Emmaus Read Online Free Page B

Emmaus
Book: Emmaus Read Online Free
Author: Alessandro Baricco
Pages:
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she typed, on a Remington Portable. Letters, or parts of books, stories. In America she discovered photography, now she turns up in encyclopedias as a photographer. She liked to photograph derelicts and iron bridges. She did it well, in black and white. She had Hungarian and Spanish blood in her veins, but she married Andre’s grandfather in Switzerland—thus becoming very wealthy. We never saw her. She was known for her beauty. Andre resembles her, they say. Also in character.
    At a certain point the grandmother stopped taking photographs—she devoted herself to keeping the family together, becoming its gracious tyrant. Her son suffered from this, her only son, and the woman he married, an Italianmodel: Andre’s parents. They were young and insecure, so the grandmother broke them regularly, because she was old and had an inexplicable power. She lived with them and sat at the head of the table—a servant handed her the plates, saying the name of each course in French. Until she died. The grandfather had departed years earlier, it should be said, to complete the picture. Died, to be precise.
    Before Andre, Andre’s parents had had twins. A boy and a girl. To the grandmother it had seemed rather vulgar—she was convinced that having twins was something poor people did. In particular she couldn’t bear the girl, whose name was Lucia. She couldn’t see the use of her. Three years later, Andre’s mother became pregnant with Andre. The grandmother said that, obviously, she should have an abortion. But she didn’t. And here’s exactly what happened next.
    The day Andre came out of her mother’s womb was an April day—the father was traveling, the twins were at home with the grandmother. The clinic telephoned the house to say that the mother had been admitted to the delivery room; the grandmother said, Good. She made sure that the twins had eaten, then she sat down at the table and had lunch. After coffee she let the Spanish nanny go for a couple of hours and took the twins to the garden: it was sunny, a beautiful spring day. She sat down on a recliner and fell asleep, because it happened that she did that, sometimes, after lunch, and didn’t think it necessary to behave differently. Or it simply happened—she fell asleep. The twins played on the lawn. There was a pool with a fountain, a stone pool with red andyellow fish. At the center a jet. The twins approached, to play. They threw things they found in the garden into the pool. Lucia, the girl, at a certain point thought it would be nice to touch the water with her hands, and then her feet, and to play in it. She was three, so it wasn’t easy, but she managed it, planting her small feet against the stone and pushing her head over the edge. Her brother was half watching her, half picking up things on the lawn. In the end the child slid into the water, making a faint sound, as of a small amphibious animal—a round creature. The pool wasn’t deep, barely two feet, but she was scared by the water, maybe she hit the stone bottom, and this must have dulled the instinct that would have simply, naturally, saved her. So she breathed the dark water, and when she sought the air that she needed to cry, she couldn’t find it. She turned slightly, laboriously, pushing on her heels and slapping the water with her hands, but they were small hands, and made a light, silvery sound. Then she was motionless among the yellow and red fish, who didn’t understand. The brother came over to look. At that moment Andre emerged from her mother’s womb, and did so in suffering, as it is written in the book we believe in.
    We know this because it’s a story that everyone knows—in Andre’s world there is no modesty or shame. That’s how they hand down their superiority, and underscore their tragic privilege. This predisposes them to rise inevitably into legend—and in fact numerous variants of this story
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