Mood Indigo Read Online Free PDF Page B

bathroom and into the bedroom and slipped on his jacket, picked himself up, and put it on.
    â€˜Nicholas must have gone … He must know some crazy girls … They say that all the girls where he comes from go to work as maids of practically all trades for philosophers …’
    He closed the bedroom door behind him.
    â€˜There’s a slight tear in the lining of my left sleeve … And there’s no insulating tape left … Too bad, I’ll use a nail.’
    The flat door slammed behind him with a noise like a naked hand slapping a bare bottom … He began to tremble …
    â€˜I must think of something else … Suppose I break my neck going down the stairs …’
    The staircase carpet – very pale mauve – only showed signs of wear on every third tread because Colin always went down four at a time. He caught his feet in a chromium stairrod and became entangled in the banisters.
    â€˜That’ll teach me to think nonsense. Serves me right. I am stupid, the butcher-boy is stupid, the …’
    There was pain in his back. He understood why when hereached the bottom and threw away the banister that was sticking out from the back of his overcoat collar.
    The street door closed behind him with a sound that was like a kiss on an uncovered shoulder.
    â€˜What is there to see in the street?’
    First of all there were two road-menders playing cricket. The fattest one’s belly wobbled up and down contrapuntally as its owner jumped down and up. For a ball they had a crucifix painted red with the cross missing.
    Colin walked on.
    To right and left rose elegant and fantastic mud-huts with large bay windows. A woman was leaning out of one of them. Colin blew her a kiss and she shook on his head the hearthrug of black and silver swansdown that her husband couldn’t stand.
    Shops brightened up the stark appearance of the big buildings. A display of supplies for fakirs caught Colin’s attention. He noted that the price of broken glass and long nails had gone up since last week.
    He passed a dog and two other people. People were being kept indoors by the cold. Those who managed to tear themselves from its clutches escaped minus most of their clothes and died of pneumonia.
    The traffic policeman at the crossroads had hidden his head in his cape. He looked like a big black umbrella. Waiters from the cafés ran round him in circles to keep themselves warm.
    A boy and a girl were kissing in a doorway.
    â€˜Don’t let me see them … Don’t … Don’t let me see them … They’re driving me mad.’
    Colin crossed over. A boy and a girl were kissing in a doorway.
    He closed his eyes and began to run.
    He opened them again very quickly because, under his eyelids, he could see thousands and thousands of girls going round – and such a vision would make him lose his way. There was still one right in front of him, walking in the same direction. You could see her pretty legs in little white lamb bootees under her coat of unglazed panda-skin and her matching hat. Red hair under the hat. Her coat flew out from her shoulders and danced all round her as she walked.
    â€˜I must overtake her. I must see her face …’
    He got ahead of her and burst into tears. She was at least fifty-nine. He sat on the kerb until the tears stopped flowing. It made him feel a lot better. With a little crackle his tears froze and shattered like glass as they fell on to the hard granite pavement.
    After five minutes or so he realized that he was sitting in front of Isis High-Pottinuice’s house. A pair of girls walked past him and went straight in.
    His heart swelled up to ten times its normal size, became completely weightless, lifted him up above the earth, and he went straight in after them.

11
    A rumble of sounds from the party being thrown upstairs by Isis’s parents could already be heard from the first floor. The staircase spiralled round three