Love in a Bottle Read Online Free PDF Page B

got to you, and now I have nothing to give my betrothed. Do you know what, Ajándok? I shall give you this book. You don’t yet know how to use it; I am the only one who knows how to do that. But… when I have a home, what need will I have of it then, and what will my loss of wisdom mean to anyone? I shall give it to you—when we get to the end of the village.”
    The child waiting to be born rushed up to them, his tiny hands raised in the air. The cheerful babble filled their hearts with a feeling of benevolence, and they stood there, the pride and joy of the village.
    But the night was waning, and they still had a way to go. Here and there the first faint colours were already dappling the white walls of the houses, and the air was chill.
    They went on to within a stone’s throw of the end of the village. There they stopped outside a house with a fearsome reputation. The owner was a wicked man, drunk and boorish, the associate of thieves. Ajándok drew closer to her betrothed. She no longer felt anger now towards the malefactor because, in her dream, she knew her husband would take good care of her; and they now had a child, a beautiful child with large, beautiful eyes.
    Then the scholar opened his book, and studied it for a long time. Slowly the colour drained from his face. He slumped against the sharp fence, beat his brow and looked distraught for what seemed an age, then he suddenly seized the terrified Ajándok by the shoulder and demanded: “Ajándok, what shall we call our child?”
    In her terror she could not reply.
    â€œHis name will be Never Was, because we never shall have children. Get up. Clear off out of here. We shall never see each other again!”
    Then he collapsed in misery against the fence. Ajándok just stood there, wringing her hands. She felt everything slipping away through her fingers.
    The scholar looked up at her. “Are you still here, Ajándok? It’s no use. It’s written here. I can’t help it. And even if I tried, it would be no use. There are even more terrible things in this book, and even worse things inside me. Off you go, Ajándok, and pray for my soul. Pray for the damned.”
    Ajándok stood shivering in the chilly dawn, then buried herself in his arms: “I shall never leave you, I shall never ever leave you!”
    And though her blood froze in her veins when she saw what would have to be, she did not move from his side. But he never spared her a glance. Pulling his cloak around him, he stepped quietly up to the window of the house. Inside lay the child, sleeping open-mouthed in its cot. The scholar pressed his deathly pale face against the window and stared boldly into the room: his glance was so terrible and so fierce that Ajándok steeled herself to place her hand in front of his eyes to protect the child, before she realised that that terrible look would have bored right through her bloodless fingers. Dreadful minutes passed while he continued to stare; then the child woke and gazed at the window in wide-eyed astonishment. Suddenly its two eyes darkened, and it burst into a faltering, abandoned cry. The cry produced sounds of movement inside the house, the scholar seized Ajándok and hauled her after him as he ran. They ran like murderers being driven off with pitchforks.
    The rim of the sky was already pale, and a great cloud was passing solemnly overhead, like a dragon emerging from a swamp, as they do at the approach of sunrise. The air was heavy, as before a storm, when the trees dare notmove but huddle with hunched shoulders, awaiting judgement . They finally stopped a little way beyond the village, where the marshland began. The scholar sat down on a boundary stone and spoke:
    â€œSee, I pass back and forth over the land like a hailstorm . I am a thing of ill omen, the secret horror of whispered prayers. Ajándok, many times in the past you have been terrified by the mere sound of my name, but to set