In Red Read Online Free Page B

further. In a hoarse voice he listed the reasons why the roof tiles had broken. Yet everything all around was cracking at the seams, the entire order of Stitchings, and through the gaps that once a lone officer in a tropical helmet had taken advantage of, not just streams of water but foreign armies could
inundate the town at any moment. Stammering with agitation, Kazimierz asked to be discharged and released from his oath, because waiting for him somewhere was a combat uniform, squadrons of cavalry, artillery batteries.
    â€œBe my guest, go, if you have the good fortune not to be kept by anything here,” replied Ahlberg calmly, refilling their glasses. “Who wouldn’t wish to leave and to forget?”
    That very afternoon he signed the necessary documents and sent them to Stockholm, to the Ministry of War, which had not waged war in a hundred years and had no intention of doing so. The response came by return mail. As the pale blue and purple flowers on Stefania’s tambour proliferated, Kazimierz with a single tug was snapping the threads that enwrapped his heart. Free of all ties, he headed for where there was gunfire. He was leaving so as to forget. In a farewell gesture he took aim at the metal rooster on the town hall tower and pulled the trigger. The shot rang dully through the sleeping town. The rooster spun and came to rest, its beak gaping open as before. But the sparrows on the window ledges didn’t even stir.
    Stefania waited, but never received a letter. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she whispered as she threaded her needle. She believed steadfastly in Kazimierz’s return, because the engagement ring was still waiting for her decision, the story of the proposal didn’t yet have an ending. With the help of her maid, Stefania was sewing her trousseau. The already-finished items were piled neatly in a chest of drawers. Kazimierz’s expected
return seemed an obvious consequence of her work in hemstitching the sheets and linen hand towels, and embroidering damask tablecloths. But a rumor reached her that before his departure Kazimierz had sold the ring to pay off his gambling debts. Stefania dropped her needlework on the table and stared at the wall. She sat this way for the entire day, then in the evening, with a trembling hand, she reached for some silk whose hue was as powerful as the scent of a rose.
    The dark red blossomed upon the tambour and brought sudden confusion among the lilies. The design looked as if it had been stained. Stefania was frightened by the rose, which had escaped from under her dexterous fingers. Her cheeks burning feverishly, she unpicked the silk threads. Gusts of air swept them up and carried them all over the world. Obedient to electrostatic forces, the threads settled on the roofs of military trains and on uniforms. Every man on whom a scrap of red silk thread came to rest was struck by a bullet in the war. Before Stefania had finished the sachet adorned with lilies, Kazimierz returned on a train, free of cares, with a red thread tangled in his hair, in a long box fastened with nails. The casket was buried in the town cemetery in the sector containing the graves of army officers; the salute rang out and came back as an echo. And that was an end of it. In the meantime the roof over Colonel Ahlberg’s quarters was still leaking, and after successive attempts at repair the wretched pail had to be emptied even more often than before.
    Without Kazimierz the war went on, it even expanded in ever-widening
circles. An official telegram came for gentle Augustus Strobbel, who one day, holding a box of cigars given him by his uncle, was bid farewell by stiff and solemn clerks, then left the porcelain works and got on a train that took him to where a combat uniform awaited him and a thorough knowledge of porcelain manufacture was of no use.
    After Felek the orderly had gone to war the fireman Alojzy could have had all the leftover apple pie to