Music for Chameleons Read Online Free Page A

to see him, these rather ordinary-looking folk, or what they talked about, and I was far too concerned with my own affairs to much wonder over it. When I did, I imagined that his friends had found in him an intelligent, kindly man, a good listener in whom to confide and consult with over their troubles: a cross between a priest and a therapist.
    Mr. Jones had a telephone. He was the only tenant with a private line. It rang constantly, often after midnight and as early as six in the morning.
    I moved to Manhattan. Several months later I returned to the house to collect a box of books I had stored there. While the landladies offered me tea and cakes in their lace-curtained “parlor,” I inquired of Mr. Jones.
    The women lowered their eyes. Clearing her throat, one said: “It’s in the hands of the police.”
    The other offered: “We’ve reported him as a missing person.”
    The first added: “Last month, twenty-six days ago, my sister carried up Mr. Jones’s breakfast, as usual. He wasn’t there. All his belongings were there. But he was gone.”
    “It’s odd—”
    “—how a man totally blind, a helpless cripple—”
    TEN YEARS PASS .
    Now it is a zero-cold December afternoon, and I am in Moscow. I am riding in a subway car. There are only a few other passengers. One of them is a man sitting opposite me, a man wearing boots, a thick long coat and a Russian-style fur cap. He has bright eyes, blue as a peacock’s.
    After a doubtful instant, I simply stared, for even without the black glasses, there was no mistaking that lean distinctive face, those high cheekbones with the single scarlet star-shaped birthmark.
    I was just about to cross the aisle and speak to him when the train pulled into a station, and Mr. Jones, on a pair of fine sturdy legs, stood up and strode out of the car. Swiftly, the train door closed behind him.

III
    A Lamp in a Window
    ONCE I WAS INVITED TO a wedding; the bride suggested I drive up from New York with a pair of other guests, a Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, whom I had never met before. It was a cold April day, and on the ride to Connecticut the Robertses, a couple in their early forties, seemed agreeable enough—no one you would want to spend a long weekend with, but not bad.
    However, at the wedding reception a great deal of liquor was consumed, I should say a third of it by my chauffeurs. They were the last to leave the party—at approximately 11 P.M .—and I was most wary of accompanying them; I knew they were drunk, but I didn’t realize how drunk. We had driven about twenty miles, the car weaving considerably, and Mr. and Mrs. Roberts insulting each other in the most extraordinary language (really, it was a moment out of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ), when Mr. Roberts, very understandably, made a wrong turn and got lost on a dark country road. I kept asking them, finally begging them, to stop the car and let me out, but they were so involved in their invectives that they ignored me. Eventually the car stopped of its own accord (temporarily) when it swiped against the side of a tree. I used the opportunity to jump out the car’s back doorand run into the woods. Presently the cursed vehicle drove off, leaving me alone in the icy dark. I’m sure my hosts never missed me; Lord knows I didn’t miss them.
    But it wasn’t a joy to be stranded out there on a windy cold night. I started walking, hoping I’d reach a highway. I walked for half an hour without sighting a habitation. Then, just off the road, I saw a small frame cottage with a porch and a window lighted by a lamp. I tiptoed onto the porch and looked in the window; an elderly woman with soft white hair and a round pleasant face was sitting by a fireside reading a book. There was a cat curled in her lap, and several others slumbering at her feet.
    I knocked at the door, and when she opened it I said, with chattering teeth: “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve had a sort of accident; I wonder if I could use your phone to