the stretch of her eyes, embarrassment in the tuck of her chin, a touch of joy in the broadening of her mouth. She studied my choir robe.
“Are you a monk?” Her tone suggested she preferred snakes to monks.
Again, I said nothing.
“When I am grown up,” she said, coming toward me very slowly and yet speaking quickly, “there won’t be monks anymore, just philosophes , which women can be, even though women cannot run manufactories.” When she finished speaking, Jean-Jacques was near my face. He stopped writhing and stared limply into the darkness. The girl looked into my eyes. I retreated a step. She advanced.
Her dress rustled when she moved. Her stiff black shoes creaked. She tapped her teeth together twice. “If you ever tell anyone what you saw, I will bash your face,” she said.
Then she walked right past me.
I turned to watch her go, and only then did I notice that she limped. Her right foot was turned inward and her knee did not bend. She glanced backward as she left the room and caught me studying her leg. A flash of hurt joined the battle of her face. “It is cruel to stare,” she said.
Then she was gone. I watched the doorway, then closed my eyes so I could run back through her sounds, now stored in my memory. The swish of her dress, the soft snake-charming voice awakened my other senses. Was that her scent of soap and citrus still lingering in the room?
I returned to the main hallway and leaned against the wall until I heard Ueli dragging his feet along the floor, for he had been sent to find me.
We were there to sing a Sunday Vespers—we sang Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus , a piece that offered the right virtuosity, harmony, and piety to impress geniuses and wealthy imbeciles alike, and thus to inspire revisions of last wills and testaments in ways most generous to the abbey. The Duft chapel was a dank block of limestone filled with a surfeit of icons and thirty or so worshippers. Feder and I stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the choir. This evening he did not conceal a needle in his fist and poke it into my arm, or whisper that the abbot had locked Nicolai away for his indecent crimes, both of which were common antics when we practiced. Now, the chapel full with the best St. Gall blood, he smiled like an angel, and gave no sign that he despised me.
Just as we were about to begin, the doors at the back of the chapel opened and in strode the master of the house, Willibald Duft. Not only was the head of the Duft und Söhne textile empire thin, he was short, and so among the other rotund men in the chapel, he had a boyish appearance. He did not pause to cross himself, but only dipped his finger in the stoup and drew a circle in the air, splashing holy water on the floor. His left hand held the now-clean hand of his only child, Amalia Duft, the snake-kisser. She limped along beside him.
They sat beside a woman in the first pew who had the unattractive combination of high, hollow cheeks, thin shoulders, and wide hips, making her appear a sagging, fleshy pyramid resting on the pew. Amalia sat between the two adults. I wrongly took the pear-shaped woman for Amalia’s mother and Willibald’s wife; instead, I later learned, she was Duft’s unmarried sister, Karoline Duft, the chief source of piety in the house and instigator of this particular service.
During the first two movements, I watched these three. The team of tenors and altos fought with each other and with the violins and harpsichord for possession of the chapel, using exaggerated volume and a barely perceptible extension of their notes as weapons. But the war was lost on the crowd; the clamor merely dulled their attention. Some smiled blankly. Others had a dumb look of faked fulfillment on their faces. Several worshippers fell asleep. Duft was staring at his shoes. Beside him, Amalia swung her feet listlessly and made no effort to disguise the boredom on her face. However, it appeared that Karoline Duft could not have been happier
“Are you a monk?” Her tone suggested she preferred snakes to monks.
Again, I said nothing.
“When I am grown up,” she said, coming toward me very slowly and yet speaking quickly, “there won’t be monks anymore, just philosophes , which women can be, even though women cannot run manufactories.” When she finished speaking, Jean-Jacques was near my face. He stopped writhing and stared limply into the darkness. The girl looked into my eyes. I retreated a step. She advanced.
Her dress rustled when she moved. Her stiff black shoes creaked. She tapped her teeth together twice. “If you ever tell anyone what you saw, I will bash your face,” she said.
Then she walked right past me.
I turned to watch her go, and only then did I notice that she limped. Her right foot was turned inward and her knee did not bend. She glanced backward as she left the room and caught me studying her leg. A flash of hurt joined the battle of her face. “It is cruel to stare,” she said.
Then she was gone. I watched the doorway, then closed my eyes so I could run back through her sounds, now stored in my memory. The swish of her dress, the soft snake-charming voice awakened my other senses. Was that her scent of soap and citrus still lingering in the room?
I returned to the main hallway and leaned against the wall until I heard Ueli dragging his feet along the floor, for he had been sent to find me.
We were there to sing a Sunday Vespers—we sang Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus , a piece that offered the right virtuosity, harmony, and piety to impress geniuses and wealthy imbeciles alike, and thus to inspire revisions of last wills and testaments in ways most generous to the abbey. The Duft chapel was a dank block of limestone filled with a surfeit of icons and thirty or so worshippers. Feder and I stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the choir. This evening he did not conceal a needle in his fist and poke it into my arm, or whisper that the abbot had locked Nicolai away for his indecent crimes, both of which were common antics when we practiced. Now, the chapel full with the best St. Gall blood, he smiled like an angel, and gave no sign that he despised me.
Just as we were about to begin, the doors at the back of the chapel opened and in strode the master of the house, Willibald Duft. Not only was the head of the Duft und Söhne textile empire thin, he was short, and so among the other rotund men in the chapel, he had a boyish appearance. He did not pause to cross himself, but only dipped his finger in the stoup and drew a circle in the air, splashing holy water on the floor. His left hand held the now-clean hand of his only child, Amalia Duft, the snake-kisser. She limped along beside him.
They sat beside a woman in the first pew who had the unattractive combination of high, hollow cheeks, thin shoulders, and wide hips, making her appear a sagging, fleshy pyramid resting on the pew. Amalia sat between the two adults. I wrongly took the pear-shaped woman for Amalia’s mother and Willibald’s wife; instead, I later learned, she was Duft’s unmarried sister, Karoline Duft, the chief source of piety in the house and instigator of this particular service.
During the first two movements, I watched these three. The team of tenors and altos fought with each other and with the violins and harpsichord for possession of the chapel, using exaggerated volume and a barely perceptible extension of their notes as weapons. But the war was lost on the crowd; the clamor merely dulled their attention. Some smiled blankly. Others had a dumb look of faked fulfillment on their faces. Several worshippers fell asleep. Duft was staring at his shoes. Beside him, Amalia swung her feet listlessly and made no effort to disguise the boredom on her face. However, it appeared that Karoline Duft could not have been happier
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