Читать книгу Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles - Kira Henehan - Страница 23

17

Dame Uppal and I sat in an easy silence for some time. A strangely easy silence, one might say, since we were unacquainted each with the other and such situations generally require a trying. A terse semblance of small talk, say, or a forced exchange of compliments.

She was hard to compliment.

Although her dressing gown was splendid.

Her dressing gown was, in fact, a thing that might well have been crafted by fairies, if fairies existed. It was of a color somewhere between cream and raspberry, with not enough on either side to definitively place it in either camp, and shot through with fine threads of gold. The finest, so fine indeed that it took careful scrutiny to even locate these threads and recognize them as such and not just attribute the overall golden aspect to a heavenly glow emanating from within.

Or without, either way.

If heaven existed.

Then, upon the hue and the golden aspect, a fading plum riot of orchids.

It was a fine thing beneath which lay, like something beached, a decidedly un-fine creature.

—It’s a lovely dressing gown, I said.

—It’s a lovely day, she parried.

It was not a lovely day, but I played along.—It’s a lovely home.

—It’s a lovely hair, she said, and she gestured awkwardly toward my head.

It seemed a bit of a low blow. It seemed as though only one of us was being earnest in the conversation. It was a lovely dressing gown, and home, if one cared for the baroque style.

We lapsed into a silence somewhat less easy.

I would not so much have minded a nibble on some meats.

The other Uppal entered the room at last, sans meats but full of bluster and nerves.

—You’ve been well entertained I hope, he said with an apologetic gesture toward his mate.

Dame Uppal deigned to move her head ever so slightly in the direction of his voice.

—You’ve been fed I hope, he said hopefully.—Sated on cured meats and the like?

—I have not. I glared in a reproachful manner toward Dame Uppal, our easy companionship torn asunder by her mocking of my hair.

The hair, I perhaps have already mentioned, is not my fault.

—O dear then. Professor Uppal looked with dismay at his heap on the divan, and then shook his head briskly.—O dear. Well, we shall have to do something. Won’t you come to my study.

Dame Uppal ignored our exodus, letting instead her chin drop to rest on her sternum. She was perhaps admiring her dressing gown, admittedly still quite fine.

I followed the Professor down a hallway lined with tapestries that looked to be of medieval provenance, though quite neatly preserved to maintain their rusty patina. I would not personally have chosen the overall palette, finding umbers and crimsons and muddy browns a bit heavy and claustrophobic, but I could not argue with the quality of the decorating, nor of the consistency of tone and mood.

The study supported this observation. It was a study that might have been featured in a periodical dedicated to the study of studies, so studious was its bearing. It had the dark wood, the saturated rugs, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases and the heavy oak desk indicative of serious contemplation, meticulous research, and philosophical argument.

Indeed, there was a marbled chess set upon an equally marbled pedestal, with the pieces either intentionally or organically arranged in demonstration of a quite elaborate sequence.

Someone had just castled queenside.

The Professor settled into his leather chair with an aspect of heaviness his physical form neither espoused nor required. Such heaviness in color, alas! It can change a man.

—My wife, he said.—Please understand—

—Was there talk of meats? I cut him off. My temper was unwell, and I cared not for his explanations.

—Yes, yes very well. He understood I’d had a trying spell out in the sitting room. He understood that a tray of cured meats might set me to rights. He cried out, quite suddenly, but firmly,—Odille! and barely a moment had passed before a door in the bookshelves that I had certainly not noticed though my noticing skills have always been quite exemplary opened inward and into my vision stepped a Vision.