called back. “Between a week and a year!”
“Look,” said Lily. “He’s reading her palm now. She’s laughing.”
“Yeah. He’s tracing her loveline. Hah. Some hope.”
“Short men try harder. What happened to his foot? Are you going to tell your mum?”
“About Violet? Let’s not talk about Violet. It’ll be an absolute disaster,” Keith said thoughtfully, “if Kenrik and Rita get here and they aren’t just good friends.”
At noon Whittaker arrived with the coffee tray, and the party re-gathered in the sun. Beyond, three columns of smoke fumed skyward from the valley, olive-coloured and silvery-blue at the edges. Below, on the upper slope of the nearest foothill, you could see the two monks whooften walked there—in impassioned conversation but without gesture, walking, pausing, turning, with hidden hands. Whittaker said,
“Adriano. I hear you’re a man of action.”
“It would be futile to deny it. Why, my body, as the map of a battle, itself tells the tale of my love of adventure.”
And it was true: all over his ripply little frame Adriano bore the wounds of his commitment to the good life.
“So your left foot, Adriano. What happened there?”
Two lesser toes had been sheared clean off by the propeller of a speedboat in the waters of Ceylon.
“And this … discolouration on your neck and shoulder?”
The result of a helium blaze on a hot-air balloon, six miles above the Nubian Desert.
“How about these black studmarks on your hip and thigh?”
Out hunting wild boar in Kazakhstan, Adriano succeeded in graping himself with his own shotgun.
And the knee, Adriano?
A toboggan smash on the elevated run at Lucerne … Other mementoes of hazard were written on his body, most of them the result of numberless tramplings on the polo field.
“Some call me accident-prone,” Adriano was saying. “Only the other day—well, I was recovering from a forty-floor elevator plunge in the Sugar Loaf Plaza in Johannesburg. Then some friends bundled me onto a jet to Heidelberg. We survived the landing, in dense fog, thanks to heroic work by my co-pilot. And we were just taking our seats for
Parsifal
when the balcony collapsed.”
There was a silence, and Keith felt himself being taken, being slid out of genre. He thought the upper classes had ceased to be this—had ceased to be the source of unsubtle social comedy. But here, contending otherwise, was Adriano. Keith said, “You should be more careful, mate. You should just stay indoors and hope for the best.”
“Ah, Keethe,” he said, trailing a little finger down Scheherazade’s forearm, “but I live for hazard.” He took her hand, kissed it, smoothed it, returned it with slow care. “I live to scale the impossible heights.”
Now Adriano rose up. With some pomp he approached the diving board.
“It’s very bendy,” warned Scheherazade.
He marched to the end of it, turned, measured out three long paces,and turned again. Then the two-step advance, the springing leap (with right leg coyly cocked). And like a missile catapulted by a siege engine, with a rending twang Adriano shot sunward. There was a moment, halfway up, when you glimpsed a look of swollen-eyed alarm, but then he bunched and balled and twirled, and vanished with an almost inaudible splash—a gulp, a swallow.
“… Thank God for that,” said Lily.
“Yes,” said Scheherazade. “I thought he was going to miss. Didn’t you?”
“And hit the concrete on the far side.”
“Or the hut. Or the rampart.”
“Or the tower.”
After another twenty seconds the board stopped juddering and the four of them climbed spontaneously to their feet. And stared. The surface was almost entirely undisturbed by Adriano’s ramrod splashdown, and all they saw was sky.
“What’s he doing down there?”
“Do you think he’s all right?”
“Well he did land in the shallow end.”
“It was quite a drop anyway. Can you see any blood?”
Another minute passed and the colour of
“Look,” said Lily. “He’s reading her palm now. She’s laughing.”
“Yeah. He’s tracing her loveline. Hah. Some hope.”
“Short men try harder. What happened to his foot? Are you going to tell your mum?”
“About Violet? Let’s not talk about Violet. It’ll be an absolute disaster,” Keith said thoughtfully, “if Kenrik and Rita get here and they aren’t just good friends.”
At noon Whittaker arrived with the coffee tray, and the party re-gathered in the sun. Beyond, three columns of smoke fumed skyward from the valley, olive-coloured and silvery-blue at the edges. Below, on the upper slope of the nearest foothill, you could see the two monks whooften walked there—in impassioned conversation but without gesture, walking, pausing, turning, with hidden hands. Whittaker said,
“Adriano. I hear you’re a man of action.”
“It would be futile to deny it. Why, my body, as the map of a battle, itself tells the tale of my love of adventure.”
And it was true: all over his ripply little frame Adriano bore the wounds of his commitment to the good life.
“So your left foot, Adriano. What happened there?”
Two lesser toes had been sheared clean off by the propeller of a speedboat in the waters of Ceylon.
“And this … discolouration on your neck and shoulder?”
The result of a helium blaze on a hot-air balloon, six miles above the Nubian Desert.
“How about these black studmarks on your hip and thigh?”
Out hunting wild boar in Kazakhstan, Adriano succeeded in graping himself with his own shotgun.
And the knee, Adriano?
A toboggan smash on the elevated run at Lucerne … Other mementoes of hazard were written on his body, most of them the result of numberless tramplings on the polo field.
“Some call me accident-prone,” Adriano was saying. “Only the other day—well, I was recovering from a forty-floor elevator plunge in the Sugar Loaf Plaza in Johannesburg. Then some friends bundled me onto a jet to Heidelberg. We survived the landing, in dense fog, thanks to heroic work by my co-pilot. And we were just taking our seats for
Parsifal
when the balcony collapsed.”
There was a silence, and Keith felt himself being taken, being slid out of genre. He thought the upper classes had ceased to be this—had ceased to be the source of unsubtle social comedy. But here, contending otherwise, was Adriano. Keith said, “You should be more careful, mate. You should just stay indoors and hope for the best.”
“Ah, Keethe,” he said, trailing a little finger down Scheherazade’s forearm, “but I live for hazard.” He took her hand, kissed it, smoothed it, returned it with slow care. “I live to scale the impossible heights.”
Now Adriano rose up. With some pomp he approached the diving board.
“It’s very bendy,” warned Scheherazade.
He marched to the end of it, turned, measured out three long paces,and turned again. Then the two-step advance, the springing leap (with right leg coyly cocked). And like a missile catapulted by a siege engine, with a rending twang Adriano shot sunward. There was a moment, halfway up, when you glimpsed a look of swollen-eyed alarm, but then he bunched and balled and twirled, and vanished with an almost inaudible splash—a gulp, a swallow.
“… Thank God for that,” said Lily.
“Yes,” said Scheherazade. “I thought he was going to miss. Didn’t you?”
“And hit the concrete on the far side.”
“Or the hut. Or the rampart.”
“Or the tower.”
After another twenty seconds the board stopped juddering and the four of them climbed spontaneously to their feet. And stared. The surface was almost entirely undisturbed by Adriano’s ramrod splashdown, and all they saw was sky.
“What’s he doing down there?”
“Do you think he’s all right?”
“Well he did land in the shallow end.”
“It was quite a drop anyway. Can you see any blood?”
Another minute passed and the colour of
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