Camilla Read Online Free Page A

hungry because I usually eat shortly after I come home from school, so I let him heap a little of everything on my plate.
    â€œWhen a sugar daddy gives his baby a mink coat and a diamond necklace, he usually expects certain favors in return,” my father said as the waiter wheeled the little table away. “What are you going to give me for those two promised books, Camilla?”
    I looked at him rather blankly. “You know I haven’t anything I could give you, Father,” I said, and took a small nervous sip of my vermouth cassis. After all, even the Christmas and birthday presents I get for him are bought with the allowance money he gives me. I have never actually earned a penny of my own in my life.
    â€œWell, you can give me your love, for one thing,” he said, and began picking up lentils, one after the other, on one tineof his fork. “And your complete honesty is another thing I value. You’ve always been honest with your father, haven’t you, Camilla?”
    â€œYes, Father,” I said, and broke a breadstick in half so that small crumbs of it fell onto the rough white tablecloth.
    â€œI would have liked more children,” my father said then. “A son, maybe. But I am sure that no other child could ever give me the satisfaction and joy that you have.”
    My father had never spoken to me like this before. The only way I really knew that he loved me was that sometimes when I kissed him good night he would give me a rough hug that almost broke my ribs and sometimes he would bring me home a book that he had just happened to hear me mention I wanted, or a new map of the stars. “I love you very much, Camilla, do you know that?” he said now, and I wondered if this was
in vino veritas
and if it was because of his dry martini, which he had drunk very quickly and then followed with more.
    I looked down at my plate and I had only eaten half the hors d’oeuvres and suddenly I couldn’t eat any more and I took a big swallow of my vermouth cassis.
    â€œMademoiselle is finished?” the waiter asked, and took away my plate.
    We had onion soup next. My father handed me a dish of Parmesan cheese and said, “Did you like the doll Jacques Nissen gave you?”
    I sprinkled cheese over my soup. “No. I don’t much care for dolls.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with it?” my father asked.
    â€œI’d like to give it to Luisa if that would be all right. She still likes dolls.”
    â€œWhy not?” my father said. “It’s yours to do as you please with.”
    The restaurant was filling up. People were crowded about the bar and sitting on the small uncomfortable chairs just inside the door. Occasionally the door would open, letting in a gust of dark rain-smelling air, and I would look at the door because somehow I could not look at my father.
    The waiter took away my soup bowl and brought me a plate with stuffed mushrooms and tiny string beans and potatoes chopped up in cheese sauce. I tasted everything and then my father said, “Nissen comes to see you fairly often, Camilla. Do you like him?”
    Luisa and I play a game called Indications, in which you have to guess a person by the things he reminds you of— colors and materials and animals and painters and things like that. And I did Jacques once for Luisa. I remember some of the things he reminded me of. For an animal it was a little stripy snake coiled around a rosebush; and the flower was the berry of the deadly nightshade and the painter was Daumier or Lautrec and the music was Debussy’s “Golliwog’s Cakewalk.” And the weapon was a dagger or a poison ring and the method of transportation was a submarine and the drink was absinthe with lots of wormwood. I don’t mean that Jacques is
like
these things, but when Luisa would ask me for instance what weapon does he remind you of, that was the kind of thing I had to answer. So what was I to say to