The Realms of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

had never been there and knew it was a dream. This is impossible, she was saying to herself, as she stood there in her dream gazing at every tiny detail of the unexistent wall’s surface, at every thread of the dark blue towel, at every little silver screw in the frame of the mirror. Impossible, impossible, I could never create so powerfully in such detail, she said to herself, quite consciously panic stricken even in her dream. And then she woke up. It was pitch black, and her heart was pounding high up in her bosom—too much black coffee, as people on the Continent always say. Also, her tooth was aching shockingly. Help, help, please God it is morning, she said to herself, and switched on her bedside light and looked at her watch.
    It was. It was seven o’clock.
    Thank God for that, she said, and got out of bed, and went over to the window, nervously exploring the hole in her tooth as she walked. The curtains were so thick they let in no light. She opened them, and there was the autumn sunshine, there was the harbour, there were the boats and their forests of masts, and there was all the dazzling bay, with the islands far out, strung along the horizon. Her thudding heart lifted. Lovely, said her waking heart.
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    While she was having breakfast, she had a good idea for her lecture—nothing much, just an interesting new connection about Phoenician trade which would interest, from what Galletti had said, this particular lay and local audience. She got out her notes again, scribbled a few more, crossed out one quotation and decided to use another. The breakfast was delicious—nice doughy rolls, thank God, instead of those hard crusty things one sometimes got, and the coffee was hot. I must get my tooth fixed, she thought (plugging up the cavity with dough, swallowing down a couple of codeine) as soon as I get back to England. I must get my tooth fixed, she thought, and have a bath.
    The water was hot, and there was a bath as well as a shower. She didn’t like showers. She liked to lie in a hot bath. And like lying in a hot bath it was, two hours later, to hear Professor Andersson introduce her to her audience. She sat there, neatly, happily, listening to the long list of her achievements: she let them flow over her, reassuring, relaxing, comforting, like water full of compliments. I did all that, she thought to herself, as she heard the catalogue of her accomplishments: I, me, I stole all that from nature and got it for myself. I am a vain, self-satisfied woman, she said to herself, with satisfaction.
    Professor Andersson was an amiable fellow: tall, stooping, urbane, Scandinavian, and chivalrous in a thoroughly acceptable way, like most Scandinavians. (She didn’t trust Galletti: in her pre-Karel days, when she found it almost impossible to stop herself sleeping with people whenever she was away from home, she’d have been in trouble with Galletti.) But Andersson was delightful. He was even rather handsome, thought Frances idly, watching his beaky profile and his cold grey Nordic eye. She liked people with big noses, having one herself. What about making a pass at Andersson. Would he respond? He was in a promising age group for response. She looked down, modestly, to avoid her own improper speculations, and the image of a less tidy Professor in her splendid hotel bed, and noticed that she should have cleaned her shoes, perhaps. But nobody would look at her shoes, they’d be behind the lectern. How filthy she had been that day with Karel in the mud. She had got into the shower fully clothed, sandals and all, and it had run off her in great streaks and lumps, clogging up the drainage: she’d had to pick lumps of mud out and mush them up with a hairpin before they would go down.
    She shouldn’t really think about Karel. It was unsuitable, memories of him threw her sometimes, they would flash across her mind in the middle of dinner parties and press conferences. His thinning yellow