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Brick & Storm [Hood Misfits Hood Misfits Volume 2 (retail)
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Duzy zeszyt. Dowod. Trzecie kla Agota Kristof

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.‘There may be a play up in town you’d like to see.’Nell turned to Sylvie.‘When he says town, he means London.’Her mother said quietly that in the circumstances, perhaps a trip to London might not be a good idea.They’d have to wait and see.‘Because of the belligerent madman?’ asked Sylvie with a glitter of defiance.‘Only pleasant talk at the dinner table, please, Sylvie.’ Nell’s mother cut into the pie and spooned the slivers of meat dotted with carrot chunks onto a plate and topped it with a slice of crust.‘Here you are, dear.Do help yourself to vegetables.’Sylvie waited politely while the other plates were filled and passed around.Mollie poured water into the girls’ glasses, and then splashed wine into hers and her husband’s.Looking satisfied, Sylvie forked a morsel of meat into her mouth and delicately chewed.‘Oh, my favourite,’ announced Nell as she cut through the crust on her plate.‘Mmmm, it is lovely.What is it?’ asked Sylvie.‘Rabbit pie,’ said Mollie.Sylvie’s shriek was eclipsed by the crash of her plate as she upended it and it splintered on the floor.Gravy splashed up her socks.Expletives flew from her mouth.‘You did it on purpose!’ Sylvie screamed.‘You spiteful, nasty …!’Nell covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her giggle of shock.Marcus grabbed his wine glass and pulled it out of reach of Sylvie’s flaying hands.‘Well, really,’ exclaimed Mollie, her fork stopped halfway to her mouth.‘Whatever’s the matter?’Sylvie’s dark eyes, bright with tears, flashed venom.‘My rabbit.She killed my rabbit.And now you make me eat a rabbit! How could you! You ice-cold English bastards!’With a throaty sob she turned, grinding cooked rabbit flesh into the carpet with her heel, and fled from the room.After a moment, Marcus cleared his throat and said quietly, ‘I’m not one to profess to being an expert at French, but …’Mollie took a great gulp of wine.Nell lifted her fork, not wanting to let any of her favourite meal go cold and said, ‘Yes, Dad, I don’t think that was very ladylike, do you?’Far into the evening, Sylvie wept, her eyes swollen, her nose the colour of Marcus’s red madder paint.Nell, from her own bed, watched across the lino bedroom floor, with the knotted, circular, wool rug dead centre, as her mother knelt by the head of Sylvie’s bed.Mollie smoothed her niece’s hair over her forehead.She never does that for me, thought Nell, even when I’m being sick.Dad always looks after me, and gets me a bowl.‘Come now, Sylvie.No more tears,’ said Mollie, trying her best to sound soothing.‘I don’t like it here.I don’t like her! I’ve never liked her.’Nell cringed and pushed her head under the pillow.‘Try to sleep and you’ll feel better in the morning,’ Mollie sighed.‘Bring Uncle Marcus in,’ demanded Sylvie.‘He should tell Nell off.’Mollie said, ‘Uncle Marcus is indisposed.’Probably, thought Nell, with his head under his pillow.Mollie tried again, reminding her wearily that it was getting late.She reached out and switched off the bedside lamp.In the now darkened room, Nell saw that the moon had risen, the big, white, summer moon, and it was sending a silver pathway across her bed.Sylvie relented.She snuffled, blew her nose loudly and turned over to face the wall, muttering in French as her sobs faded.Nell looked up to see her mother standing over her, her face in shadow but her anger fizzing from her fingertips.The light from the landing behind her made her silhouette enormous.‘You really, really should have told us about the rabbit.’SylvieThe seagulls’ cries were sharp and melancholy over the rooftops and a faint tang of the sea drifted through.Drenched by sleep, her eyes tightly closed, she imagined the gaps in her shutters letting in crooked beams of light.She smelt the lavender-soap scent of her boudoir, fleeting but pungent.Wobbles of sunlight danced across the honey-coloured puzzle of the parquet floor.Occasional muffled footsteps fell along the corridor outside her door.For one clouded, confused moment she was there.Right there.But then, she dropped like a stone back to reality and lay pinned to the spare bed in her cousin’s meagre little room.She had slept for far too long; her face, covered with a fine film of dampness, had sunk into the pillow.Her scalp was soaked with perspiration, her temples ached and her mouth was dry from weeping.She squinted across the room she was resigned to share with Nell for the summer.Where was the lace, the delicacy, the flowers she was used to? The rag rug had seen better days, the grey lino was split here and there, and the crocheted patchwork quilt that Nell boasted she’d made last winter was rumpled at the end of the empty twin bed.And it looked like it would smell of mothballs.Sylvie fingered the thin cotton sheet and compared it to her lace-edged counterpane.Her insides emptied in loneliness.She begged herself not to think of her mother.She got out of bed and grabbed her silk dressing gown, wrapping it around her nightgown which had been stitched by the nuns of the Abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel.She sat down at the kidney-shaped dressing table which Uncle Marcus had made in the year after the Great War, Nell had told her proudly.It was a way of keeping himself occupied.He made lots of things, apparently, painted a great deal of pictures, and dug in his September Garden.It was a child-size dressing table, really, and Sylvie’s long legs poked through the gap in the seersucker curtain at the front.She knocked her knee and sucked an oath through her teeth.The mirror was foxed around its edges.It could do with a polish, she thought as she leant forward.‘Zut,’ she whispered, staring at her puffy eyes and crumpled skin.Her pillow – rough linen, not the fine silk cotton she was used to – had marked her cheeks and forehead like a road map of Normandy.Tears returned to singe her eyes.How could they? How could they make her eat lapin? Nell knew.And Nell had laughed.Sylvie brushed furiously at her hair and reached for her pink ribbon to make a ponytail.Maman said her hair was as dark and as glossy as the midnight hour.Papa said so also.Maman said that that particular shade of ribbon contrasted so beautifully with the colour of her hair.She shook her head, whipping the sleek lock of hair over her shoulder, irritated now by the thought of her mother and the way she said things [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]