The Bay of Foxes by Sheila Kohler Read Free Book Online

Paris for several months have reduced him to no more than skin and bones. For months he has not had a proper meal, subsisting on stale bread and an occasional piece of fruit or vegetable stolen from an open stand.
    She pulls down heaps of sweaters and pushes them into his arms. She takes jackets off hangers, shirts, hands him shoes. She says, “I have to buy my shoes in America—size eleven—or I buy men’s sizes.” He just looks at her.
    “Try them on,” she commands.
    He puts the clothes down on the shelf and hesitates, watching himself in the mirror. “Go on,” she says, hovering behind him, not making any move to leave him alone to undress. He pulls his T-shirt over his head. He is plunged into darkness for a moment before he emerges into the bright light, where he can count his ribs, which seem to try to thrust their way out of his skin. Quickly he pulls on a soft black turtleneck sweater. He puts a jacket over it. The sleeves are a little short when he stretches out his long arms, but otherwise it fits. He stares at his reflection in the mirror before him. The jacket acquires elegance, a fine line, the allure of his youth. Also, there is grace in his long neck and the tilt of his head.
    “Try these,” she commands, giving him a pair of linen trousers.
    He hesitates again, thinking of his threadbare and possibly stained underwear. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. He is obliged to take off his khaki trousers and quickly pull up herItalian designer pants on his long legs. She gives him a leather belt to pull in the waist, so that they fit perfectly.
    “It’s amazing, we are the same size,” she says, amused, looking at him in the mirror. She says, “A very young and dark double.” Then he slips on a pair of long, narrow American shoes. He flexes his toes in the soft leather. They, too, fit. He needs new shoes. He can feel the earth through the holes when he walks in his lone pair. How he wants them! She has so many, all with their shoe trees. He stands before the mirror staring at his reflection, laughing at himself, at her hovering behind him, his young, dark head blooming where her old, pale one has wilted.
    “
Formidable!
” she says and claps her hands. “
Magnifique!
” she says, thoroughly enchanted by his appearance in her clothes, as though she were responsible for it, with all his beauty, his life.
    Indeed, he feels she has brought him back to life.
    “You definitely look better than I do in these,” she says, taking more clothes from the shelves, giving him another heap of sweaters, scarves, and even long-fingered leather gloves that fit perfectly. He stands there grinning in her gloves, with his arms filled with her designer clothes. Finally she takes a broad-brimmed black hat from the top shelf and angles it on his head. She stands back and admires, cocking her head to one side. The hat gives him a rakish air that reminds him of what he looked like as a young teenager, before all the troubles began.
    How pleased he had been with himself in those days, he thinks with wonder, remembering standing in front of a mirror and flexing his muscles, an adored, pampered only boy who thought himself invincible, immortal.
    “Perfect!” she exclaims.
    “I can’t,” he says, taking off the hat, thrusting the clothes back into her arms. “I can’t take your clothes. I can’t accept all of this!”
    “Go on, please. It gives me so much pleasure,” and she gives him a soft kiss on the cheek, thrusting her things back into his arms.
    “Then you must let me work for you. It would give me great pleasure,” he says.

VII

    H E AWAKENS IN HIS NARROW ROOM WITH A START, THE LIGHT in his eyes. He trembles with fear, remembering the light in the net in the center of the cement ceiling in the prison, which came on suddenly. “Please turn off the light! Please turn off the light!” he would plead with the walls, kneeling and putting his hands over his eyes. He craved sleep, oblivion. Sometimes he