The fire is growing, a glowing maw contesting the onrushing night. No further train whistles intrude on my solitude. I warm a wine in my hands before the merry gleam of the flame while genius turns to ash as eerily easily as discarded trash.
Now there were more and more pages and papers to consign to the fire. Incidental notes hurriedly dashed off, prezzies for mistresses, the bill from a whip-maker who used a bull’s pizzle for the aggravating tip. What had we here? I put the wine down on a rude side-table and pulled the paper up to my nose, peering at it from beneath my spectacles. Ah! One of the school-master’s reports from Baudelaire’s time at the Lycee.
In fact, the Lycee is where we had first met. I whiled away the common hour chiseling my playmates out of their allowances at marbles. Baudelaire spotted me, my face full of dust, and my knees filthy, and knew me for one of his own: a charlatan. Charles’ Charlatans was our gang. I was able to fund some of the more extravagant of our exploits with my marble winnings. But it was always Charles, reserved in his spotless knickers and blue velvet tie, who spawned our plans, and who stood coolly by on the midnight corner as our lookout while I pried pig fetuses from their pickle jars in the science building. Oh, what a fine Christ that ball of guts made, nailed above the altar, as the school processional stepped solemnly into the church that Easter Sunday!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.