The Enchanter Read Online Free PDF Page A

whiteness of her neck sheeny from the sidewise light next to her brown curls, which received another vigorous toss (seven-eighths habit, one little eighth flirtatiousness). “Ah, an accident … a taxi dent …,” he mumbled, pretending to peer through the empty window over the crown of her head but seeing only the tiny flecks of dandruff in its silky vertex.
    “It’s the red one’s fault!” she exclaimed with conviction.
    “Ah, the red one … We’ll get the red one,” he continued incoherently and, standing in back of her, feeling faint, abolishing the final inch of the melting distance, took hold of her hands from behind and began senselessly spreading and tugging them, while she did no more than gently rotate the slender wristbone of her right hand, mechanically trying to point her finger at the guilty party. “Wait,” he said hoarsely, “press your elbows against your sides and let’s see if I can, if I can lift you.” Just then a bang came from the vestibule followed by the ominous rustling of a raincoat, and he moved away from her with an awkward abruptness, thrusting his hands in his pockets, clearing his throat with a growl, starting to say in aloud voice, “… at last! We’re famished here.…” And, as they were sitting down to table, there was still an aching, frustrated, gnawing weakness in his calves.
    After dinner some ladies came for coffee, and, toward evening, when the wave of guests had receded and her faithful friend had discreetly left for the cinema, the exhausted hostess stretched out on the couch.
    “Go on home, my dear,” she said without raising her eyelids. “You must have things to take care of, you probably don’t have anything packed, and I’d like to go to bed, or else I won’t be up to doing anything tomorrow.”
    With a short mooing sound to simulate tenderness he pecked her on the forehead, which was cold as cottage cheese, then said, “By the way, I keep thinking how sorry I feel for the girl. I suggest we keep her here after all. Why should the poor thing have to continue staying with strangers? It’s downright ludicrous now that there is a family once again. Think it over carefully, dearest.”
    “And I’m still sending her off tomorrow,” she drawled in a feeble voice, without opening her eyes.
    “Please, try to understand,” he continued more softly, for the girl, who had been dining in the kitchen, had apparently finished and her faint glow was present somewhere nearby. “Try to understand what I’m saying. Even if we pay them for everything, and even overpay them, do you think that will make her feel any more at home there? I doubt it. There’s a fine school there, you’ll tellme,” (she was silent) “but we’ll find an even better one here, apart from the fact that I am and always have been in favor of private instruction at home. But the main thing is … you see, people might get the impression—and you already heard one little hint of that kind just today—that, in spite of the changed situation, i.e., now that you have support of all kinds from me and we can get a larger apartment, arrange complete privacy for ourselves, and so forth, the mother and stepfather still tend to neglect the kid.”
    She said nothing.
    “Of course you can do as you please,” he said nervously, frightened by her silence (he had gone too far!).
    “I’ve already told you,” she drawled with that same ridiculous, martyrlike softness, “that what is paramount to me is my peace and quiet. If it is disrupted I shall die.… Listen: there she goes scraping her foot on the floor or banging something—it wasn’t very loud, was it?—yet it’s already enough to give me a nervous spasm and make me see spots before my eyes. And a child cannot live without banging around; even if there are twenty-five rooms all twenty-five will be noisy. Therefore you’ll have to choose between me and her.”
    “No, no—don’t even say such things!” he cried with a panicky