The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence by Kirsten Lodge

Author:Kirsten Lodge
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909232006
Publisher: Dedalus Limited
Published: 2012-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

V

The July day was unbearably hot. The sun heated the dry, hazy air through and through. The trees with their broad, fully-grown leaves silently, sleepily, happily took in the sun’s rays, like lizards at noon on a hot stone. The smell of dust and every kind of flower hung in the air. The whole cemetery park was now full of flowers. All was immaculately clean and tidy, the graves carefully tended and cheerful-looking. But mingling with the various fine fragrances and the aroma of blossoming lime trees, there was another smell, barely noticeable, but unsettling, elusive and heavy. It is a smell found only in cemeteries during extremely hot spells. Charlotte always thought that it was the breath of dying lime blossoms. They smelled exactly like that when they were falling. Charlotte didn’t feel the heat. Her fine face was as pale as always, her hands working away as usual. And here, behind the fence of Albert’s grave, where she was now in the habit of spending her days, it was especially shady. The lilac, long past blossoming, was now dense with new growth, and the old birches met in a thick green awning overhead. There were no more violets on Albert’s grave. Two big white rose bushes grew there now. Charlotte herself looked after them, and nowhere were the blossoms so fresh and luxuriant as here.

Today Charlotte was wearing a light-coloured dress with short sleeves. She’d felt happy since morning. Her happiness, like Charlotte herself, was quiet and inconspicuous. It was as if an even, gentle flame were glowing in her heart. As she twisted long stems of lavender into a wreath that had been ordered, she suddenly began to sing in a quiet, fine voice, and this made her feel flustered. She so rarely forgot herself like that.

The white medallion beneath the cross was now half-hidden by roses. Charlotte liked to draw her hand along the gentle, scarcely protruding profile of that half-seen face: the marble was cool to the touch, velvety and always caressing.

It seemed to have got muggier. Hazy air crept from the surrounding bogs and from the direction of the distant forest. Charlotte, tearing her eyes away from the lavender for a moment, turned her gaze upward. She shuddered, cried out weakly and blushed: above her, on the old wooden fence, beyond which stretched other peoples’ gardens, and further still lay the bog and a coppice, sat a solid, handsome youth in a skilfully embroidered crimson shirt. It was Johann.

“Don’t be frightened, Mam’selle Charlotte,” he said, very politely, even gallantly, as he tipped his white peaked cap. “Forgive me for … coming by the direct route. From my place it’s much closer to come like this, although the way is a bit difficult. But I knew that you had chosen this little nook … And not wishing to disturb your respected papa by coming through the main gates and the house … Will you allow me to join you?”

“Yes,” Charlotte whispered, with lowered lashes.

Her happiness had vanished without a trace.

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.