Aldous Huxley Mortal Coils

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After the first mouthful Mr. Buzzacott put down his fork. "In the Italian gardens of the thirteenth century," he
began again,, making with his long, pale hand a curved and flowery gesture that ended with a clutch at his
beard, "a frequent and most felicitous use was made of green tunnels."
51
"Green tunnels?" Barbara woke up suddenly from her tranced silence, "Green tunnels?"
"Yes, my dear," said her father. "Green tunnels. Arched alleys covered with vines or other creeping plants.
Their length was often very considerable."
But Barbara had once more ceased to pay attention to what he was saying. Green tunnels the word had floated
down to her, through profound depths of reverie, across great spaces of abstraction, startling her like the sound
of a strange-voiced bell. Green tunnels what a wonderful idea. She would not listen to her father explaining
the phrase into dullness. He made everything dull; an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead. She pictured
caverns in a great aquarium, long vistas between rocks and scarcely swaying weeds and pale, discoloured
corals; endless dim green corridors with huge lazy fishes loitering aimlessly along them. Green-faced
monsters with goggling eyes and mouths that slowly opened and shut. Green tunnels...
"I have seen them illustrated in illuminated manuscripts of the period," Mr. Buzzacott went on; once more he
clutched his pointed brown beard clutched and combed it with his long fingers.
Mr. Topes looked up. The glasses of his round owlish spectacles flashed as he moved his head. "I know what
you mean," he said.
"I have a very good mind to have one, planted in my garden here."
"It will take a long time to grow," said Mr. Topes. "In this sand, so close to the sea, you will only be able to
plant vines. And they come up very slowly very slowly indeed." He shook his head and the points of light
danced wildly in his spectacles. His voice drooped hopelessly, his grey moustache drooped, his whole person
drooped. Then, suddenly, he pulled himself up. A shy, apologetic smile appeared on his face. He wriggled
uncomfortably. Then, with a final rapid shake of the head, he gave vent to a quotation: .
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
He spoke deliberately, and his voice trembled a little. He always found it painfully difficult to say something
choice and out of the ordinary; and yet what a wealth of remembered phrase, what apt new coinages were
always surging through his mind! "They don't grow so slowly as all that," said Mr. Buzzacott confidently. He
was only just over fifty, and looked a handsome thirty-five. He gave himself at least another forty years;
indeed, he had not yet begun to contemplate the possibility of ever concluding.
"Miss Barbara will enjoy it, perhaps your green tunnel." Mr. Topes sighed and looked across the table at his
host's daughter.
Barbara was sitting with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, staring in front of her. The sound of
her own name reached her faintly. She turned her head in Mr. Topes's direction and found herself confronted
by the glitter of his round, convex spectacles. At the end of the green tunnel she stared at the shining circles
hung the eyes of a goggling fish. They approached, floating, closer and closer, along the dim submarine
corridor.
Confronted by this fixed regard, Mr. Topes looked away. What thoughtful eyes! He couldn't remember ever to
have seen eyes so full of thought. There were certain Madonnas of Montagna, he reflected, very like her: mild
little blonde Madonnas with slightly snub noses and very, very young. But he was old; it would be many
years, in spite of Buzzacott, before the vines grew up into a green tunnel. He took a sip of wine; then,
mechanically, sucked his drooping grey moustache.
"Arthur!"
52
At the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Topes started, raised his napkin to his mouth. Mrs. Topes did not permit
the sucking of moustaches. It was only in moments of absentmindedness that he ever offended, now.
"The Marchese Prampolini is coming here to take coffee," said Mr. Buzzacott suddenly. "I almost forgot to
tell you!"
"One of these Italian marquises, I suppose," said Mrs. Topes, who was no snob, except in England. She raised
her chin with a little jerk.
Mr. Buzzacott executed an upward curve of the hand in her direction. "I assure you, Mrs. Topes, he belongs to
a very old and distinguished family. They are Genoese in origin. You remember their palace, Barbara? Built
by Alessi."
Barbara looked up. "Oh yes," she said vaguely. "Alessi. I know." Alessi: Aleppo where a malignant and a
turbaned Turk. And a turbaned; that had always seemed to her very funny.
"Several of his ancestors," Mr. Buzzacott went on, "distinguished themselves as viceroys of Corsica. They did [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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