Wanderer by Sarah Léon & John Cullen

Author:Sarah Léon & John Cullen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2019-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

9

DEATH AND THE YOUTH

Immediately, a wave of anguish and remorse swept over Hermin, like the windy blasts that were assaulting the building in distress. He ran to the door, snatched it open, and called out from the threshold: “Lenny! Don’t be an idiot! Lenny!”

For all response, some snowflakes, avenging soldiers, stung his face and infiltrated his collar: just punishment for a man who had thrown his guest out on such a hellish night…

At first, a bit of disingenuousness saved him. He imagined that it wouldn’t be long before the storm would discourage the boy and oblige him to seek shelter and wait for a lull; soon he’d be knocking on the door…

Hermin went back to the Great Room and numbly took refuge next to the hearth. There the roar of the windy gusts as they rushed furiously down the chimney mingled with raised voices from the scene he’d just lived through to fill the room with sound. Outside the storm was besieging the Pommier Chenin as never before. The windowpanes vibrated under the cannonade.

Now Hermin was trembling. Was that caused by the cold insinuating itself into the house, or was it a repercussion of the recent disaster? His gaze fell on the bottle and the glass that were still standing on the low table. He contemplated them with disgust for several moments, but then, as his shivering persisted, he finally poured himself a shot and downed it in one gulp. After that he fell back into the armchair, trying to remain insensible to the remorse that was beginning to torment him. He saw a book Lenny had left lying open on one arm of the sofa. The work in question—nothing less than a rare edition of Schubert’s correspondence—was part of Hermin’s music library. He’d perused the volume numerous times and liked reading it piecemeal. It was natural for him, this time, to begin reading at the page where Lenny must have left off. And thus he stumbled on the following passage, in the margin of which a couple of lines of verse had been written in pencil:

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