Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch Read Free Book Online

and yet he was happy to teach yoga to such an unpleasant person. ‘Does she pay you a lot?’
    ‘She pays me if she has the money,’ replied Mr Vishwanath.
    ‘You mean sometimes she doesn’t pay you?’
    ‘Money is not the most important thing.’
    ‘You mean she comes and she doesn’t pay you? She has that big car and—’
    ‘She is a very old student of mine,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘She has been coming to me for many years.’
    ‘But she’s so horrible!’
    ‘Have you ever even spoken to her, Amelia?’
    ‘But you can see it!’
    Mr Vishwanath sighed. ‘In every person, Amelia, there is a beauty.’
    Amelia started to laugh.
    ‘You cannot tell from the outside.’
    Mr Vishwanath’s voice was soft, almost too soft to hear. Amelia stopped laughing. She remembered the look on the old lady’s face in Mr Vishwanath’s studio, in that split second before the lady opened her eyes and saw Amelia spying on her. Calm. Gentle. Beautiful?
    ‘Is she angry with you now?’ asked Amelia quietly. ‘Because of me?’
    Mr Vishwanath didn’t reply.
    ‘Is she not going to come back, Mr Vishwanath?’
    Mr Vishwanath was silent for a moment. ‘She is easily angered. That is one of her faults.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘In her own way, she has had a hard life. Yet most people would think it has been easy. Materially. The easier others think it, the harder it seems to her.’
    ‘Mr Vishwanath, that sounds like a riddle.’
    ‘Look,’ said Mr Vishwanath. ‘Here comes your father.’
    Amelia jumped. For a second, she thought Mr Vishwanath was going to tell her father about what she had done. Then she knew that was the last thing he would do.
    Her father wandered absentmindedly towards them from the shed at the end of the garden, staring at the ground as he made his way through the sculptures. He didn’t notice Mr Vishwanath and Amelia until he had almost reached the verandah.
    ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Hello.’
    Amelia smiled.
    ‘Hello,’ said Mr Vishwanath.
    Amelia’s father frowned. ‘Didn’t I . . . Amelia, didn’t I call you before?’
    ‘When?’
    ‘On the intercom. Didn’t I call you?’
    ‘Why would you have called me?’
    ‘I needed something. That’s right. I remember now, I needed something urgently.’
    ‘What was it?’ asked Amelia.
    Amelia’s father frowned again. ‘I don’t know . . . I must have . . . Amelia, if I need something urgently, you have to bring it. Do you understand? If I don’t have it, I may as well not even bother!’
    ‘Alright,’ said Amelia.
    ‘If no one ever got things when they needed them, no one would manage to invent anything new. And you know what would happen then, don’t you?’
    ‘We’d still be in the Stone Age,’ said Amelia under her breath.
    ‘We’d still be in the Stone Age!’ said Amelia’s father. Amelia nodded.
    Amelia’s father frowned again. ‘What was it that I needed?’ he muttered to himself, and rubbed his chin. ‘What was it?’ He turned around and began to walk back to the shed, still frowning and muttering, having forgotten about whatever it was that had made him come out of the shed in the first place.
    Amelia watched him. She wondered what it would be like to have a father like other children had. Or at least one who wasn’t exactly like the one she had.
    Eventually she shrugged. She turned back to Mr Vishwanath.
    ‘Mr Vishwanath, if that old lady’s life is so hard, she should do something to make it easier. No point complaining about it.’
    ‘Many people would say her life has not been hard.’
    ‘Then even less point!’ exclaimed Amelia.
    ‘Maybe it isn’t so simple,’ said Mr Vishwanath.
    ‘And maybe it isn’t so complicated,’ replied Amelia, although she had no idea now what Mr Vishwanath was talking about, and she just said it because it sounded right. Although why should it be so complicated? Why should anything be complicated, if you just took the time to think about it sensibly?
    Mr Vishwanath was watching her as