Читать книгу Silk - Alessandro Baricco - Страница 20

14.

TO the most invincible man in Japan, the master of all that the world might take away from that island, Hervé Joncour tried to explain who he was. He did it in his own language, speaking slowly, without knowing precisely if Hara Kei was able to understand. Instinctively he rejected prudence, reporting simply, without inventions and without omissions, everything that was true. He set forth small details and crucial events in the same tone, and with barely visible gestures, imitating the hypnotic pace, melancholy and neutral, of a catalogue of objects rescued from a fire. Hara Kei listened, and not a shadow of an expression discomposed the features of his face. He kept his eyes fixed on Hervé Joncour’s lips, as if they were the last lines of a farewell letter. The room was so silent and still that what happened unexpectedly seemed a huge event and yet was nothing.

Suddenly,

without moving at all,

that girl

opened her eyes.

Hervé Joncour did not pause but instinctively lowered his gaze to her, and what he saw, without pausing, was that those eyes did not have an Oriental shape, and that they were fixed, with a disconcerting intensity, on him: as if from the start, from under the eyelids, they had done nothing else. Hervé Joncour turned his gaze elsewhere, as naturally as he could, trying to continue his story with no perceptible difference in his voice. He stopped only when his eyes fell on the cup of tea, placed on the floor, in front of him. He took it in one hand, brought it to his lips, and drank slowly. He began to speak again as he set it down in front of him.