The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Page A

absorbed. From the open window the moon swam out, exactly as in a romance, causing me to remember that I was not Hamlet but Romeo.
    I played louder and louder till suddenly the door opened and Berthe said:
    ‘Your aunt asks you to stop playing, as she has a
migràine
.’
    ‘Come out on the balcony,’ Sylvia said.
    ‘Ha, ha! High-heeled shoes at last! How they show off the calves!’
    She laughed—a lovely dingling laughter.
    ‘It’s dishonest to show too much of your legs. It upsets men’s equilibrium. Either don’t go so far, or if you do, then go the whole hog.’
    ‘Alexander’ (she called me by my third name because George, she thought, was too common and Hamlet a little ridiculous)—‘Alexander, read me something.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Anything. This.’
    ‘Whose book is this?’
    ‘
Maman’s
.’
    I opened and read: ‘ “… Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a questionof nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dream. You may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.” ’
    Sylvia had shut her eyes.
    ‘Lovely,’ she murmured.
    Night, the patron of lovers and thieves, enwrapped us, casting upon us a thin veil of white mist. But the light was on in the corridor, and I had the feeling that every moment the door might fling open and my aunt would come in. This disconcerted me somewhat. A wicked smell, as of burning fishbones, rose from behind the backyard wall which the balcony overlooked.
    ‘Tomorrow I’m going back to school,’ she said, ‘and—and we’ve never been out by ourselves. What cold hands you have, Alexander.’
    ‘What is it like at your school?’
    ‘Quite nice,’ she said. ‘We play hockey.’
    A phenomenon of transformation! A Belgian girl, after four years in an Irish Catholic convent in Japan, came out an Irish colleen; there was even a trace of the delicious brogue in her accents. But withal there was a Latin warmth of grace in Sylvia which underlined her naturally acquired anglicism. There was a British freedom in her, but she would remember the restraints of a Latin upbringing, what was at Dixmude, and the ceremonious notions of her parents as to conduct that becomes a Belgian young girl. And there was something ‘taking’ in such discipline, as in a beautiful young horse submitting to the harness, or the discomfiture of ornament upon a lovely female form.
    ‘ “Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you kept your youth …” ’
    While I read aloud, Sylvia ‘prepared’ an expression ofwonderment on her face, to show that she was sensitive to what I read. But she began to fret as I read on, absorbed, and then nestled to me closely. Her nostrils widened as she breathed in the fresh air.
    ‘ “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young …” ’ And although neither of us had anything to do with the tragedy of old age, here we kissed. A light breeze that moment wafted the smell of the burning fishbones upon us.
    ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she purled.
    I agreed.
    Besides, it was.
    ‘Lovie—dovie—cats’-eyes,’ she said.
    ‘ “Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer to the earth …” ’
    We kissed.
    And then we kissed again, this time independently of Dorian.
    She had soft warm lips, and I held my breath back—at some considerable