the valley, the forest, the yellow road far below, the distant outline of the town. His farsighted eyes picked up the movement of a steadily advancing carriage. His guest was en route.
Face expressionless, body motionless, he followed the rapidly moving target. Then he closed one eye as a hunter does when taking aim.
9
It was already past seven o’clock when the General came out of his bedroom. Leaning on his ivory-headed cane, he walked with slow, measured steps down the long corridor that linked this wing of the castle, with its private quarters, to the great public rooms, the reception hall, the music room, the salons. The walls of the corridor were hung with old portraits in gold frames: portraits of ancestors, of great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, of friends, of former servants, of regimental comrades and famous guests. It was a tradition in the General’s family to employ a resident artist: sometimes itinerant painters, but sometimes also better-known men, such as the artist from Prague who had spent eight years here during the General’s grandfather’s time and had painted everyone who came within range of his brushes, including the majordomo and the winning racehorses. His great-grandfather and great-grandmother had fallen victim to the attentions of amateur artists indulging their wanderlust, and stared down from the wall in their robes of state. They were followed by a number of serious, composed male figures—contemporaries of the Officer of the Guards, with Hungarian moustaches and curled forelocks, wearing black formal clothes or dress uniforms. It had been a good generation, the General thought, as he looked at the portraits of his father’s relatives, friends, and military comrades. A good generation, a trifle eccentric, not at ease in society, arrogant, but absolutely dedicated to honor, to the male virtues: silence, solitude, the inviolability of one’s word, and women. If they were let down, they remained silent. Most of them were silent for a lifetime, bound to duty and discretion as if by vows. Toward the far end of the corridor were the French portraits, French ladies with powdered hair, fat bewigged gentlemen with sensual lips, distant relations of his mother, unknown faces looming dimly out of their backgrounds of blue, pink, and dove gray. Then the picture of his father in his Guards’ uniform. Then one of the portraits of his mother, in a feathered hat and carrying a whip like an equestrian in a circus. Then a blank space, about a meter square, with a ghostly gray line marking the perimeter where once a picture had hung. The General walked past the empty space impassively and reached the landscapes.
The nurse was standing at the end of the corridor in a black dress with a freshly starched white cap on her head.
“What are you looking at? The pictures?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want us to hang the picture back up?” she asked, pointing directly at the blank space on the wall with the bluntness of the very old.
“Is it still here?” the General asked. The nurse nodded.
“No,” he said, after a short pause. Then, softer, “I did not know you had kept it. I thought you had burned it.”
“There is absolutely no sense,” said the nurse in a high, thin voice, “in burning pictures.”
“No,” said the General candidly, the way one would talk to one’s nurse and no one else. “That isn’t what matters.”
They turned toward the grand staircase and looked down into the outer hall, where a manservant and the chambermaid were arranging flowers in crystal vases.
In the intervening hours the castle had come to life like a device whose mechanism has been wound up and reset: not only the furniture, chairs, and sofas liberated from their linen shrouds, but also the paintings on the walls, the enormous wrought-iron chandeliers, the ornaments in their glass cabinets and on the mantelpieces. Logs were piled in the hearth ready for a fire, for it was the end of
Face expressionless, body motionless, he followed the rapidly moving target. Then he closed one eye as a hunter does when taking aim.
9
It was already past seven o’clock when the General came out of his bedroom. Leaning on his ivory-headed cane, he walked with slow, measured steps down the long corridor that linked this wing of the castle, with its private quarters, to the great public rooms, the reception hall, the music room, the salons. The walls of the corridor were hung with old portraits in gold frames: portraits of ancestors, of great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, of friends, of former servants, of regimental comrades and famous guests. It was a tradition in the General’s family to employ a resident artist: sometimes itinerant painters, but sometimes also better-known men, such as the artist from Prague who had spent eight years here during the General’s grandfather’s time and had painted everyone who came within range of his brushes, including the majordomo and the winning racehorses. His great-grandfather and great-grandmother had fallen victim to the attentions of amateur artists indulging their wanderlust, and stared down from the wall in their robes of state. They were followed by a number of serious, composed male figures—contemporaries of the Officer of the Guards, with Hungarian moustaches and curled forelocks, wearing black formal clothes or dress uniforms. It had been a good generation, the General thought, as he looked at the portraits of his father’s relatives, friends, and military comrades. A good generation, a trifle eccentric, not at ease in society, arrogant, but absolutely dedicated to honor, to the male virtues: silence, solitude, the inviolability of one’s word, and women. If they were let down, they remained silent. Most of them were silent for a lifetime, bound to duty and discretion as if by vows. Toward the far end of the corridor were the French portraits, French ladies with powdered hair, fat bewigged gentlemen with sensual lips, distant relations of his mother, unknown faces looming dimly out of their backgrounds of blue, pink, and dove gray. Then the picture of his father in his Guards’ uniform. Then one of the portraits of his mother, in a feathered hat and carrying a whip like an equestrian in a circus. Then a blank space, about a meter square, with a ghostly gray line marking the perimeter where once a picture had hung. The General walked past the empty space impassively and reached the landscapes.
The nurse was standing at the end of the corridor in a black dress with a freshly starched white cap on her head.
“What are you looking at? The pictures?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you want us to hang the picture back up?” she asked, pointing directly at the blank space on the wall with the bluntness of the very old.
“Is it still here?” the General asked. The nurse nodded.
“No,” he said, after a short pause. Then, softer, “I did not know you had kept it. I thought you had burned it.”
“There is absolutely no sense,” said the nurse in a high, thin voice, “in burning pictures.”
“No,” said the General candidly, the way one would talk to one’s nurse and no one else. “That isn’t what matters.”
They turned toward the grand staircase and looked down into the outer hall, where a manservant and the chambermaid were arranging flowers in crystal vases.
In the intervening hours the castle had come to life like a device whose mechanism has been wound up and reset: not only the furniture, chairs, and sofas liberated from their linen shrouds, but also the paintings on the walls, the enormous wrought-iron chandeliers, the ornaments in their glass cabinets and on the mantelpieces. Logs were piled in the hearth ready for a fire, for it was the end of
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