The Planet on the Table Read Online Free PDF

Eeek!”
    “Jesus!”
    “Devil! Death, away!” A small black shape rushed at him, brandishing sharp metal points.
    “Jesus!” Carlo repeated, holding the boat hook out to defend himself. The figure stopped.
    “Death comes for me at last,” it said. It was in old woman, he saw, holding lace needles in each hand.
    “Not at all,” Carlo said, feeling his pulse slow back down. “Swear to God, Grandmother, I’m just a sailor, blown here by the storm.”
    The woman pulled back the hood of her black cape, revealing braided white hair, and squinted at him.
    “You’ve got the scythe,” she said suspiciously. A few wrinkles left her face as she unfocused her gaze.
    “A boat book only,” Carlo said, holding it out for her inspection. She stepped back and raised the lace needles threateningly. “Just a boat hook, I swear to God. To God and Mary and Jesus and all the saints. Grandmother. I’m just a sailor, blown here by the storm from Venice.” Part of him felt like laughing.
    “Aye?” she said. “Aye, well then, you’ve found shelter. I don’t see so well anymore, you know. Come in, sit down, then.” She turned around and led him into the room. “I was just doing some lace for penance, you see… though there’s scarcely enough light.” She lifted a tomboli with the lace pinned to it. Carlo noticed big gaps in the pattern, as in the webs of an injured spider. “A little more light,” she said and, picking up a candle, held it to the lit one. When it was fired, she carried it around the chamber and lit three more candles in lanterns that stood on tables, boxes, a wardrobe. She motioned for him to sit in a heavy chair by her table, and he did so.
    As she sat down across from him, he looked around the chamber. A bed piled high with blankets, boxes and tables covered with objects… the stone walls around, and another staircase leading up to the next floor of the campanile. There was a draft. “Take off your coat,” the woman said. She arranged the little pillow on the arm of her chair and began to poke a needle in and out of it, pulling the thread slowly.
    Carlo sat back and watched her. “Do you live here alone?”
    “Always alone,” she replied. “I don’t want it otherwise.” With the candle before her face, she resembled Carlo’s mother or someone else he knew. It seemed very peaceful in the room after the storm. The old woman bent in her chair until her face was just above her tomboli; still, Carlo couldn’t help noticing that her needle hit far outside the apparent pattern of lace, striking here and there randomly. She might as well have been blind. At regular intervals Carlo shuddered with excitement and tension. It was hard to believe he was out of danger. More infrequently they broke the silence with a short burst of conversation, then sat in the candlelight absorbed in their own thoughts, as if they were old friends.
    “How do you get food?” Carlo asked, after one of these silences had stretched out. ‘Or candles?”
    “I trap lobsters down below, And fishermen come by and trade food for lace. They get a good bargain, never fear. I’ve never given less, despite what he said—” Anguish twisted her face as the squinting had, and she stopped. She needled furiously, and Carlo looked away. Despite the draft, he was warming up (he hadn’t removed his coat, which was wool, after all), and he was beginning to feel drowsy…
    “He was my spirit’s mate, do you comprehend me?”
    Carlo jerked upright. The old woman still looked at her tomboli.
    “And—and he left me here, here in this desolation when the floods began, with words that I’ll remember forever and ever and ever. Until death comes… I wish you had been death!” she cried. “I wish you had.”
    Carlo remembered her brandishing the needles. “What is this place?” he asked gently.
    “What?”
    “Is this Pellestrina? San Servolo?”
    “This is Venice,” she said.
    Carlo shivered convulsively, stood up.
    “I’m the