Bella by C M Blackwood

Author:C M Blackwood [Blackwood, C M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-13T07:00:00+00:00

21

Clara’s Library

While César was occupied with Tom Folsom, his sufferings unknown to all the members of his loving household, Lucie returned from a walk with Maríbel. The two young women had been escorted by Eduardo, to and from the house of Delfina Barba – where such a raucous discussion and debate had taken place concerning that lady’s wedding dress, that both Lucie and Eduardo entered the apartment with pounding headaches, and looked sympathetically at one another as the subject of the dress started up again – this time between Maríbel and her mother.

Eduardo went in search of his father (who was sipping whiskey and soda in the kitchen), and Lucie wandered off in the direction of Clara’s bedroom, from which she heard, as she moved nearer, the faint sound of music coming. The door was shut. So she knocked; and Clara called for her to come in.

Clara was lying on her little bed, with a diminutive radio standing beside her on a tiny table. Her back was propped up against the wall, and her head was situated just beneath the window (a window which Lucie noticed, upon drawing just a little closer, looked directly out into the courtyard). She stood for a moment looking down at the arbor, and the silver moonlit flowers scattered all around it. From that vantage point, there didn’t seem to be very much order in the great garden; but rather it appeared as a rampant, wild thing that grew as a single entity, with a single heartbeat. Its heart was the arbor, and its many limbs reached out in all different directions, to cover the ground with their green leafy creepers. No path could be seen in its lush, velvety thickness. There was only a swallowing darkness.

“Hello, Lucie,” said Clara, looking up at the face hovering just above her, which was still fixed intently on the window. She reached to switch off the radio.

Lucie shook her head, looked to Clara, and smiled. “Hello, Clara.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

Lucie didn’t answer, but simply sat down on the edge of the bed. She let her eyes rove round the room.

“I thought you would have left already?” she said.

“Not for nearly an hour.”

Again, Lucie made no response; but her averted face broke into a wide smile.

As we said already, the room was hardly larger than a closet. But it was very neat, and everything seemed to have its proper place; in contrast to the brothers’ bedroom, which Lucie had discovered to be strewn all over with clothes and magazines, the first time she entered it. But then, there wasn’t even so much as a simple dresser in that room, while in Clara’s there was present a small but handsome chest of drawers – all of which drawers were fully shut, with no articles of clothing protruding or dangling forth from their depths, as was the case with Lucie’s own back home. Surely there was no room, what with the bed and the bureau, for any other item

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