Camilla Read Online Free PDF Page A

mountain; but I just shook hands with her and went out into the restaurant again.
    When I got back to the table my father was very worried and very sweet to me and he paid the bill and we left the restaurant. Outside it had stopped raining and turned much colder. Clouds were breaking up and racing across the sky, and the sidewalk had almost dried except for where it was uneven and the puddles lay like dark shadows in the night.
    â€œShall we get a taxi or would it make you feel better to walk a little?” my father asked.
    â€œLet’s walk,” I said. The black shocking air felt wonderful to my hot cheeks. I looked up and through a big rip in the clouds I saw a star; and I wished. Luisa thinks it is terrible for me to wish on stars, but I know she wishes on them herself; and I like to do it even though it isn’t scientific. I think that it is good to believe in things like wishing on stars but bad to believe in things like black cats crossing your path and seeing the new moon through glass. I like wishbones, too, and wishing on the first bite of a birthday cake; and Luisa and I have always said “bread and butter” when a lamppost or anything goes between us, though I’m not sure that that is as constructive a superstition as the others.
    â€œDid you know that there are meteoric showers in winter?” I asked my father. “There are the Ursids and the EpsilonArietids and the Orionids. And there are the Taurids and the Andromedids. Aren’t those beautiful words, Father?”
    â€œYes,” my father said, and all the rest of the way home we did not say another word. But he held my hand in his—we both had our gloves in our pockets in spite of the cold wind—and every once in a while my father would press my hand with his strong fingers. We walked up Second Avenue for a while and then we turned west toward Third, and again an el train went by with the lights warmly yellow in the windows; it looked as though everybody inside must be comfortable and companionable and perhaps even talking together to help keep the night out of the train. But I knew that in reality they were probably tired and cross and in a hurry to get home and change into dry slippers; or perhaps some of them might have no place to go except a flophouse, or not even a quarter for that, and were waiting for a chance to spread out a newspaper on one of the seats and sleep there.
    When we got to the apartment my father asked, “Do you feel better, dear?”
    â€œYes,” I said. But I did not want to go into the house. I wanted my father to go in and leave me outside to walk and walk out on the streets and maybe go into Central Park and sit down on a bench and talk to someone else who wanted to be out all night walking too.
    But my father pressed my hand again and we went upstairs. We went into the living room; it was dark there, but my father did not turn on the lights. We walked over to the window and stood looking out. From the living-room windows you can see across Central Park to the apartments on Central Park West and you can see Radio City and Essex House and Hampshire House and the tip of the Empire StateBuilding and it is all more beautiful even than pictures of the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon.
    â€œCamilla,” my father said, “Camilla, I was mad or drunk or both. I shouldn’t have—” and then he didn’t say anything more.
    I waited awhile and he just stood there beside me and held my hand so tightly that I could feel my bones creaking together, and at last I said, “It’s all right, Father.”
    â€œIs it, Camilla?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” I said, and I tried to make my voice sound very firm.
    My father let my hand go then and said, “Let’s go see if your mother is awake.”
    We walked very softly to my mother’s room. It is my father’s room, too, in that he sleeps there, but the room that we call his room is his