Mefisto Read Online Free PDF Page B

stood still, hearing my own breathing, and the wind churning in the trees behind me. My hands were rank with the catpiss smell of privet. Mr Kasperl was walking in the meadow, with a girl at his side. I recognized him at once, there was no mistaking that pigeon-toed gait. Today he wore a shabby white linen jacket and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and was carrying a cane, with which he cuffed the grass idly as he walked. The girl was tall and pale, with long heavy dark hair. Was she clutching a posy of wildflowers? No, no. Her flowered skirt reached to the ground. I noticed the tips of her black pumps, like demure little tongues, peeping out, turn and turn about, at each step, from under the billowing hem, that was damp from the deep grass, and stuck with hayseeds and the dust of buttercups. Mr Kasperl stopped, and lifted his head and looked about him, at the sky, the swaying trees, puffing contemplatively on his cigar, which I could smell even at that distance. The girl went on a little way, but then she stopped too, and stood blankly gazing, her arms hanging at her sides. There was about the two of them a sense of oppression, of stifled restlessness, as if they were captives and this was their daily sip of freedom. I felt an itch of excitement, skulking there in the gloom amid the fleshy odours of leaf and loam. Then nearby something stirred, and my heart plopped on its elastic. Not ten yards from me, leaning against a riven tree, or twined about it, as it seemed at first, was a young man, who must have been there all the time, watching me, while I was watching the others. He was thin, with a narrow foxy face and high cheekbones and a long, tapering jaw. His skin was pale as paper, his hair a vivid red. He wore a shabby pinstriped suit, that had been tailored for someone more robust than he, and a grimy white shirt without a collar. He detached himself from the tree and came forward, examining me with amiable interest.
    – What’s your name, my man? he said,
    – Swan, sir.
    He fell back a pace with an extravagant stare, pressing a hand to his breast.
    – Swansir ?
    – No, sir. Swan.
    – Aha. A cygnet, by Jove.
    He took out a dented tin box half filled with cigarette butts, selected one with care, and lit it. He had bad teeth, and a tremor in his hands. He smoked in silence thoughtfully, his head tilted, looking at me with one eye shut.
    – My name, he said, is Felix.
    He grinned, showing a blackened eye-tooth. The fat man and the girl had advanced across the grass, and stood now below us at the edge of the copse, bending forward a little out of the glare and peering up at us with impassive attention. The girl’s long, heart-shaped face was slightly lopsided, as if the left half had slipped a fraction, giving her an expression at once eager and wistful. She was older than I had first thought, a woman, almost. Felix turned to them and called out:
    – Swan, he says his name is.
    They made no reply, and he looked at me again and winked.
    – That, he said, pointing with his thumb, that is Mr Kasperl.
    I began to back away. The girl smiled at me suddenly, and touched the fat man on the shoulder and made a complicated gesture with her hands, but he paid her no heed. Felix, watching me retreat, flicked away his fag-end, and slid his hands into his pockets and grinned.
    – Bye bye, bird-boy, he said.
    I hurried down the tree-lined avenue, prey to a kind of brimming agitation. I could still see vividly Mr Kasperl’s seagull eye, Felix’s white, hairless wrists, the girl’s sudden smile. Wind roared through the tops of the trees, like something plunging past on its way to wreak havoc elsewhere. I came to the main road, and did not look back. When I got home the house seemed altered, as if some small, familiar thing had been quietly removed.
    I next saw Felix and the fat man at Black’s Hotel, where my aunt was the manageress. It was morning, and the place had a hangover smell. In the bar the chairs were stacked on the tops of