In Red by Magdalena Tulli Read Free Book Online Page B

declared Loom in irritation. He climbed the tower, looked the cannon over closely, and saw that it hadn’t even budged.
    In the course of his inspection he was hit by a stray bullet, the first and at the same time the last bullet of the war in Stitchings: it was the same one that had clipped the metal weathercock and set it spinning for a brief moment. It had circled the earth an unknown number of times since the day of Kazimierz Krasnowolski’s departure; suffice it to say it pierced Loom’s cold heart that afternoon, when he had gone to examine the cannon. He swayed, his moist hand slid down his watch chain and stopped
at the gold pocket watch, and that very moment black, tainted blood spattered onto his clothing.
    â€œDash it,” he grunted. “This is a new coat!”
    And he slipped to the ice-covered ground, into a pale blue and purple emptiness. Because of the frost, rigor mortis stiffened his body so quickly that he ended up lying on his catafalque with his dead fingers gripping his watch, which ticked loudly, to the embarrassment of those attending the funeral. One lusterless blue eye peered at the timepiece from beneath a half-closed lid.
    Loom had left behind his sewing shops, his fuel depots, his stores and warehouses, along with the priceless goods he kept in them: bolts of fabric, barrels of kerosene, sacks of grain. He left his account books, his mortgage bonds, his stocks, his promissory notes, and his cash. The only thing he took with him was his watch.
    â€œHe did a greater service to the town by dying than with the whole of the rest of his life,” the gentlemen of the town council murmured discreetly as they gave one another a light. The transfer of these possessions by mortmain would have been deliverance for the town’s empty coffers, the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Stitchings. Everyone was waiting for this, since they had all had enough of the chapter that was ending. Yet an obstacle was presented in the form of the ambiguous and most unseemly presence of Emilka, who resided in Loom’s
house as if it were the most natural thing in the world, amid well-thumbed French romances that were piled on windowsills, armchairs, sofas.
    â€œThere has to be a will somewhere,” people kept repeating.
    In the feverish search someone broke the bottle that had been handed down by the first of the Looms, inside which for generations an English galleon had been sailing the high seas full sail, driven by gusts of desire and greed. The Looms has gotten used to the idea that their life did not end: so long as it had been possible, at the appropriate moment each of them had been able to replace his predecessor unobtrusively, and so they were not in the habit of leaving wills, let alone bequests to the town, which they regarded as their own property in its entirety, from the heaps of snow lining the streets to the golden gleam of the weathercock on the town hall tower.
    The English galleon ran aground with shattered masts on the shallows of the floor and saved Stitchings. For where else could the ocean, salty as tears, have come from to fill the invisible channels of turnover to the benefit of trade and commerce, if not from that accidentally broken bottle?
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    ANYONE WHO MAKES IT TO STITCHINGS APPRECIATES ITS promising misty grayness and the moist warm breeze in which desires flourish so handsomely. A wide choice of furnished
rooms with all modern conveniences, and homemade meals available just around the corner, cheap and filling. Daybreaks and sunsets at fixed times. A moderate climate, flowers throughout the year. It’s well worth making the long steamboat journey, putting up with seasickness, till the port of Stitchings comes into view crowded with freighters flying various flags. Or for the same number of days rattling along in a train, dozing from tedium, rocking to the rhythmic clatter of the wheels. The visitor – for instance a traveling