Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Readingnote 5 (11)

       Desiree wear shoes, and she meets Daniel Beauxhomme.  Even though they do not formally introduce themselves, Daniel Beauxhomme is familiar of the girl (Desiree).  Desiree lives outside the hotel near the pool where she can see the light of Daniel's room.  One night, in her dream (I suppose), Daniel comes to her and laid with her.  Desiree sings songs for him.

        Desiree had never worn shoes.  Her feet were large, her toes long, straight, and wide apart.  These liberated toes she forced together to make them fit the confinement of the unyielding plastic of the too-small shoes.
     
       She smiled.  It's he.  It's he at last.  She sighed.  At last it's he.  Her brilliant smile attracted young Daniel Beauxhomme, who said to her, "Mademoiselle, your face is not strange to me.  Who are you?  From where do I know you?"

        I shall never leave these grounds again, Desiree Dieu-Donne vowwed, looking around her.  I shall die before I do.  As through in answer to her silent vow, a papillon came to rest on an azalea ush beside the steps.  Quickly Desiree captured it and put it into her cage.  A nearby artisan, seeing her ritual, inquired what she had done.  Desiree laughed gaily.  Hearing her loud, happy laughter, all the artisans laughed along with her.

        Desiree lived in a sort of terror.  But never had she lived so well.  When darkness came, when guests gave up outdoor pleasures, when the night watchmen replaced those who worked days, the grounds became her playland.  then she kicked off her shoes, eased her sore feet in cool grass, and in the happiness brought her by the release from pain she ran and played freely.  In the orchards she gathered fruits.  She ate them along with the leavings of guests' dinners, placed in buckets outside the kitchen for collectors.  Meats she had never before tasted, buttered bread, legumes cooked in strange sauces became her nightly meals.  She bathed in swimming pools where bats swooped down to quench their thirst.  She washed her clothes.  she washed her hair and combed it with her magic comb.  Stretching out at the side of the pool, as black as the night that absorbed her, she listened tot eh laughter of guests, to music playing, to the coming and going of cars, while gazing up at the windows of Daniel Beauxhomme's room.  Only when his lights went out did she go to sleep.

        Never did she attempt to go into the hotel, or to try to see Daniel Beauxhomme.  She longed to.  But she feared being caught and banished from the grounds and losing forever her chance to save him.  This forced her to exercise patience.  The gods had sent her to him.  She had to use her patience, until they sent him to her.  And they did.

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