Jarmila Read Free Page B

absent-mindedly. “But it is not bad. Look here—there are even some rubies. It could work and it will work. I give you my word on it, and my word is worth something, although I did serve time in prison. Five years to the day, and innocent into the bargain … Five months maximum is what I should have got and my lawyer promised me that too … But, frankly, I am not a lucky man. If I fall in love with a woman, she’s bound to belong to another. ‘Come with me instead, we’ll go to America,’ I’d say. ‘A relative of mine lives in the Negro quarter. He’s a watchmaker like myself and all Negroes love watches. But they’re both awesome and terrifying, the Negroes. Like children, they wreck them and overwind them. They have money, you can sell them a ring for far beyond its worth. It is possible to make a living there, I know it is.’ But she would have none of it. ‘If it were only me, I’d go with you, but now our child is on its way. Why don’t you share my excitement? We’ll be even happier then than we are now!’ she said, pulling me close. Stifling a cough, she kissed me and instead of suffocating herself she smothered me with her white serpent arms; it felt good, and, looking back I don’tregret anything! Taking my breath away she intoxicated me; it was like a dreadful drunkenness deeper than that from dark beer; a crimson darkness fell in front of my eyes. Heat suffused each limb and turned it weak. Only my heart leapt with a furious fire and angry ardour! Surrender was sudden, and the slightest of sighs escaped, so tenderly that it barely caused the feathers to flutter, nor frightened the little mice in the corner … And I found myself agreeing with her. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘The Oom-Pah will certainly be better positioned to look after our child than I will having only just arrived in Harlem. But, Jarmila, have you considered that your Oom-Pah is twenty years older than you? Maybe he’ll die soon. Then we’ll get married, the child will be mine, and so will you! Thank God, even the rich have to die, don’t they? He bought you far too cheaply for next to nothing. Just like he swindles poor farmers, paying them a trifle for their most precious down feathers. He is the mighty merchant after all. He knows all about feathers separating them into piles—the finest here, the ones of average weight and quality there, and the heaviest there …’ ‘Stop talking of feathers,’ she whispered, and pressed up against me once more, insatiable …”

VI
    H E HAD ENTIRELY IMMERSED HIMSELF in the wretched watch and there it was, devoid of all its entrails apart from some little cogs which were apparently attached to the mechanism of the hands. He extracted one of these cogs using tweezers, held it up to the light, twirled it in his fingers, eyes half-shut.
    “Here it is, dear sir! Either the cog was badly cut and was acting up for that reason or it wasn’t lying dead level, thus distorting the entire mechanism of your watch. I can’t say which as I don’t have the appropriate tool with me: do you want to come back tomorrow evening?” I replied that come tomorrow I’d be on my way to Paris. He seemed sorry about this, but remained silent.
    “Please keep the watch,” I said. “You’ve laboured over it and I have another at home, a gold watch.”
    “Keep it? No, that’s out of the question! Give me your address, I’ll send the watch on.”
    “All right. I live in rue Monsieur, number nineteen. Do you want to make a note of that?”
    “What for? My memory is far too good, I remember everything as though it were etched upon it as on stone. You’re an educated man. Can you teach me how to forget?”
    “If that’s all,” I said laughing, “I certainly can.” Breathing heavily he stared at me with his right eye wide open. He had drunk excessively, but was still lucid. As for me, no amount of alcohol, even a quantity like that affects me.
    “Well, come on! How can I forget?” he asked with