takers, so he bowed and walked out of the room. Duffy gathered in the coins on
the table top and began doling them out among himself and the two others who'd
bet against Bobo.
There was a quick thumping down the stairs, and then the innkeeper's voice
screeched, 'What the hell's going on? Duffy, why aren't you preventing this?'
'He's taking bets on it,' growled one of the losers.
'Oh, of course!' said Werner with an exaggerated nod. 'What else would a
bouncer do? Listen to me, you old wreck: when Aurelianus gets back here - pray
God it's soon! - you are going to be unemployed. Do you follow me?'
The Irishman pocketed his share and picked up Epiphany's bundle. 'I do.' After
bowing to the company he crossed to the door and stepped outside. The air
still had a bite of morning chill in it, but the sun was well up in the
cloudless sky and steam was curling from the shingles of nearby roofs.
Bobo had got up on his hands and knees and was crawling toward the door. Duffy
dropped several coins where he'd be sure to come across them, and then strode
off, whistling.
Under the gaiety, the Irishman had been obscurely depressed all morning, as he
always was when he intended to look in on Epiphany's invalid father. What is
it, he asked himself now, that upsets me about the old artist? I guess it's
mainly the smell of doom that clings to him. He's so clearly on
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side of Fortune's wheel -studied under Castagno in his youth, was praised by
Dürer himself ten years. ago, and now he's a drunkard going blind, drawing on
the walls of his tawdry
Schottengasse room.
As Duffy turned down the Wallnerstrasse a couple of mongrels smelled the food
in the cloth-wrapped package he was carrying, and pranced around him as he
walked. The street became wider as it neared the northwest face of the city
wall, and the Irishman made his way right down the middle of it, following the
gutter, weaving around vegetable carts and knots of yelling children. Where is
it, he thought, craning his neck; I'm always afraid I've passed it. Ah, right
here. He shook his free arm menacingly. 'Off with you, dogs, this is where we
part company.'
Edging his way out of the traffic flow and pushing open the creaking boarding
house door, the
Irishman stepped reluctantly out of the morning sunlight and into the
stale-smelling dimness of the entryway. Maybe, he thought, what bothers me is
the possibility that I'll be like this myself soon, living in a crummy hole
and mumbling jumbled memories to people who aren't listening anyway.
He crossed the dusty entry, stepped through the stairway door - and froze.
In front of him, beyond a narrow beach, stretched away to the horizon a vast,
listless lake or sea, reflecting with nearly no distortion the full moon that
hung in the deep night sky.
Duffy's stunned mind scrabbled for an explanation like an atheist at the
Second Coming. I was slugged from behind, he thought, and brought here
(Where's here? There's no body of water this size within a hundred miles of
Vienna) and I've been unconscious for hours. I just now came to, and I'm
trying to get away.
He took two paces toward the lake and tripped painfully over the bottom steps
of an old wooden stairway. Leaping to his feet, he stared around him
bewilderedly at the close walls and the stairs. He ran back through the entry
hail to the street, stared hard at the front of the building, the crowded
sunlit street and the blue sky, and then slowly walked back inside.
He winced when he stepped again into the stairwell, but the old, peeling walls
remained solid, almost sneering at him in their mundanity. He clumped
hurriedly up to the second floor and knocked on the door of Vogel's room. Then
he knocked again.
A full minute after his third and loudest series of knocks, a chain rattled
and the door swung inward, revealing the cluttered mess of blankets, books,
bottles and paper-rolls that Duffy had always seen there. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
