Читать книгу Silk - Alessandro Baricco - Страница 12

6.

BALDABIOU was the man who, twenty years earlier, had come to town, headed straight for the mayor’s office, entered without being announced, placed on the desk a silk scarf the colour of sunset, and asked him

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘Women’s stuff.’

‘Wrong. Men’s stuff: money.’

The mayor had him thrown out. He built a silk mill, down at the river, a barn for raising silkworms, in the shelter of the woods, and a little church dedicated to St Agnes, at the intersection of the road to Vivier. Baldabiou hired thirty workers, brought a mysterious wooden machine from Italy, all wheels and gears, and said nothing more for seven months. Then he went back to the mayor and placed on his desk, in an orderly fashion, thirty thousand francs in large bills.

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘Money.’

‘Wrong. It’s the proof that you are an idiot.’

Then he picked up the bills, put them in his wallet, and turned to leave.

The mayor stopped him.

‘What the devil should I do?’

‘Nothing: and you will be the mayor of a wealthy town.’

Five years later Lavilledieu had seven silk mills and had become one of the principal centres in Europe for breeding silkworms and making silk. It wasn’t all Baldabiou’s property. Other prominent men and landowners in the area had followed him in that curious entrepreneurial adventure. To each one, Baldabiou had revealed, without hesitation, the secrets of the work. This amused him much more than making piles of money. Teaching. And having secrets to tell. He was a man made like that.