Colours and Years

hello, Summer is here!
Exactly now, the smouldering hot season starts in Rio de Janeiro.
As if on cue, weather started to get warmer...

Sumer Google doodle... cute! But we won't feel lucky, we'll feel HOT here in Rio.

Oh well, at least we'll have beach, coconut water and cold beer...

For my birthday, a friend sent me a lovely book about life and memories, a nice reflection on choices made. So well written, so pleasant to read... And since it's mere 72 hours since my apocalipse, my gift will be today's 40th page.

Colours and Years

Margit Kaffka

Chapter V.

page 40

"For this very reason it was a refined and noble art to deal daintily with it, in the feverish turns of the dance, floating, twirling or tiptoeing on the spot, never forgetting ourselves totally, or what we owned to external appearances and to our superior status.

We joined hands and floated in a waltz around the big dining-room, swaying gently and smoothly with our supple waists. Hanika hummed a tune for us in her stifled, colorless little wisp of a voice and hurried to push the chairs out of our way. ‘They’re the most beautiful of all! There’s none like them in the world!’ she sighed feverishly and exultantly. Grandma opened the door on us; she stood there nodding and observant.

‘Five hundred forints for he two of them… for that they should be pretty, too!’ she said to herself. ‘But they really are magnificent, so they are’, she added more enthusiastically. ‘They fit both of you like a glove!’

She swiftly turned around and went back into her big room overlooking the courtyard. In recent days, she had not had much time for us. She sat in the alcove of the window where the floor was raised, as if on a throne, and held audience for her own clients – those who obtained small sums of money from her at a good rate interest, applicants for leases or agents for cheap plots of land, solicitors, tradesmen and merchants. The most frequent caller was Lipi, our nimble and clever Jew who was good for anything; he was her client and her business confidant. Now all her energy was devoted to her life’s great desire: the elevation of the family through the one and only male heir.

István, indeed, was thirty years old and deputy public notary; next door Ágnes, grandma’s favorite, smoothly groomed and in white muslin dress, grew imperceptibly into a gentle church-mouse of a girl; she was two years older than I was and so very different. ‘As for this lot here, just let them get on with things quickly and as best they can!’ – this thought was obvious in the whole way grandma treated us. She felt that our style and everything employed to achieve it were quite different, and she did not pester my mother over the espense of the dresses. She knew they were our armour, with which we had to be victorious and conquer an all-important battle of life.

When Lipi left grandmother, he would look in on me cheerfully as I sat in the covered terrace. ‘How grown-up you are, Miss Magda! You’ve grown beautiful too! There’s a new factory in Kolozsvár that makes the most splendid walnut furniture. I’ll get hold of some for the price they sell it to me!’"

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See you soon...

partiu praia!

Disclaimer: 40 pages 40 is my way to come to terms with celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. By promoting 40 awesome books I like in no way I intend to dupe the original authors. If you, as me, like what you read, buy them!

All 40 books can be found on the right side bar. ►

All images found on Google. Kudos to the original poster.