The Lemon Table Read Online Free PDF Page B

spans the rapids, he had watched four hundred men at work, catching the logs as they emerged from the river, and arranging them in the sorteringsbommar according to the distinctive marks of their owners. He explained to her, like a man of the world, the different systems of marking. Swedish timber is stencilled in red letters, with inferior wood marked in blue. Norwegian timber is stencilled in blue at both ends with the shipper’s initials. Prussian timber is scribed in the sides near the middle. Russian timber is dry-stamped or hammer-marked on the ends. Canadian timber is stencilled in black and white. American timber is marked with red chalk on the sides.
    “Have you seen all this?” she asked. He admitted that he had not yet examined North American timber; he had only read about it.
    “So each man knows his own log?” she asked.
    “Of course. Otherwise a man might steal another’s log.” He could not tell if she was laughing at him—indeed, at the whole world of men.
    Suddenly there was a flash from the shoreline. She looked away from it, back at him, and in full face the singularities of her profile were brought into harmony: her little chin pushed her lips into prominence, the tip of her nose, her open, grey-blue eyes … it was beyond description, beyond even admiration. He felt clever to guess the question in her eyes.
    “There is a belvedere. Probably someone with a spyglass. We are under surveillance.” But he lost confidence as he pronounced the last word. It sounded like something another man might say.
    “Why?”
    He did not know what to reply. He looked away to the shoreline, where the belvedere flashed again. Embarrassed, he told her the story of Mats Israelson, but he told it in the wrong order, and too quickly, and she did not appear interested. She did not even seem to realize that it was true.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, as if aware of his disappointment. “I have little imagination. I am only interested in what really happens. Legends seem to me … silly. We have too many of them in our country. Axel scolds me for having this opinion. He says I am not showing honour to my country. He says that people will take me for a modern woman. But it is not that either. It is that I have little imagination.”
    Anders found this sudden speech calming. It was as if she were giving him guidance. Still looking across at the shore, he told her about a visit he had once made to the copper-mine at Falun. He told her only the things that really happened. He told her that it was the greatest coppermine in the world after those of Lake Superior; that it had been worked since the thirteenth century; that the entrances were close to a vast subsidence in the ground, known as Stöten , which had occurred at the end of the seventeenth century; that the deepest shaft was 1,300 feet; that nowadays the annual yield was about 400 tons of copper, beside small amounts of silver and gold; that it cost two riksdaler for admission; that gunshots were extra.
    “Gunshots are extra?”
    “Yes.”
    “What are the gunshots for?”
    “To awaken the echoes.”
    He told her that visitors usually telephoned ahead to the mine from Falun to announce their arrival; that they were given miner’s attire and accompanied by a miner; that on the descent the steps were lit by torches; that it cost two riksdaler. He had told her that already. Her eyebrows, he noticed, were strongly marked, and darker than the hair on her head.
    She said, “I would like to visit Falun.”
    THAT EVENING , he could tell Gertrud was in a temper. Eventually, she said, “A wife has a right to a husband’s discretion when he arranges a rendezvous with his mistress.” Each noun rang like a dead clunk from the klockstapel .
    He merely looked at her. She continued, “At least I should be grateful for your naïveté. Other men would at least wait until the steamer was out of sight of the jetty before starting their canoodling.”
    “You are deluded,” he