Utz by Bruce Chatwin Read Free Book Online Page B

the landlord’s property, it was she who stood guard against them. Utz was free to leave the castle with his treasures.
    In Prague, she slept in a leaky attic room a few doors down Å iroká Street. When interrogated about the terms of her employment, she bridled. She was not Mr Utz’s employee. She looked after him merely as a friend.
    He, by inviting her to share his table, affirmed that the friendship was shared.
    Over dinner, he explained the reason for his journey. She dropped her knife and fork, and gasped, ‘You’re not ill, I hope.’
    He calmed her fears, but gave no hint that he might never come back. She should sleep, meanwhile, in the apartment — in his bed if she wished it — and keep the door firmly locked. His friend, Dr Orlík, would look in from time to time, in case there was anything she needed.
    The wine went to her head. She became a little flushed. She talked a little too much. For her, it was an evening of perfect happiness.
    At breakfast, she came back to make coffee. She helped Utz with his suitcase to the taxi. Then she climbed upstairs, and listened to the beating of the rain.

T he customs men were expecting him at the frontier.
    They frisked him, removed the small change from his pockets and, as experts in the art of irritation, appropriated Marta’s picnic. Then, finding nothing in his luggage that could be classed as a work of art, they took his copy of ‘The Magic Mountain’ and a pair of tortoiseshell hairbrushes.
    â€˜I suppose,’ he muttered as the green caps moved along the corridor, ‘they need those for the Museum also.’
    After Nuremberg, the rainclouds lifted and the sun came out. He had nothing now to read and so stared from the window at the telegraph wires, the tarred wood gables of the farmhouses, the orchards, the cows in fields of buttercups, and parties of blond-haired children who clung to the barriers of level-crossings and waved their satchels.
    The signal-boxes, he noticed, were pitted with bullet-holes. Across the compartment sat a young married couple.
    The girl was turning the leaves of an album of wedding-photos. She was pregnant. She wore a grey smock trimmed with lace. Her bluish legs were unshaven, and her dyed hair dark at the roots.
    The boy, Utz was glad to see, was disgusted by her. He looked very ill-at-ease in his American leather flying-jacket, and shuddered whenever she touched him. He was a swarthy, skinny boy with pouting lips and a head of black curls. His nails were stained with nicotine, and he chain-smoked desperately. Was he an Arab, or something? Or a gipsy? Or Italian? Italian, Utz decided, after hearing him speak. She must have had money, and he had been starving. But what a price to pay!
    She began to unpack her hamper and Utz began to have second thoughts. He was ravenous. Had he, perhaps, misjudged her? Perhaps she would offer him a share?
    He prepared a grateful smile for when the time came. Then, like a dog at the master’s table, he watched her swallow a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a schnitzel, a ham sandwich, half a cold chicken and some rounds of garlic sausage. She swilled these down with a bottle of beer, smacked her lips and continued, absent-mindedly, to stuff slices of pumpernickel between them.
    The boy hardly touched his food.
    Utz could stand the strain no longer. He had come to a decision. He would ask. He would beg. He opened his mouth to say ‘Please’ — at which the young man tore off a chicken leg and was in the act of handing it across when the girl, shouting ‘No! No! No!’, slapped him back, and went on peeling an orange.
    The smell of orange rind filled the compartment. Ach! What wouldn’t he give for an orange! Even a segment of orange! The oranges one got in Prague, scavenged or stolen from one or other of the embassies, were usually shrivelled and tasteless. But this orange dripped its juice over the monster’s fingers.
    Utz leaned