A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories by Eva Ibbotson

Author:Eva Ibbotson [Ibbotson, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

And so the days drew steadily on, mounting to their climax – Christmas Eve. Snow fell, the tree arrived, the last candle was lit on the Advent ring. The littlest niece, falling from grace, ate the chimney off the gingerbread house. The exchange of hampers became ever more frenzied. The Pfischingers, who still had not sent, invaded Tante Gerda’s dreams …

It was on the morning of the twenty-third that Onkel Erns and his future son-in-law assembled to perform the sacrificial rites on the Great Carp Ferdinand.

The little nieces had been bundled into coats and leggings and taken to the Prater. Graziella, notoriously tender-hearted, had been sent to Rumpelmayers on an errand. Now, at the foot of the stairs stood the cook, holding a gargantuan earthenware baking dish – to the left of her the housemaids, to the right the kitchen staff. On the landing upstairs, Tante Gerda girded her men – a long-bladed kitchen knife, a seven-pound sledgehammer, an old and slightly rusty sword of the Kaiser’s Imperial Army which someone had left behind at dinner …

In the bathroom, Onkel Ernst looked at the fish and the fish looked at Onkel Ernst. A very slight sensation, a whisper of premonition, nothing more, assailed Onkel Ernst, who felt as though his liver was performing a very small entrechat.

‘You shoo him down this end,’ ordered Franz, splendidly off-hand. ‘Then, when he’s up against the end of the bath, I’ll wham him.’

Onkel Ernst shooed. The carp swam. Franz – swinging the hammer over his head – whammed.

The noise was incredible. Chips of enamel flew upwards.

‘Ow, my eye, my eye!’ yelled Franz, dropping the hammer. ‘ There’s a splinter in it. Get it OUT!’

‘Yes,’ said Onkel Ernst. ‘Yes…’

He put down the sword from the Kaiser’s Imperial Army and climbed carefully on to the side of the bath. Even then he was only about level with Franz’s streaming blue eye. Blindly, Franz thrust his head forward.

The rest really was inevitable. Respectable, middle-aged Viennese solicitors are not acrobats; they don’t pretend to be. The carp, swimming languidly between Onkel Ernst’s ankles found, as he had expected, nothing even mildly edible.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.