C by Tom McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

rise halfway to the ceiling. Silk tapestries hang between these piles: large, patterned weavings. One shows, in red and gold against a background of black moiré, a throned king being handed a baby by his queen, or perhaps one of the palace servants, while courtiers whisper to one another in the background. Another, on the facing wall, depicts a woman holding what appears to be a lion’s head as she runs after a man who seems to be dressed as a woman, while shepherds and their very human-looking sheep gaze on smilingly. Others have ciphers in place of pictures: flowing, dancing signs that suggest Chinese or Indian script, or else some kind of musical notation. A woman moves around beneath these, selecting sample fabrics from the piles and carrying them towards Serge and Sophie’s mother, who’s seated on cushions. Her legs are folded away beneath a low table across which several samples have been laid out for inspection by a man who’s kneeling awkwardly on the table’s far side. Facing away from Serge, Sophie and Bodner, she’s unaware of their presence in the room.
    “… two hundred yards of crêpe … two hundred of Jacquard … three hundred thrown singles …” the man reads from a notebook; “organzine and tram, two hundred and fifty …”
    “Versoie originals,” she tells him.
    “Naturally, Mrs. Carrefax,” he answers. “Finest around. If you produced five times as much we’d buy it just as fast.”
    “Five times? You want five times more?” she asks him.
    “I said if you made five times as much we’d buy it.”
    “Why would I want to make five times as much?” she asks him.
    “You’d make more money.”
    She stares at him quizzically, not having understood his last phrase.
    “Mo-ney.” He mouths the word slowly, raising his voice—then, realising that this second action makes no difference, drops it right down and continues: “And what with technology leaping forwards as it is, new century and all that, you might consider—”
    “We have no need of more money here. We are not poor,” she tells him.
    “Maybe so, maybe so. But your methods are somewhat antiquated, it must be admitted. The loom, for example, must be more than—”
    “It is a Huguenot loom. Its craftsmanship has never been surpassed. Where else can you find silks like these?” Her arm sweeps round the room, past the piles and hanging tapestries—and as her eyes trail after it she catches sight of Bodner and the children, interlopers on this small business colloquium. Her face drops—though the look she gives them isn’t unkind. “The costumes,” she says wearily.
    “Papa says because I’m Rhea I should have stars coming from mine,” Sophie tells her.
    “Tears?”
    “Stars,” Sophie repeats.
    “Stars,” she repeats back. “And you, Serge?”
    Serge . He always relishes the way she says his name: where his father gives it as an electrical “Surge” rounded by an abrupt j , her version takes the form of a light and lofty “Sairge” that tails off in a whispered shh .
    “I’m Cronos. That’s Saturn. I need sheets around my head. But Papa says to tell you that he also must have streams of nectar which must be gold and eleven feet long. And the other children will be Curetes. These are shepherds, Mr. Clair says. And they must have clashing spears.”
    “And Papa says to tell you Serge must have a scythe,” says Sophie.
    “Nathaniel is Poseidon,” Serge adds, “and he must be disguised like a sheep so he can hide among the real sheep.”
    “Tell your father to send Nathaniel and the other children to me in the morning to be measured. The sheep too if he wants—but in the morning.” As his mother speaks these words, her hands dance with one another, the fingers of one tripping along the palm of the other before rising to tap her chest. Bodner signs back. His twisted upper lip rises and falls slightly as he does this, as though he were slowly chewing something.
    “He’s saying