Ignorance Read Online Free Page A

carried away with me behind my eyes and remembered afterwards, in silence, once I was back inside the school, with the nuns questioning me. Brightly coloured memories blurred past like flicked-over pages in a picture book. The book opened and the pages stood up and time stopped and the pictures jumped out and came alive. Bluebeard-the-Jew’s big blue eyes, his wild black hair, his indigo workman’s shirt, red and white spotted neckerchief, emerald corduroy trousers. The bright bottles of sirop , green and pink and yellow, he brought out of the rose-painted cupboard and lined up on the blue and white checked tablecloth. We could choose: menthe or framboise or ananas . Black slabs of chocolate he fitted between pale lengths of bread before handing them to us with a courteous bow. Mesdemoiselles . The honey-tiled corridor, a dark yellow tunnel, silted with dust rolling light and silvery as fur, which ran through the ground floor of the house, connecting back to front. Cream-painted panelled doors, glistening like sheets of mother-of-pearl, opened off it on both sides. The bare, unfurnished salon , painted scarlet, stencilled with gold garlands. Oh, Marie-Angèle exclaimed: like a ballroom. She spread out her arms and spun, a grey-clad Cinderella.
    The Hermit told us he preferred to sit in the kitchen. This pale green apartment, lined with old wooden armoires and buffets painted pale pink, pale green, pale blue, its rafters hung with wheels of dried apple threaded on strings, had a tiled floor patterned in small turquoise and cream squares. Above the fireplace he had pinned up three rows of small rodent-like animals, flattened, the grey fur and skin split open and peeled back, the tiny claws splayed out. Marie-Angèle shuddered: mice? Ugh! He said: these are voles. I walked over and stroked them. Soft. He said: don’t be scared. They’re dead. They can’t hurt you. I like drawing them.
    Scattered between the sirop bottles on the blue and white cloth lay photographs of fat, loose-haired women, in rucked-up pale chemises, lolling in armchairs. Big grins. Black bows in their dark ringlets. Black triangles of hair between their plump legs. Outside, at the foot of the stairs, three nailed-up moles grimaced in a sort of dance, paw to paw. I’ve got lots more things like this. Come upstairs, if you like, and I’ll show you.
    The staircase was neater and smaller than the one in the school. It twisted up in a tight oval. Like going inside a snail’s shell. Fragile and brown. You wanted to step delicately in case something smashed. Shallow treads tucking in around the corners, a curved wooden baluster. Men weren’t supposed to have dolls’ houses but he did because he was like a child. Smiling at us, hopping back and forth. The sort of child I’d have liked to make friends with, someone with a cupboard full of treasures who’d show me them and let me pick something out and take it home. He gave Marie-Angèle the black and white feather and that wasn’t fair, I wanted it just as much as she did.
    He opened the door to his study on the first floor, full of books and piles of magazines. Next to it, a smaller room containing a shiny black and gold cabinet in which he had arranged the bones of small animals in circles and rows. He let us pull out each shallow drawer in turn, examine the contents, touch them. With our forefingers we caressed the skulls of rats and squirrels, the dry wings of staked-out butterflies and moths, the clean white skeletons of mice, the transparent brown and white tubes of shed snakeskins. Wizened dark pellets he said were owl droppings. Iridescent blue feathers of tits, arranged in fans. Green-gold carapaces of beetles with black claws.
    Up another flight to the second floor. He took us into his two bedrooms. One faced north, out into the place , and the other looked south, over the garden. One big and one small. One painted black and one white. One served for sleeping in during summer, he explained, and