Black Bird Read Online Free Page B

Black Bird
Book: Black Bird Read Online Free
Author: Michel Basilieres
Tags: Fiction, General
Pages:
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the same direction, like parallel lines,” when Marie knocked at his window. He left the warm bed, his body startled by the change in temperature, opened the window and retreated before the blast of winter air. Marie climbed in without a word, carefully closing the window behind her.
    She whispered: “Tell them I’ve been with you all night. All night, understand?”
    Just at that moment the doorbell sounded downstairs.
    Jean-Baptiste looked towards the door. “No, I don’t understand. Okay, you want me to cover for you, but what will they think if we say we were here together?”
    Marie got into his bed and pulled the covers under her chin. “For God’s sake, they’ll arrest me.”
    “Coat, boots and all,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Would you do it for me if our positions were reversed?”
    They were silent a moment.
    He asked, “What did you do?”
    “Nothing. Does it matter? I did what was right.”
    “I just want to know what kind of criminal I’m harbouring. That’s a crime too, you know. I want to know how serious this is.”
    Now there were people walking about the house, making noise.
    “Don’t be so self-righteous. Will you turn me in? Would you turn in Grandfather and Uncle?” She was struggling to take off her clothes under the blankets. There was a knock at the door.
    Jean-Baptiste got back into bed. His sister was cold beside him.
    Father burst into the room. “Jean-Baptiste, wake up. Angus is dead.”
    Angus was his other grandfather, Mother’s father. She sat on the divan sobbing; Father spoke with the police. Marie quietly went to her own room; Jean-Baptiste looked suspiciously after her, but said nothing and instead made tea. Aline began to fry potatoes and bacon. Grandfather and Uncle sat silently in the dark basement, looking up through the narrow window to the street until they saw the wheels of the patrol car driving away. Then they went back to bed.
    Angus had lived on the slope of the mountain, on a street that would someday be named after a man Grandfather counted among his customers, a man famous for opening up people’s skulls and prodding them with electrodes while they were still awake. A man who was the Desouches’ family doctor because he could be paid in trade instead of cash. Itwas a prestigious street, where many foreign countries had their embassies in large rambling houses older than their countries and more solid than their governments, and where behind closed doors, worse things were done to people still awake.
    Angus had been proud to live there. He’d seemed to think his street somehow more worthy of respect than others. Perhaps because it was higher up the hill, or because so many of his neighbours were mysterious men in dark glasses. Or because so many of the houses were surrounded by fences and cameras. At any rate, he had a way of suggesting that Mother’s street was beneath him in more than just the literal sense.
    It was never any use pointing out to him that he could only afford to live there because he lived alone in a small apartment and spent no money on vices of any kind, or even simple necessities like clothing, preferring to wear what he still insisted were the perfectly useful shirts and pants he’d been issued in the army. Or that, really, it was past time to cancel his dead wife’s pension.
    None of this or any other opinion contrary to his made any impression on him, for Angus was one of the world’s freelance wise men. They’re not rare, these savants, but those to whom they offer advice curiously ignore them. And they’re often intentionally thwarted by their inferiors just to keep them from influence and power or even simple respect. They’ve always paid less than you have, and for better goods. They invariably shake their heads as they say they told you so. They always have another suggestion forgetting your life in order. They have a great respect for their own experience, but scoff at anyone’s education. To them the words “expert”

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