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."A better than amateur, but to Aldo's trained ear somewhat grating Oxbridgeaccent.Tuesday the second? he thought, reaching shakily for the thermos in hiskit bag.Tuesday the goddamn-it-to-hell second was four daysafterhe'd burnedthe Greathouse.As always, Aldo forced himself to banish his fear, send it right back to theorphanage where it belonged.So he's alive? So what? No change in plans findthe striga the rest will fall into place.He fitted a collar onto hisflashlight to keep the beam narrow, and began searching, starting with thebase of the ladder where he'd squeezed out the jellied gasoline.The charmarks were deep scored and well defined whatever had gone wrong, it wasn't thefault of Dow Chemical.The bottom five ladder rungs had all collapsed.Aldo studied the stub edgesunder the beam and saw they had broken off downward and inward, noticed thepale splintered wood beneath the layer of char.Somehow she had extinguishedthe flames before climbing down.But how? Then he remembered the way the bedhad rocked beneath her limp form as he pressed the pillow to her face, andshook his head, disgusted at his own carelessness.Ignoring the painter's ladder leaning beside the burnt one, Aldo grabbed thecharred edge of the platform with both hands and chinned himself up easily.Unlike the ground floor, the loft hadn't been cleaned up after the fire sureenough, he saw that the plastic mattress of the waterbed had been dragged offthe frame.He crawled over to it with his flashlight.The thick plastic wasslimy with mildew, and he could see the puncture holes, the long rips; thescissors she must have used still lay beside the bed.Clever old thing had she been in a trance, or only lying doggo? Playingpossum, they said here.No matter he wouldn't underestimate her a second time,not with Whistler on the loose too.For a start, he determined to go over theA-frame with a fine-tooth comb.Informatiune este putere, as they used to sayin the Third Branch.Information is power.But it wasn't until much later, after he'd gone through the house once top tobottom, glancing at books, patting through clothes, checking into drawers andcabinets and finding little of value to him, then systematically backtracked,bottom to top, going over every item he'd gone over the first time, but onthis second pass giving it the full Third Branch treatment, lookingunderthedrawers, tapping the doors and walls and cabinets for hollow hidey-holes andfalse bottoms, slitting the seams and linings of clothes, and carefullyopening and shaking out every one of her books, that he discovered the letterhidden under the snakeskin inner lining of the silk-covered loose-leafnotebook in the damask-draped wicker altar not far from the bed where he'dbegun his search hours before.This must be my lucky day, thought Aldo as he read through the letter, whichwas handwritten in faded lilac ink, and began to appreciate just how muchinformation he had attained.And how much power as well.Then he glanced athis watch and saw that it was nearly 3:00 A.M.But it was the date and not thetime that caught his attention.November 11th.Armistice Day.Better known asPiss-Pants Day in the Orfelinat.Aldo winced at the memory.In the sixties, as part of the drive toward"National Communism" as opposed to the preceding, but now entirely discredited"Proletarian Internationalism," only Romanian history was allowed to be taughtin the schools or at least in the orphanage schools.And only positive aspectsPage 109ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlof Romanian history at that, which drastically limited the curriculum.So every Armistice Day the orphans were forced to sit in the auditorium andlisten to hour upon hour of boring speeches celebrating the heroic defendersof Moldavia, without whom the war would surely have been lost, etc., etc.,during which time the children were not permitted to go to the toilet.Hence,Piss-Pants Day.After all, it's not as if the fucking day doesn't owe me, thought Aldo,folding the letter carefully, and slipping it back under the inner cover ofthe loose-leaf.Then he slid the book into his kit bag, blew a kiss to theheavens, and climbed back down the ladder as far as the rungs would allowbefore leaping lightly to the charred floor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]