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V I
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describe. But on a clear day, the doctor could look the other way and
see, far off, the live blue Sound and the silhouettes of white sail boats
and grey battleships. And while the plants, their windows ghastly blue
all night, their noises constant every hour of every day, were almost
within a stone's throw of
his
window, he at least had the illusion of
being in the country. For the lawns in front and in back were healthy,
the trees were abundant, and forsythia was blooming now along the
wall. He had pondered often in the year he had lived here why so
expensive a house (for clearly it was that; its plate glass and the in–
tricate furbelows of its
fa~ade
testified to 'suddenly acquired money)
had been built on so unprepossessing a site, and at last he learned
from a taxi-driver that the original owner had been a rum-runner
who had brought his boats up the narrow neck of water and had
unloaded them at the cottage in the back yard where now the Hor–
vath family lived. While he was unable to find more than a humorous
token in it, he thought with certain pleasure of the interview in which
the house changed hands and became the property of the present
landlord, a Roman Catholic priest.
Sometimes, too, he wondered how the bootlegger would regard
the changes he had made in his room, a room which perhaps had
formerly been the office for the transaction of his illegal business. And
how, for that matter, the priest did when he came on
his
monthly
tour of inspection. Very likely both of them would find it prissy and
impractical. He had taken down the pictures he found there: a tinted
photograph of the Grand Canyon (which he thought must be the
most dreadful sight in the world), a subdued study of an English
cottage and one of a vase of asters. In their place he had hung a print
of "The Siege of Toledo" and one of "The Fall of Icarus" and a
photograph of the bridge in Wiirzburg. On top of the bookcase were
three decanters, for Kiimmel, brandy and dubonnet, a little white pot
of philodendron, and a pewter tray on which stood two heavy wine
glasses and a curious pipe. In the shelves were the few books he had
brought with him from Ludwigshaven: Dante, Rilke, Plato, some
medical books,
Buddenbrooks, Crime and Punishment, The Charter–
house of Parma,
and those he had bought here, in the hope, never
realized, of learning to read English easily. Those were
For Whom
the Bell Tolls, The
Late1
George Apley, The Golden Treasury
and
The Story of San Michele.
A cuckoo clock hung on the wall over the
bed and on the bureau a large wooden nutcracker lay amongst big
pecans in a polished lemonwood bowl. On the bedside table were an
ashtray he had bought in Milan, a brown earthenware carafe, a diary
bound in green leather, and a little silver letter opener.
