The Days of the King by Filip Florian Read Free Book Online Page B

in amazement, and women adjusting their headscarves. It drizzled on the approach to the Danube, to make the point that it was autumn, and the carriages, assembling in four rows, crossed the river by ferry, effortlessly, smoothly, because the whirlpools and currents had abated after such a long drought. Given the cold breeze during the crossing, Carol had chosen not to go on deck. He gazed through the porthole, alert and tense, reclining on cushions covered in cashmere, leaning his chin on his left palm, his right hand clutching his head. He was awestruck by the multitude of flies and midges that swarmed around the horses. In the distance he glimpsed a minaret, gray at first, then milky white as the sun pierced the clouds. He examined the walls of the fortress of Rusçuk, the towers and the lookout posts, the battlements and redoubts, the large pennants, with their undulating golden crescent moons. With his barracks background and incurable passion for order, he could not help admiring the formation in which the troops were drawn up to pay him honor. On the riverbank, near the wharf, he was greeted with a doubtful, barely perceptible smile, a smile that might not have been a smile, but which he, the prince, knew very well could not be anything else. Omer Pasha proved gallant, squandering the long and ardent minutes of lunch in praising, through an interpreter, the precision of Prussian cannons. When at last the detachment of soldiers pressed their weapons to their chests and gave the salute, Karl Ludwig felt his throbbing gums erupt, as if the point of one of those slender bayonets had skewered his cheek. Somewhere to the rear, behind the generals, politicians, ministers, advisers, secretaries, and so many others, a muffled thud was heard. A thin, chestnut-haired man with well-ironed clothes had dropped the bag he was holding. It looked like a doctor's bag. Truth to tell, Joseph Strauss had never heard anyone emit such a terrible yowl of pain.
    To Varna they were conveyed on a short and motley train, with a red carriage immediately behind the locomotive, like a salon on wheels, with all the trappings of luxury, a blue carriage in the middle, with broad, restful couchettes, and a green one at the end, used for regular journeys. For six and a half hours—perhaps longer, until one and all they glimpsed the sea, gleaming in the pale dusk, somnolent and boundless—each member of that numerous retinue kept to his allotted place, without transgressing rank or role. As for the dentist, with a notebook in his lap, an inkpot in his left hand, and a pen in his right, he had taken advantage of the company of a garrulous and tic-ridden cook to jot down a large number of recipes, in particular ones for game, fish, and lamb. Even though he understood only a part of the chatter of the lanky man beside him, who had a twitch in his shoulder, blinked incessantly, and accompanied each detail about food preparation with fluttering fingers, Herr Strauss thought gratefully of young, jug-eared Martin Stolz, with his thin mustache and skillful Romanian lessons. He did not, however, know the words for something essential in the language, the names of the condiments, and so he had patiently tried to elicit them, in that train advancing over hills and through forests, tilled fields, pumpkin patches, hay meadows, and vineyards, now crawling through oriental-looking towns, now hurtling past isolated houses, villages, and flocks. Onerously, he managed, amid a welter of words and a flurry of gestures, to discover the words for pepper (
piper
), mint
(mentă
), paprika
(boia),
garlic
(usturoi
), rosemary
(rozmarin),
poppy seed
(mac),
and tarragon
(tarhon).
They had got as far as lovage
(leuştan),
boredom, and the impossibility of matching up in German all the aromatic herbs and seeds of Romania, when Joseph was summoned to the first carriage, the red one, where Prince Carol, anticipating the moment when he would acquire, peruse, and decipher