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stupid woman who does not comprehend such things. But surely you understand … He claps both hands to his head. She has already opened up her dresser and retrieved the camera hidden under the false drawer bottom. It is rigged with an infrared lens so she can take note of distant troop and ship movements at night, the negatives passed on to her confederates to transport to the capital. Now she has the camera set on normal mode, and she bears down on the magistrate, his face in the dead center of the frame. With the failing sunlight throbbing through the windows, one could almost mistake this shot as something constructed in a high-class studio, like one you would find in the city, where cities still exist, where nights still blaze with electric light and your footsteps take you across the city square  |
to the fountains and the sounds of music from cafés and the lazy rustles of trees against the wind. What? Stop! The magistrate's skeletal hands are before his eyes. Don't do that! Why not? I know you. And she does; she has full recollection of him now, she remembers him even more than she remembers Old Hawk, which makes the realization all the more repugnant to her. She remembers the time she was with her father in the town square after a rainstorm, the mud in the streets like an invitation to play, and the magistrate's carriage jerking up and down as it struggled down the roads. Realizing quite sensibly that it must have been an uncomfortable ride, she asked her father, Why does he not get out and walk? Old Hawk had patted her head  |
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