By now it was three. I closed the door and went to the library, fiddle nervously with the keys in my pocket.
It was a strange day, overwhelming. The campus seemed deserted - everyone was at the party, I thought - and the green fields, the bright tulips seemed as resigned, waiting for something under that sky littered with clouds.
Somewhere a shutter creaked. On my head, among blacks the cruel talons of an elm, jailed a kite struggled convulsively. We are in Kansas , I thought, in Kansas before it by the cyclone.
The library was like a grave, the ice from the interior neon lights made the afternoon even more gray and cold than it was.
The windows of the reading room showing shelves, trolleys, empty not a soul.
The librarian - a horrible cow named Peggy - behind the desk reading a magazine Women's Day, not looked up. The copy machine hummed in the corner. I climbed the stairs to the second floor, walked around the section of foreign languages and went into the reading room. There was no one, just as I thought, but one of the tables near the entrance I noticed a small pile of books, crumpled sheets and a bag of greasy chips.
I went: the person had come out recently, I thought. A can of grape juice, drink for three quarters, it was still cold to the touch. I wondered what to do: maybe it was just went to the bathroom and was about to fall, I decided to retrace my steps when I saw the ticket.
on a volume of World Book Encyclopedia was a piece of lined paper folded in two, with the name "Marion" written on it in tiny, uneven handwriting Bunny. I opened it and read it quickly:
old girl,
I got bored. I go to the party to take a birrino.
See you later.
B
See you later.
B
I folded the paper and I sank down on the armrest of the chair of Bunny. Usually went out for walks around one: that now, at three, had gone to the party to Jennings, it meant that they had failure.
I went back to the Commons - its red brick facade, flat like the wings of a theater, stood out against the dark sky - and I called Henry. No response. Neither of the twins at home.
The Commons was equally deserted, except for a couple of old guards and the lady in red wig who was the switchboard to knit all weekend, regardless of the incoming calls. As usual, the lights peep here and there on his telephone, and she gave them away, like the nefarious negligent telegraph operator on the Californian night that sank the Titanic . The I passed and headed for the vending machines beverages had a coffee soluble and went back to the phones. Still no answer.
hung up and I walked into empty rooms, with a copy of the newspaper of graduates under the arm, and I sat on a chair by the window and sip my coffee.
passed fifteen or twenty minutes. The Journal of graduates was depressing: it seemed that the alumni of Hampden were not able to do anything else, out of school, which opened shops in Nantucket ceramics or join a religious sect in Nepal.
threw it aside and looked out: the light was very strange, somehow made it more intense green of the lawn, so as to make it appear a stretch unnatural, almost not of this world. An American flag, solo against the purple sky, whipping back and forth on its support of brass.
I sat staring at her, then suddenly I did not do more: put on my coat and headed for the ravine.
I went back to the Commons - its red brick facade, flat like the wings of a theater, stood out against the dark sky - and I called Henry. No response. Neither of the twins at home.
The Commons was equally deserted, except for a couple of old guards and the lady in red wig who was the switchboard to knit all weekend, regardless of the incoming calls. As usual, the lights peep here and there on his telephone, and she gave them away, like the nefarious negligent telegraph operator on the Californian night that sank the Titanic . The I passed and headed for the vending machines beverages had a coffee soluble and went back to the phones. Still no answer.
hung up and I walked into empty rooms, with a copy of the newspaper of graduates under the arm, and I sat on a chair by the window and sip my coffee.
passed fifteen or twenty minutes. The Journal of graduates was depressing: it seemed that the alumni of Hampden were not able to do anything else, out of school, which opened shops in Nantucket ceramics or join a religious sect in Nepal.
threw it aside and looked out: the light was very strange, somehow made it more intense green of the lawn, so as to make it appear a stretch unnatural, almost not of this world. An American flag, solo against the purple sky, whipping back and forth on its support of brass.
I sat staring at her, then suddenly I did not do more: put on my coat and headed for the ravine.
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