City of the Beasts Read Online Free PDF

he was turning red. He hesitated a few minutes but finally went up to one of the waiters behind the counter. The man pointed his carving knife in some vague direction, and shouted instructions over the roar in the restaurant, in an accent so thick that Alex didn't understand a word. He decided to use logic: he needed to find out what direction Second Avenue was and then count the streets. Simple. But it didn't seem quite so simple when he found out that he was on Forty-Second Street at Eighth Avenue and figured how far he had to go in that icy cold. He was grateful for his training in mountain climbing; if he could rock climb for six hours, like a fly, he could certainly walk a few blocks on level ground. He zipped up his jacket, tucked his head down between his shoulders, put his hands in his pockets, and started walking.
    It was after midnight and beginning to snow when Alex reached the street his grandmother lived on. The neighborhood looked run-down, dirty, and ugly; there wasn't a tree in sight and it had been some time since he had seen a human being. He thought only someone as desperate as he was would be walking through the dangerous streets of New York City at that hour. The only thing that had saved him from being mugged was that no criminal in his right mind would want to be out in this cold. His grandmother's building was a gray tower in the middle of many other identical towers surrounded by security fences. He rang the bell and immediately the harsh, hoarse voice of Kate answered, asking who it was who had the nerve to bother her at that hour of the night. Alex could tell she had been waiting for him, although of course she would never admit it. He was frozen through and through, and never in his life had he needed so much to throw himself into someone's arms, but when the elevator door finally opened onto the eleventh floor and he was standing before his grandmother, he was determined not to let her see his weakness.
    "Hello, Grandmother," he said as clearly as he could, given the way his teeth were chattering.
    "I've told you not to call me Grandmother!" she scolded.
    "Hi, Kate."
    "You took your time getting here, Alexander."
    "I thought we agreed that you were going to pick me up at the airport," he replied, struggling to hold back the tears.
    "We didn't agree to anything. If you're not capable of getting from the airport to my house, you certainly aren't capable of going into the jungle with me," said Kate. "Take off your jacket and boots. I'll give you a cup of hot chocolate and draw a warm bath for you, but you can be sure I'm doing it only to keep you from getting pneumonia. You have to be healthy for the trip. Don't expect me to pamper you in the future. Understand?"
    "I have never expected you to pamper me," Alex replied.
    "What did you do to your hand?" Kate asked when she saw the soaked bandage.
    "That's a long story."
    Kate's small apartment was dark, crowded, and chaotic. Two windows—the panes were filthy—looked out on a light shaft, and a third faced a brick wall and a fire escape. He saw suitcases, knapsacks, bundles, and boxes in all the corners. Books, newspapers, and magazines were piled on tables. There were human skulls she had brought from Tibet, bows and arrows from African pygmies, funeral vessels from the Atacama Desert, petrified scarabs from Egypt, and a thousand other objects. A long snakeskin stretched the length of one wall. It had belonged to the famous python that had swallowed Kate's camera in Malaysia.
    Until that moment, Alex had never seen his grandmother in her own surroundings, and he had to admit that now, seeing her among her things, she was much more interesting. Kate was sixty-four years old, thin and muscular—pure fiber, and skin like leather from spending so much time outdoors. Her blue eyes, which had seen a lot of the world, were as sharp as daggers' points. Her gray hair, which she herself cut without looking in the mirror, stood out in every direction, as if it