Extreme Magic Read Online Free PDF

Ernest.
    “Well, if he’s so top-drawer, what’s he doing over here?”
    “He never said anything about what he is,” said Ernest, losing his stammer. “It’s you. He just wants to be polite. And I think he’s very straightforward.”
    “Oh-h—you. You didn’t even have the spirit to stand up for Hans.”
    Upstairs, Alastair, whose frank estimate of himself would have been no closer to Ernest’s than to Portia-Lou’s, was looking in a mirror at his tongue. Yes, it had a boil on it, from the food here—not quite what Americans abroad had led him to expect. He touched the spot with iodine, then took out a pocket notebook in which, after chewing his pencil for a minute, he wrote, “Can’t refer openly to origins, as we do. Affronts them.” He was snoring by the time Mrs. Mabie, nudging Ernest, who had also begun to snore, wanted to know the name of that girl, the earl’s daughter, the one who had fallen in love with Hitler.
    A few days later, Weil, catching sight of Mr. Pines chatting with the pretty stenographer in the outer office, invited him for lunch.
    “Righto. ’Bye, Janice.”
    “’Bye, Mr. Pines.”
    “Ah now, remember,” said Pines as they left. “Just call me Al.”
    They found a table in the cafeteria on the floor below. “Pretty girl,” said Mr. Pines. “She don’t mind teaching me American.”
    “Careful you don’t teach her anything else,” said Weil. “This is a pious campus.”
    “Not likely. Still, women are so much more irreligious than men, don’t you think? Shocking, what some of them will do.”
    “Mm,” said Weil. Though still liking Mr. Pines, he was beginning to place him rather more accurately than had the Mabies. “And how are you getting along in your quarters?”
    “Oh, that’s another cup of tea. Perhaps you can set me right on that, sir. Mrs. Mabie, would she be—a bit on the barmy side?”
    “No-o. Just—exaggerated. Why?”
    “Well, the last few days she’s got very chatty, in a very odd way. I don’t mind her wanting me to natter on about myself, where I’ve been, what I’ve done, politics and all that, but—it’s as if she’s trying to catch me out.” Pines hesitated. “With what we’ve been told at home about things here—do you think she’s trying to make me out a Communist?”
    “Are you?” said Weil.
    “No. Labor. But surely that—?”
    “Oh no, you are safe. Each visitor here is allowed certain national idiosyncrasies. That one happens to be yours.”
    “Well then, I wonder, I do,” said Alastair. “You see, although I don’t like to say this, I’m rather certain she’s been going through my things.”
    Later, sometime after nine that evening, the Mabies and the Weils faced each other over the latter’s dining-room table. Portia-Lou, sitting tall in the fullness of confession, had just refused a proffered slice of Nüsstorte.
    “So,” said the professor. “So Mr. Pines has skis from Garmisch, and his camera is an I.K.G.—as mine would be if I still had them. So he has, among souvenirs from Tangier and Castellammare, also some from Nüremberg—and among his billets-doux a bundle calling him Putzi. Ach, Portia! So during the war he flies over the Alps—and during the occupation he skis over them!” He flung up his hands. “So that makes this—this R.A.F. Spitzbub’ —a Nazi?” He pushed his cup toward Hertha for more coffee. “Excuse me, I would laugh, if I could yet laugh at that word.”
    “But Hans, it’s not just that—it’s…other attitudes,” said Portia.
    “Ah, so, you are still sore at him because he does not act the way you expected. Excuse me again from your attitudes. I know them. Arrières pensées, ten or fifteen years behind the times. Like the Paris styles, by the time they come to Posen.”
    “Na, na, Hans, halt dein Mund!” said Hertha.
    “Ernest,” said Weil, “you will understand. We cannot have this gossiped in the college, on no provocation. Hertha and I have talked it over this