Lord of All Things by Andreas Eschbach Read Free Book Online Page B

she said at last, “maybe some other time.” She lowered herself to the ground on the inside of the wall.
    Hiroshi was relieved. He liked the garden much better than the city all around it. They went back upstairs.
    On the way Charlotte pointed at the house where Hiroshi lived with his mother. “That’s your place, isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” Hiroshi said.
    She moved her slender white arm slightly to one side so that she was pointing directly to the window above Hiroshi’s bed. “And that’s where you were watching me from when I was standing out in the rain.”
    He looked at her in amazement. “How do you know that?”
    “I just know,” Charlotte replied coquettishly. Then she hugged herself tight, as though she were suddenly cold. “Sometimes I do crazy things like that. Just because I want to. I can’t help it. And then sometimes I don’t even dare to do perfectly ordinary things.”
    “What sort of ordinary things?”
    She shrugged. Somehow, right at that moment Hiroshi thought she looked like a little bird with injured wings. When he was small, he had found a bird like that and wanted to bring it home, but his mother hadn’t let him.
    “Ordinary things,” she said. “Make a phone call. Leave the house. Or wear a particular dress.”
    “But what might happen just because you wear a particular dress?” Hiroshi asked in surprise.
    “Nothing,” said Charlotte.
    He wondered whether he understood what she was telling him. Not really, but somehow that wasn’t important.
    “Are there things you don’t dare to do?” Charlotte asked him.
    Hiroshi thought about it. “At school I steer clear of the big boys who are always starting fights. I’m not strong enough, that’s the trouble. I can’t fight back when they hit me. I’ve got no chance against them. And the teachers never believe you when you say you’ve been bullied.”
    It was good to be able to say that to somebody even if it didn’t change anything. His mother never wanted to hear about that sort of thing. And she absolutely refused to let him take a karate course so that he could learn self-defense. They couldn’t afford it, she had decided.
    Charlotte said, “That’s okay. I’d do the same.”
    The next moment she seemed to have forgotten the topic entirely. “Come on,” she called, setting off at a run. “Let’s go on the swings!”
    Hiroshi ran after her, and they reached the swings at the same time. She had a whole playground all to herself! He had never seen such a thing, never even dreamed about luxury on such a scale. In kindergarten he had always had to share the playgrounds with loads of other kids. Truth be told, he’d never had enough time on the swings, because he could hardly get started before somebody was shooing him away—either the big boys, the bullies, when he was little, or, once he was a big boy himself, the grown-ups, the teachers, telling him he had to let the little ones have a go.
    It was great being rich!
    He swung back and forth, flung himself along the arc, climbing higher each time and feeling that moment of weightlessness at the topmost point and then the way gravity snatched him back in the very next breath, pressing him into the seat. Then he let go as he reached the top of the upswing, simply slipped from the seat, and flew through the air—the best feeling he could ever imagine.
    “That’s great!” Charlotte shrieked.
    But when Hiroshi got up from where he had tumbled onto the grass, he saw Charlotte’s mother was crossing the lawn toward him. Everything about her threatened anger—the way she walked, the look on her face, her posture. Hiroshi stood where he was and waited. The ambassador’s wife didn’t even look at him. She marched over to her daughter, who was already ducking her head, and spoke to her in a sharp voice. Hiroshi couldn’t understand a word, of course, but he could tell Charlotte’s mother was very angry.
    Once her mother had stopped scolding her, Charlotte got off the