Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress [antikvár]

T he village headman, a man of about fifty, sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, close to the coals burning in a hearth that was hollowed out of the floor; he was inspecting my viohn. Among the possessions brought to this mountain village by the two "city youths"— which was how they saw Luo and me—it was the sole item that exuded an air of foreignness, of civilisation, and therefore aroused suspicion. One of the peasants came forward with an oil lamp to facilitate identification of the strange object. The headman held the violin upright and peered into the black interior of the body, like an officious customs officer searching for drugs. I noticed three blood spots in his left eye, one large and two small, all the same shade of bright red. Raising the violin to eye level, he shook it, as though convinced something would drop out of the sound holes. His investigation was so enthusiastic I was afraid the strings would break. Just about everyone in the village had come to the house on stilts way up on the mountain to witness the arrival of the