The File on H. Read Online Free Page B

one with the crew-cut hair. “Albanians are for hospitality renowned.”
    â€œDo you expect to stay for a while?” Mr. Rrok inquired.
    The foreigners shrugged their shoulders.
    â€œMethinks a goodly length of time.”
    â€œWe are delighted." the governor replied.
    â€œThank you, good sir.”
    Daisy thought that she recognized something familiar about their intonation … classes on ancient Albanian versification at the girls’ school. But she found it hard to concentrate.
    â€œFrom what I have heard about you, you intend to study our folklore?” said the governor.
    One of the visitors raised his eyebrows as if to delay replying, while the governor exchanged a rapid glance with the magistrate, the only person with whom he had shared his suspicions.
    â€œHow can I put it? Verily, indeed … and perchance other matters too,” came the reply, from the one called Bill Norton.
    â€œI'm sorry, but I did not quite understand.
”
    The other foreigner furrowed his brow once again, “We purport to have much ado with your ancient song,” he explained. “And perchance …”
    â€œ'Dawn came up from the couch of her reclining …,’“ Daisy recited to herself, the opening line of one of the epic poems in all the anthologies. That was the rhythm she could hear in the speech of the two visitors.
    â€œâ€¦ and perchance with something most closely allied to it,” the fair one went on. “We mean to say: Homer,"
    â€œYour good health!” said the postmaster’s wife, as she raised her glass of port.
    Despite her powdered face, she was visibly impatient to have these boring questions and answers come to an end and to learn more interesting things from the foreigners. Daisy had mentioned something about their having brought with them the very latest in gramophones. So what were people dancing to these days over there, from New York to California?
    â€œYou mentioned Homer?” the governor continued. “As far as I recall, a blind old Greek poet?”
    â€œWhy, yes!” Bill exclaimed in English, to Daisy’s great joy. She turned triumphantly to the other women in the room, as if to say: Now you can see that they’re real foreigners, speaking in English like that!
    â€œReally, Homer? For three hundred years there has been some debate about whether there was one or several Homers…
.”
    Mr. Rrok, the factory owner, straightened his bow tie, spread a smile across his face from ear to ear, and shyly intervened:
    â€œPardon me, gentlemen. Out here in the back of beyond, we do not have much by way of scholarship. Myself, for instance, as I told you a few moments ago, I deal with soap — Venus soap, toilet soap for ladies.… Ha ha, that sort of thing I have at my fingertips. But as for deep questions of philosophy, Homer, Verdi, or what have you, I haven’t got a clue. So please excuse my ignorance, but tell me: what connection can there be between Homer and your esteemed journey to Albania? If I am not mistaken, Homer lived four or five thousand years ago and quite a long way away from here, didn’t he?”
    The postmaster’s wife could not restrain herself from a loud sigh of exasperation. Daisy had always told her that Mr. Rrok had no more brains than his bars of soap had legs.
    The foreigners exchanged smiles that the governor judged to be full of meaning.
    Verily, about three thousand years ago, good sir,” one of them said. “ And far away from this place. But the connection exists nonetheless.”
    The shadowy smiles that the governor had thought full of meaning returned to their faces. Hmm, now they’re making fun of us openly, he thought. They’re definitely trying to pull our legs. How could one believe that they were really looking for a solution to the mystery of Homer in a small town that had never had any connection whatsoever with the poet? Couldn’t they have