Juggling the Stars by Tim Parks Read Free Book Online Page A

Gregorio was, after all, son of the padrone.
    He could go upstairs to the apartment door, but there was nothing to be gained there with that alarm. Instead he went through the porch into the tiny courtyard where the fauns postured in the middle of a fountain that had now been turned off, Morris sat on the edge of the great stone bowl. Midnight, The various clocks of the city gonged and chimed. The night was pale and the dark air of the courtyard had a spongy, damp taste. He considered the internal walls around him, smothered with vines and wistaria up all four storeys, the plants parting only for the windows, two of which were yellow with light. Nothing for it but to wait.
    He sat on the stone bowl, shifting from one buttock to the other against the cold. Half an hour, an hour; but he wasn’t bored. It had occurred to Morris that in all his long and tedious education and then his meagre round of lessons, not to mention the paperchase his year of unemployment had been, this was the very first time he had ever dealt shrewdly with the world of things and people for definite gain - bar the document case of course, and that had been too easy. This was definitely more exciting.
    Perhaps it was mostly a question of passing one’s time in the end. Without feeling an utter fool. He had thought of that before. And if they wouldn’t let you arrive at money honestly and honourably, nor marry it, perhaps it wouldn’t be so terribly out of order, or even difficult, to steal it. Perhaps it was just a matter of keeping your eyes peeled, an extension of the sort of Morris-against-the-world feeling he had always sensed at school.
    And then it wasn’t even a question of money really, but of style. Was he to go on living for years and years, counting each teaching minute as so many lire, wrapping himself in blankets wintertime, doomed to public transport, envy  -while these people lived, due to accidents of birth, with the grace of emperors? What advice, what alternative counsel did the world offer him? How was time to be passed, life to be spent? The popular wisdom (find a job, chin up, work hard, there are always the weekends) offered only oblivion.
    If they gave you nothing to do, at least you could give them something to think about.
    At one fifteen the last light went off and the courtyard settled in a deeper dark. Morris gave it fifteen more minutes. It might have been wise to wait longer but he was getting cold now and eager to have done. Enough. Standing up, his bottom stiff and numb, his lips dry, bowels weak, he felt the same kind of nervous flush he had felt as a young student before an exam. Excitement and fear. The next few minutes deciding everything. And Morris had always thrived in that kind of competitive situation.
    If only life really were decided by exams!
    He went and stood under a vine whose trunk climbed to the second floor near the sitting room window of the Ferronis. He trampled the little patch of open earth where the thing sprouted and then shinned up a few feet breaking off leaves and branches. A fine mess. He dropped down and considered the windows. The hole would need to be big enough for an arm to go through to give the impression someone had reached in and opened the thing from inside.
    He took the largest of the stones from his pocket and aimed carefully. In the narrow courtyard his throw would have to be steep, near vertical. He heaved up the stone and missed. The thing struck the wall a yard or so to the right and clattered down through a sea of vine leaves. The noise was appalling, a fearfully loud rustling with sharp echoing cracks as the stone bounced on branches and finally struck the flagstones of the courtyard like a gunshot. Morris dashed through the arch to the outer door and had it half open before he paused to listen. Despite the coolness he suddenly found himself bathed in sweat. Why on earth had he got involved in this crazy business for the sake of that stupid little statue?