Spring: -I- -II- -III-
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- -VI- -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- -XI- -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- -XIX- -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: (XXXIV) -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
XXXIV
AFTER MANY sunny weeks there came a series of hot and cloudy days. The sky grew dark, like the skies of old frescoes, and the gathering clouds billowed in the sultry silence like tragic battlefields on paintings of the Neapolitan school. Against the background of those leaden and dun swirls, the houses shone brightly, with a hot, chalky whiteness, highlighted by the even more sharply edged shadows of their cornices and pilasters. People went about with their heads lowered, full of the inner darkness that had amassed inside them, as if before a storm, amid quiet electric discharges.
Bianka no longer appears in the park. Apparently, they are guarding her. They do not let her out. They have sensed the danger.
I saw a group of men in black tailcoats and top hats in the town today, pushing through the market square with the deliberate strides of diplomats. Their white shirt fronts shone brightly in the leaden air. They were inspecting houses in silence, as if pricing them up. They walked with coordinated and unhurried, rhythmical steps. On their clean-shaven faces they had moustaches, as black as coal, and their gleaming eyes, full of suggestiveness, rolled in their orbits, smoothly, as if they were lubricated. Occasionally, they raised their top hats and wiped the sweat from their brows. They were tall, slim and middle-aged, and had the swarthy faces of gangsters.
> -XXXV- >