The Marble Quilt Read Free Page B

matter. (Mrs. Warshaw was correct about this, though little else.) According to Harold’s mother, this was because Aunt Irene, after years of not being able to conceive, had taken him in as a foundling, only wouldn’t you know it? The very day the baby arrived she found out she was pregnant. “It’s always like that,” his mother had said. “Women who take in foundlings always get pregnant the day the foundling arrives.”
    Nine months later Toby was born—Toby the Second—that marvelous boy who rivaled his adopted brother for athletic skills, outstripped him in book smarts, but was handsome, too, Pratt handsome, with pale skin and small ears. Toby had been a star pupil, whereas Irene had had to plead with the headmaster to keep Stephen from being held back a grade. Not that the boys disliked each other: instead, so far as Harold could tell, they simply made a point of ignoring each other. (And how was this possible? How was it possible for anyone to ignore either of them?)
    â€œBe kind to your aunt Irene,” his mother had told him at the station in St. Louis.“She’s known too much death.”
    And now she sat opposite him, here on the train, and he could see from her eyes that it was true: she had known too much death.
    Harold flipped ahead a few pages.
    Throughout this time Orpheus had shrunk from loving any woman, either because of his unhappy experience, or because he had pledged himself not to do so. In spite of this there were many who were fired with a desire to marry the poet, many were indignant to find themselves repulsed. However, Orpheus preferred to center his affection on boys of tender years, and to enjoy the brief spring and early flowering of their youth: he was the first to introduce this custom among the people of Thrace.
    Boys of tender years, like Stephen, who, as Harold glanced up, shifted again, opened his eyes, and stared at his cousin malevolently.
    And the train rumbled, and Mrs. Warshaw’s aigrette fluttered before the Colosseum, and the cracked glass that covered Trajan’s Column rattled.
    They were starting to climb at a steeper gradient. They were nearing the tunnel at last.
    From the
Hartford Evening Post
, November 4, 1878: Letter Six, “Crossing from the Tyrol into Ticino,” by Tobias R. Pratt:
    As we began the climb over the great mountain of San Gottardo our
mulattiere
, a most affable and friendly fellow within whose Germanic accent one could detect echoes of the imminent South, explained that even as we made our way through the pass, at that very moment men were laboring under our feet todig a vast railway tunnel that upon completion will be the longest in the world. This tunnel will make Italy an easier destination for those of us who wish always to be idling in her beneficent breezes … and yet how far the Palazzo della Signoria seemed to us that morning, as we rose higher and higher into snowy regions! It was difficult to believe that on the other side the lovely music of the Italian voice and the taste of a rich red wine awaited us; still this faith gave us the strength to persevere through what we knew would be three days of hard travel.
    To pass the time, we asked our guide his opinion of the new tunnel. His response was ambivalent. Yes, he admitted, the tunnel would bring tourism (and hence money) to his corner of the world. And yet the cost! Had we heard, for instance, that already one hundred men had lost their lives underground? A hint of superstitious worry entered his voice, as if he feared lest the mountain—outraged by such invasions—should one day decide that it had had enough and with one great heave of its breast smash the tunnel and all its occupants to smithereens …
    And Irene thought: He never saw it. He had been dead two years already by the time it was finished.
    And Grady thought: Finally.
    And Mrs. Warshaw thought: I hope the
signora
saved me Room 5, as she promised.
    And Harold