Читать книгу Silk - Alessandro Baricco - Страница 17

11.

IT was 1861. Flaubert was finishing Salammbô, electric light was still a hypothesis and Abraham Lincoln, on the other side of the ocean, was fighting a war whose end he would not see. The silkworm breeders of Lavilledieu joined together in a consortium and collected the considerable sum necessary for the expedition. To them all it seemed logical to entrust it to Hervé Joncour. When Baldabiou asked him to accept, he answered with a question.

‘And where, exactly, might it be, this Japan?’

Straight that way. At the end of the world.

He left on October 6th. Alone.

At the gates of Lavilledieu he embraced his wife, Hélène, and said to her simply

‘You mustn’t be afraid of anything.’

She was a tall woman, she moved slowly, she had long black hair that she never gathered on to her head. She had a beautiful voice.