Silk by Alessandro Baricco Read Free Book Online Page B

my beloved, will be this moment, from now on, will be until the end ,
    she said, in a whisper, then she stopped.
    There were no other marks on the page that she had in her hand: the last. But when she turned it over to put it down she saw on the back some more orderly lines, black ink in the centre of the white page. She looked up at Hervé Joncour. His eyes were fixed on her, and she realised that they were beautiful eyes. She lowered her gaze to the page.
    We will not see each other anymore, my lord .
    She said.
    What there was for us we have done, and you know it. Believe me: we have done it forever. Keep your life safe from me. And don’t hesitate for a moment, if it is useful for your happiness, to forget this woman who now, without regret, says farewell .
    She remained looking at the page for a while, then placed it on the others, beside her, on a small pale-wood table. Hervé Joncour didn’t move. Only he turned his head and lowered his eyes. He was staring at the crease in his trousers, barely perceptible but perfect, on the right leg, from the groin to the knee, imperturbable.
    Madame Blanche rose, bent over the lamp, and turned it off. A faint light came in through the window, from the parlour. She went over to Hervé Joncour, took from her fingers a ring of tiny blue flowers, and laid it beside him. Then she crossed the room, opened a small painted door hidden in the wall, and disappeared, half- closing it behind her.
    Hervé Joncour sat for a long time in that strange light, turning over and over in his fingers a ring of tiny blue flowers. Weary notes from a piano reached him from the parlour: they were losing time, so that you almost couldn’t recognise them.
    Finally he rose, went over to the small pale-wood table, and picked up the seven sheets of rice paper. He crossed the room, passed the half-closed door without turning, and went out.

60.
    H ERVÉ Joncour in the years that followed chose for himself the serene life of a man with no more needs. He spent his days in the safety of a guarded emotion. In Lavilledieu the people admired him again, because it seemed to them that they saw in him a precise way of being in the world. They said that he had been like that even as a young man, before Japan.
    With his wife, Hélène, he got into the habit of making, every year, a short journey. They saw Naples, Rome, Madrid, Munich, London. One year they went as far as Prague, where everything seemed: theatre. They travelled without a schedule and without plans. Everything amazed them: secretly, even their happiness. When they felt homesick for silence, they returned to Lavilledieu.
    If anyone had asked, Hervé Joncour would have said that they would live like that forever. He had the unassailable peacefulness of men who feel they are in their place. Every so often, on a windy day, he went through the park to the lake, and stayed there for hours, on the shore, watching the surface of the water ripple, creating unpredictable shapes that sparkled randomly, in all directions. The wind was one alone: but on that mirror of water it seemed thousands, blowing. On every side. A spectacle. Light and inexplicable.
    Every so often, on a windy day, Hervé Joncour went to the lake and spent hours watching it, because, drawn on the water, he seemed to see the inexplicable spectacle, light, that had been his life.

61.
    O N June 16, 1871, in the back of Verdun’s café, before noon, the one-armed player made an irrational four- cushion draw shot. Baldabiou remained leaning over the table, one hand behind his back, the other grasping the cue, incredulous.
    ‘Come on.’
    He straightened, put down the cue, and went out without saying anything. Three days later he left. He gave his two silk mills to Hervé Joncour.
    ‘I don’t want anything more to do with silk, Baldabiou.’
    ‘Sell them, you fool.’
    No one could get out of him where the hell he intended to go. And what he would do there. All he said was something about St Agnes