Frost: a Novel
“I always prepare the fire the night before. It’s still dark, but light enough to wash. The cold water is very invigorating, and I feel like taking a walk right away, into the village and back, or up to the church and back, or only as far as the larch wood. But if I did, I know I would wake everyone in the building. The landlady would forbid it. So I sit at the window and look out, and see nothing but a tree trunk and the snow and in the snow the tracks of deer and dogs and chickens, and I read ...my Henry James, which is good distraction for me. Then, when it’s time for breakfast, I head downstairs to the public bar, and wait for the painter so that he doesn’t have to eat breakfast by himself. I am always hungry in the mornings. The landlady runs back and forth and hurries her girls off to school. When they’ve gone, the engineer and the knacker, who both stay on the second floor, leave the inn. Often guests appear by eight whose arrival I missed the night before, arriving late and moving off early, tramps and traders and other restless individuals, who’ve turned in for a night’s sleep; usually they’re badly dressed, wearing some cheap suit material, with no mittens, often they only have summer shoes, but some others pay with big notes and order up a breakfast I would never dare to for myself, with eggs and bacon, and they even order a glass of wine to go with it, and they pull newspapers out of their pockets, and lean back, and look every inch the well-informed citizen.MoreLess
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