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a leg. How I'm going to pay for them when they go to college, like your boy,
sometimes scares the ass off me."
Dean was cutting a large truffle into slices as thin as a razor blade. He was
using a wooden-handled folding knife, of the type the Wehrmacht issued to
special units that had to cut sentries' throats.
"Living here costs me practically nothing," explained Dean. "The company pays
me five hundred bucks a month, and I'm still getting ten dollars a week for
that ball-game injury back when we were kids. The team carried insurance and
that was lucky for me." He lifted the breadboard and carefully bulldozed the
truffle slices into the beaten egg, then stood up and walked to the stove. He
did limp with his left leg. Whether this was for our benefit, because he'd
been thinking of it, or simply a result of sitting too long I couldn't be
sure.
"But didn't you say your boy went to some kind of private college in Paris?
Doesn't that really cost?"
Dean stirred the egg and checked the heat of the frying pan by tossing a
scrap of bread into it. It went golden brown. He forked it out, blew on it,
and ate it before adding some salt and pepper to the egg mixture. Then he
stood with the bowl of egg poised above the stove. "You must have gotten it
wrong, Mickey," he said. "The boy went to an ordinary French technical school.
There were no fees."
With a quick movement, and using only one hand, he closed the knife and
slipped it back into the pocket of his jeans. He said, "My old Renault will do
more miles per gallon than any automobile I ever used. The running repairs I
do myself. In fact, last month I changed the piston rings. Even with the
present price of gas, I spend no more than the ten bucks a week that my injury
provides I figure; I owe my leg that car."
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He turned around from the stove. "As for the rest, that little restaurant
next door sells me my lunch at about what I could buy the ingredients for. I
don't know how they do it. In the evening I manage on a bit of charcuterie,
eggs, bread, and stuff. For special occasions, one of these twenty-franc
truffles." He smiled. "Of course, if my book hit the jackpot& "
"How often do you manage to get to the big city?"
Mann asked him. Dean tipped the egg mixture into the pan. The sudden splutter
of the egg in the hot fat made Mann turn his head.
"Paris, you mean?" said Dean.
"Or New York," said Mann. "Or London, or Brussels even Berlin." He let the
word hang in the air for a long time. "Any big city where you can do some
shopping and see a show."
"I haven't seen a show or even a movie in a lot of years, Mickey," said
Dean. He dragged at the eggs with urgent movements of a wooden spoon, twisting
and turning the pan so that the uncooked egg would run onto the hot metal that
he uncovered. "No time, and no money, for those bourgeois pastimes."
In another place, and at another time, such a comment would have passed
unnoticed, but now Dean bent low to the pan and watched the egg cooking with a
concentration that was altogether unmerited, and I knew he could have bitten
his tongue off.
Dean turned the pan up so that the giant omelet rolled onto a serving dish.
He divided it into three equal parts and put it on our plates. Above the
table, the lamp was a curious old contraption of brass and weights and green
shades. Dean pulled at the strings, and the lights came low over the dining
table.
We ate the meal in complete silence. Now that only the table was illuminated,
it gave everything near it an artificial importance. And the three sets of
busy hands, under the harsh light, were like those of surgeons cooperating in
some act of dissection. In spite of his protests about not being hungry, Mann
gobbled the omelet. When there were no more than a few smears of uncooked egg
on his plate, he took a piece of bread and wiped up the egg with obsessional
care before putting the bread into his mouth.
"The reason we came down here to see you, Hank& " Mann took another piece of
bread, tore it into pieces, and ate it piece by piece, as if trying to find
reasons for not continuing.
"You need no reasons, old buddy," said Dean. "Nor your friend, either. Hank
Dean open house. You know that by now, don't you? In the old days, I had
parties where they slept under the table, and even in the bath."
"Yeah, I know," said Mann.
"And done a few other things under the table and in the bath," said Dean. He
let out a whoop of laughter and refilled the glasses. "Cahors black wine,
they call it here. Drink up!"
"We're squeezing a couple of Russkies," said Mann. Again, his tone of voice
made it sound as if he'd stopped in the middle of a sentence.
"Defectors?" said Dean, helping himself to a slice of goat cheese and pushing
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the plate nearer to me. "Try the tiny round one; that's local," he said.
"Defectors," said Mann.
"I guess I always felt a bit too sorry for those kids who came over the wall,
back in my time," said Dean. "They'd toy with their goddamn transistor radios,
and admire their snazzy new clothes in front of a full-length mirror. And [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]