Angel Hotel [antikvár]

Two shoes fell noisily on the floor. Boris Pasternak, 'Winter Night' And his mother said good night and we drank more sherry and he talked about Paris, how beautiful it is, the men fishing on the banks for gudgeon and the vines of the Seine that turn blood-red in the autumn and how small the Mona Lisa is. He asked me if I'd done any travelling and I said I hadn't been out of the six counties, but that it was one of my dreams to go around the world. He smiled and poured me another glass of sherry. He wanted to know how old I was and what books I'd read, and said that he'd never seen hair like mine except in Italian paintings. I pointed to the big canvas above the piano and said, 'That must be your da. You look just like him. Like Count Vronsky with dark hair!' And then his mouth went all twisted, and he told me he'd died when he was ten. He told me about the dream he'd had last night, about a coffin with a glass lid and black-and-gold sides, and the sound of banging as the horses pulled it down the road. His mother was walking in front of the cart in a big yellow hat, her arms full of lupins. He didn't know what the banging was, and when he looked into the casket he saw it was his father's head hitting the side of the coffin. I started to cry. I felt like such a fool doing that in front of him, but it was the way he looked, like he was an orphan. He didn't want me to see him like that and he pretended to laugh. Said he didn't know why he was telling me that; it wasn't the n