Читать книгу Memory Wall - Anthony Doerr, Anthony Doerr - Страница 12

Alma shakes her head. “Goddammit.”

“You’ve torn your book all apart, Mrs. Alma.”

“I have? I have not. Someone else did that.”

A breath. A sigh. On the dresser, three lustrous wigs sit atop featureless porcelain heads. “Ten minutes,” Pheko says. Alma lays back, bald, glazed, a withered child. Pheko sits in the bedside chair and takes Treasure Island off the nightstand. Pages fall out when he opens it.

He reads the first paragraphs from memory. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man …

One more page and Alma is asleep.