THE GREEN KING (part 30)
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
The Photographer
from Salzburg
He turned the
handle, but didn’t open it right way. For the first time since he had entered
the house, his face showed some emotion. His pupils widened, his lips parted as
if he were suddenly out of breath. He lean his temple, then his cheek against
the door frame and closed his eyes. His features clenched in despair. He could
hear, probably more clearly that if the noises had been real, the smooth and
familiar sound, hardly hissing, of the rubber wheels of the wheelchair
belonging to Johann Klimrod, whose legs had been paralysed by an attack of
hemiplegia in 1931, in the spring when Reb Michael was not yet three years old.
He could hear his father’s voice talking on the telephone, or speaking to his
associate Erich Steyr, or to one of the four assistants or one of the three
secretaries. He could hear the clicking of the small elevator his father used
to go from his ground floor law office to the library and his private rooms….
…..could hear his father saying
to Steyr: ‘Erich, I am afraid of this trip to Lvov. In spite of these permits
you have obtained for them…’.
He opened his
eyes, pushed the door, went in. The room contained the long polished oak table
he had always known, an old carpet, a rickety chair. The walls, covered with
garnet silk above the paneling, still bore outline of the paintings that that
had hung on them. Some of the shelves accessible from an oak-railed balcony had
been torn down. There remained not one of the fifteen or twenty thousand books
collected by Johann Klimrod over forty years and, before him, by the four or five
preceding generations of Klimrods, one of whom had been a high ranking official
under Joseph II, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor. Nor did there remain
any part of the marvelous collection of madonnas in polychromed woods, slender,
smiling, dressed in brocade, four and a half centuries old..
TO BE CONTINUED
____________________________________
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar