The Smell of Telescopes Read Online Free PDF

blown all the way back to Tortuga. On this voyage he perfected the perm, but realised it would have to be reinvented at a later date. At least hunger was blunted by hope at sea; in the depths of a shop it mimicked the plumbing and flooded the mouth with despair.
    He imagined the building torn loose from its foundations and pushed along the alleys by a freak wind. Would it finally burst out of the maze and tumble into the silent sea? He clung to this febrile idea as the yam rose and fell. He dished the thin broth and lifted it to his lips with a fork, to save some for the following day. He felt the meal was digesting him, rather than the opposite. He wrestled his way into his old sailor’s coat and opened the back door, stepping out into an invisible bustle. On balconies higher than his gaze, unseen neighbours lounged. Shrill curses swooped on his shoulders like gulls. “It’s old ’Ceti Whiskers! Bet he shaves throats like rope and turns customers into overpriced pies.”
    “Never ask a corsair for a singe.”
    “Combs with a rum bottle, I say, and dries with a cannon. Better to sweep the streets with a beard.”
    He hurried past, through the oldest of old squares, where the giant cistern spoke riddles to itself, and up a cobbled hill in the shadows of the Church of St George. The bell-tower, set as far apart from the main edifice as a debate from an argument, loomed with an ironic sort of wit, a tongue poking forever upward. Although unable to find his way right up to the town walls for a clear view of the Adriatic, he had discovered a reasonable alternative. Here was a house with a room at eye level and no shutters. Inside, a family ate spherical bread: with a corrugated crust, a loaf played the role of a coconut.
    Kissing his tongue with his teeth, he crouched and watched the wife and children chew slowly, like squid, in the splendid chamber. The burly husband, who poked every dish with his finger before tasting it, sat with a deflated sack between his legs, as if to catch his stomach. The interior was so brightly illuminated with candles that friars could burn monks on the window. The family dipped into the display with lassitude, regarding each dish as a visit to an obscure relative. Not that they were ignorant of the importance of nourishment; merely that food for them had acquired abstract edges and aloof textures.
    Returning to his shop, he thought he detected footsteps behind him. It was the sound of a man who favours his left leg: perhaps a government agent was tailing him? The Italian republics did not like former pirates settling in their towns. He turned and wove in his usual random fashion, hoping to confuse his pursuer. The starlight blew darts at the shards in his hat and he glittered as he ran. Pirano was small enough, despite its cryptic heart, and he soon found himself passing the cistern, one of the few familiar landmarks among the tangle. Here he paused to drink ripples from the surface of the water.
    Hunched over the side, still and stony, he waited for the hunter to pass. There was a flapping noise, a slack mouth kissing departing cakes, and then the silence of a town where echoes are caught in washing-lines. Turning the final corner, he encountered one of these cords blocking his path. Heavy with patchwork washing, the vestments of a giant family, the line bent from a lofty window, brushed the pavement with buttoned hooves and curved to a window even higher, giving the arrangement a squint. The distance from one balcony to the other was only three feet, but the line was long enough to choke an island.
    Too stiff and huge to brush aside, sheets, shirts and skirts formed an impenetrable barrier against his homecoming. He sought an alternative approach. Up a sweep of steps, down another backstreet, through a midget courtyard: there was no entry this way. Washing-lines netted the dark. A dressing-gown punched him in the eye. He pretended to be a cat, climbing a low roof and picking a path over broken