The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Read Free Book Online Page B

harlequin’s cloak of colored scraps trimmed with trinkets and a black soutane * well worn at the seams. A flask of wine bobbed about his belt; black rosary beads wound around his right hand. Father François was a man of merry disposition; in rain and heat he walked now through ripening fields, now along snow-covered roads, whistling simple ditties and bending over his flask the better to kiss her—as he liked to say—on her glass lips; no one ever saw Father François kiss anyone else.
    My wandering goliard was a man of no small use: if a ceremony had to be performed, he would untie his sack, button himself into his narrow dark soutane, unwind his rosary, fish out his cross, and, knitting stern brows, join or absolve; if a holiday entertainment were called for (interludes or a devil’s role too difficult for the amateurs from some guild), the jester’s cloak, from out of that same sack, all bells and spangles, would wrap itself around his broad shoulders: it would have been hard to find a slyboots better able to provoke tears of laughter and invent witty sayings than the goliard François.
    No one knew if he were young or old: his clean-shaven face was always bronzed by the sun, while the bare skin on his crown could have been a bald spot or a tonsure. The girls who had laughed till they cried at the interludes or cried till they smiled at Mass sometimes gazed at François in a certain way, but the goliard was a wanderer: having performed the Mass and acted the interlude, he would stow his black cassock and jingling cloak, knot his knapsack, and be gone; his hands clasped only his staff, his lips touched only glass lips. True, striding through the fields he liked to whistle to the birds passing overhead, but birds are wanderers too, and to talk to people they would need only one phrase: “Skip it.” Here too, in the fields, the goliard sometimes liked to converse with his knapsack: he would untie its string-bitted mouth, pull out the black and the harlequin, and babble, for example, this:
    â€œ Suum cuique, amici mei [1] : remember that, my black grouse and my harlequin duck. If on earth there were harlequin masses and black laughter, you, my friends, would have to change places. But for now, you must smell the incense, and you must array yourself in wine stains.”
    Having beaten the dust out of the black and the harlequin, the goliard would replace them in his knapsack, get to his feet, and set off down the undulating roads, whistling to the quails.
    One day toward evening, dusty and tired, Father François was nearing the lights of a small village. It was a settlement of forty or fifty hearths, with a church in the middle, surrounded by green squares of vineyards. At the village gate he met a man with whom he traded questions: who-whence-why-whither? Father François had barely sat down in the Ace Trumps All when he was called away to a dying man. Knocking back a hasty tumbler or two, he thrust his arms into the sleeves of his cassock and, fastening the hooks as he went, betook himself to the soul awaiting his prayers.
    Having given the soul absolution, he returned to the tavern. By then news of the stranger had visited all forty hearths, and several old peasants, who had been waiting at the Ace Trumps All, asked him to come on the morrow—the day of their fair—and entertain the folk with something especially merry and cunning. Tumblers clinked—and the goliard said, “Very well.”
    Late that night, while looking for lodging, he chanced upon a young man carrying a lantern: its yellow eye slid over his face; in the dazzling light, the goliard saw first strong broad fingers gripping the lantern’s handle, then gleaming teeth and a broad smile.
    â€œHave you seen Father François?” the young man asked. “I’m looking for him.”
    â€œWell then, let’s look together. Have you a looking glass about you?”
    â€œWhy a looking