Читать книгу Memory Wall - Anthony Doerr, Anthony Doerr - Страница 16

Pheko arrives just after dawn to the faint odor of tobacco in the house. Three fewer eggs in the refrigerator. He stands a minute, puzzling over it. Nothing else seems disturbed. Alma sleeps a deep sleep.

The estate agent is coming this morning. Pheko vacuums, washes the balcony windows, polishes the countertops until they shine a foot deep. Pure white light, rinsed by last night’s rain, pours through the windows. The ocean is a gleaming plate of pewter.

At ten Pheko drinks a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Two tea towels, crisp and white, are folded over the oven handle. The floors are scrubbed, the dishwasher empty, the grandfather clock wound. Everything in its place.

It occurs to Pheko that he could steal things. He could take the kitchen television and some of Harold’s books and Alma’s music player. Jewelry. Coats. The matching pea-green bicycles in the garage—how many times has Alma ridden hers? Once? Who even knows those bicycles are here? Pheko could call a taxi right now and load it with suitcases and take them into Khayelitsha and before nightfall a hundred things Alma didn’t know she had could be turned into cash.

Who would know? Not the accountant. Not Alma. Only Pheko. Only God.

Alma wakes at ten thirty, groggy, muddled. He dresses her, escorts her to the breakfast table. She sits in her chair, tea untouched, hands quivering, strands of her wig stuck in her eyelashes. “I used to come here,” Alma mutters. “Before.”

“You don’t want your tea, Mrs. Alma?”

Alma gives him a bewildered look.

Upstairs the memory wall ruffles in the wind. The estate agent’s sedan glides into the driveway at 11:00, precisely on time.