The Fata Morgana Books by Littell Jonathan & Mandell Charlotte

Author:Littell, Jonathan & Mandell, Charlotte [Littell, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Published: 2013-10-20T20:00:00+00:00

* * *

During the meal, the banal, disjointed conversation continued; without arrogance but firmly, I discouraged useless discussions, put an end to pointless controversies with a fair opinion, warned off those who got too excited, supported those who spoke sensible words. It wasn’t that I took myself so seriously, on the contrary, I felt like a kid playing at being an adult, but playing seriously, so seriously that no one suspected, and when I commented in detail on the grave foreign policy crisis brewing, everyone listened to me attentively, drinking in my words without interrupting me. The children ate in silence, with just a slight clink of silverware, at times asking politely, in the interludes between subjects, for salt, or water, or some more food. A boy brought his hand to his lips: I looked at him, he blushed and grabbed his napkin to wipe his face. Their meal over, the children excused themselves and cleared their places; I poured more wine for the grownups and handed out cigarillos to those who wanted them. The woman seated to my left, who kept her beautiful clear eyes fixed on me as she listened to my words in silence, raised a lighter and lit it; I brought her hand to the tip of my cigar, thanking her with a smile, holding her fingers delicately so the flame wouldn’t tremble. She contemplated me with boundless gratitude, but at the same time a vague anxiety disturbed her gaze, making her indistinct and rarefying her features, just as was the case for all those gathered around this table. I heard a noise and raised my head: the blond child was standing in the doorway, his feet bare, pale as a sheet. I put my cigar down in the ashtray, got up, joined him and took him in my arms before heading for one of the empty rooms where I placed him on the embroidered bedspread. He murmured a few indistinct words, I brought my ear closer, the words took on strength and began to form phrases, I listened attentively, he spoke in a loud voice now, his eyes wide open and focused on a point that I couldn’t locate, his words had become clear but I was incapable of grasping their meaning, he was uttering sentences whose syntax was impeccable but whose key word, the one that would give meaning to all the others, remained incomprehensible, a group of syllables seemingly significant but tied to nothing, or else there came a word perfectly comprehensible, obvious, but inserted into a completely scrambled sentence, incapable of supporting its signification. I spoke too, calm and peaceful words, I answered his statements without thinking, trying to bring him back to a sense of reality, but each time his words only placed themselves in the wake of mine in order to overtake them and then race away again in the opposite direction, to a dizzying distance, at the depths of which they turned round and came back, following the opposite path with the same implacable logic.

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.