Tainted Tokay Read Online Free PDF Page B

young crewmembers in white shirts. They all stopped and stared, which made Elisabeth give Benjamin another one of her “did you see that” looks. Embarrassed for his friend, Benjamin ignored it and handed a five-euro note to the man taking charge of their bags.
    The Danube was silty, and the sky was ashen. This wasn’t the way Benjamin had envisioned leaving Vienna. He watched the women head off to their cabins and turned to his friend.
    A siren blared at the rear of the boat, and suddenly the dock was far away. Minutes later, the Ferris wheel in the amusement park was no more than a pinwheel lost in the distance, and the spire of the Gothic Maria am Gestade church was trying in vain to pierce the black clouds hovering over the Austrian capital. Vienna was dissolving in the morning light. Beyond the hills, a thunderstorm was brewing. Beneath them, the wind was rippling the waters of the Danube and spraying gray foam onto i ts miry banks.
    At the prow, Claude borrowed Benjamin’s lighter to rekindle his Havana. The two men puffed and silently took in the landscape. Flashes of lightning, followed by heavy drops of rain, soon dissuaded them from playing lookout any longer. The thunderstorm was quickly rolling toward the Danube. A second later, lightning struck a clump of poplars nex t to the river.
    Claude and Benjamin retreated to the sitting 
room.
    â€œBenjamin, this cruise line may not have sleek longships, but it does have charm and authenticity. I told Consuela it was ju st your style.”
    And because the publishing house was picking up the tab, the lower cost had most likely suited him, Benjamin thought. The sitting room, with its leatherette armchairs, faded posters, and Art Deco–inspired bar wasn’t exactly charming, but he still liked the unpretentious fe el of the ship.
    Most of the passengers seemed to have taken refuge inside. They weren’t numerous: a mismatched couple probably from the United States; three Asian tourists; some corpulent men who looked Russian; two red-haired girls, freckled and as tall as poplars; a bearded man, English or Scottish, clutching a sketchbook; an old woman in a wheelchair accompanied by a dour attendant; two tanned men wearing similar expensive watches and designer shirts; and finally a willowy young woman with straight blond hair that fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a turtleneck and a long cape, reminding Benjamin of Michèle Morgan in La Symphonie Pastorale , which he had seen several years earlier in a film retrospective.
    â€œHave I ever told you, Claude, that my one regret to date is never having experienced an ocean crossing from Southampto n to New York?”
    â€œDoes that stem from some nostalgia for old -style luxury?”
    â€œClaude, it is so much more. ‘Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.’”
    â€œAndré Gide,” Claude responded. “A man who fearlessly explored the shores of h is own nature.”
    Benjamin nodded. This man of letters was as facile with quotes as he was. “Let’s explore this ship, my friend,” he said, taking Claude’s elbow. “And I think we should sta rt at the bar.”
    In anticipation of the vineyards in the Eger region, which had been making wine since the thirteenth century, Benjamin proposed ordering two glasses of Egri Bikavér. This most famous of Hungarian wines was a deep crimson, true to its name , bull’s blood.
    Benjamin was hoping it would lift their spirits. Claude seemed disturbed by his phone call. Benjamin, meanwhile, couldn’t shake his worries about Alexandrine. The two friends remained mostly silent as they sipped their drinks and watched the landscape pass by, commenting only now and then on the fauna and flora, some onion-shaped domes, a pair of gray herons, a migratory bird rising from a reedy marsh, and the black poplars. Nothing terribly exotic. Just the last stretch