Deadly to the Sight by Edward Sklepowich

horn.”
    â€œWhat does it mean, sidi , to toot my own horn?” Habib asked anxiously in one of his stage whispers.
    Mondador and Polidoro laughed as Urbino explained. His head had become increasingly stuffy during the past few minutes. He made an effort at a smile, but it froze the next moment when he caught the alarmed expression on the Contessa’s face.
    Inconsequential pieces of her conversation with Frieda, Beatrix, and Marie had been drifting over to him, and weaving themselves into what Rebecca, Polidoro, and Habib had been saying. Now, however, he registered that the words lace and lace maker had occurred with some regularity in the last few minutes.
    Marie was waving a lace handkerchief in front of her face.
    â€œI can’t breathe with all this smoke,” she said.
    But it wasn’t her distress that was the focus of the women’s attention but the lace handkerchief.
    â€œYes, it’s a lovely handkerchief. You say that the old woman has one with the same design?” Frieda said. “The woman with thick glasses and very white hair? She wears gloves with the fingers cut off.”
    Marie nodded.
    â€œShe showed it to me when I was looking for one at a shop by the boat landing. I bought this one just to get away. She’s frightful looking.”
    â€œYou are a child,” Beatrix said, but in a consoling tone. She touched her friend’s wrist. “Put it away, liebling. ”
    Marie stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket as Frieda was saying, “The old woman is harmless. It’s not her fault that she looks the way she does. I tell you that she has a good imagination. That is what is important, yes!”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asked the Contessa.
    Her voice sounded weak and somewhat tremulous.
    â€œShe tells strange tales,” Frieda said. “Perhaps not as strange as mine. Ha, ha! But she could have been a writer, if all that is needed is the imagination. Regina must agree. She knows her better than any of us.” She craned her head around the room, but Regina was now nowhere in sight. “Perhaps she’s gone outside this time to smoke her cigarette,” she said with a smile for Marie. “I am sure she saw you waving your handkerchief against the smoke!”
    The tall Beatrix had a pensive look on her face. She stared at Frieda for a few moments.
    â€œYou must tell me something,” she said. “Will you use her imagination?”
    â€œOh, you are speaking of the old lace maker! I have more than enough of my own, thank you!”
    Her slightly protruding eyes regarded the Austrian woman without even a faint glint of humor.
    â€œBut other writers would steal,” she added, “or pay much money for a good story! Artists are always sketching faces in secret. It is a kind of theft. And for a writer, everything becomes—how do you say it, Contessa?—meal for the mill?”
    The Contessa nodded, her eyes locked with Urbino’s. Any desire to supply the correct idiom was driven out by the discomfort so clearly reflected in her face.
    â€œBut I do not steal,” Frieda went on. “I use what someone else tells me or something I read, and when I am finished with it, it is one hundred percent Frieda Hensel, yes!”
    She then gave a colorful narrative of what she called the romance of lace that she seemed to be spinning out as she spoke. It was about a handsome fisherman from Burano who became shipwrecked, and was rescued and comforted by beautiful mermaids in a castle of coral. When the mermaids conveyed him back to Burano after many happy months, his pockets were full of the mermaids’ seaweed. His wife, seeing the sad state of her husband, went to a wise old woman, who told fortunes and gave advice. The wife hurried home and started to copy the pattern of the seaweed with her needle and thread. And in this fashion lace making was born, and was forever associated with danger, seduction, melancholy, and