Jenny | Page 3

in and buy something - to inquire, to bargain, and to purchase. Almost before he knew it, he had entered a small, stuffy shop filled with all sorts of things. There were church-lamps hanging from the ceiling, bits of silk with gold flowers on red and green and white ground, and broken pieces of furniture.
Behind the counter a youth with a dark complexion and a bluish, unshaven chin was reading. He talked and asked questions while Helge pointed at various articles, "Quanta?" The only thing he understood was that the prices were excessive, but one ought not to buy until one knew the language well enough to bargain with them.
Several pieces of china were standing on a shelf, rococo figures and vases with sprays of roses, which looked quite modern. Helge seized one at random and placed it on the counter: "Quanta?"
"Sette," said the youth, and spread out seven fingers.
"Quattro," said Helge, holding out four fingers in a new brown glove, and felt quite pleased with himself at this leap into the foreign language. He did not understand one word of the man's arguments, but each time he finished talking Helge raised his four fingers and repeated his quattro, adding with a superior air: "Non antica!"
But the shopkeeper protested, "Si, antica." "Quattro," said Helge again - the man had now only five fingers in the air - and turned towards the door. The man called him back, accepting, and Helge, feeling highly pleased with himself, went out with his purchase wrapped up in pink tissue paper.
He perceived the dark mass of the church at the bottom of the street outlined against the sky, and walked on. He hurried across the first part of the piazza with its lighted shop windows and passing trams towards the two semicircular arcades, which laid a pair of rounded arms, as it were, about one part of the place, drawing it into the quiet and darkness of the massive church, with its broad steps extending in a shell-like formation far out on the piazza.
The dome of the church and the row of saints along the roof of the arcades stood out black against the faint light of the sky; the trees and houses on the hill at the back seemed to be heaped one on top of the other in an irregular fashion. The street lamps were powerless here, the darkness streamed forth between the pillars, and spread over the steps from the open portico of the church. He went slowly up the steps close to the church and looked through the iron doors. Then he went back again to the obelisk in the middle of the piazza and stood there gazing at the dark building. He bent his head back, and followed with his eyes the slender needle of stone that pointed straight into the evening sky, where the last clouds had descended on the roofs of that part of the town whence he had come, and the first radiant sparks of the stars pierced the gathering darkness.
Again his ears caught the sound of water emptying into a stone cistern, and the soft ripple of the overflow from one receptacle into another into the basin. He approached one of the fountains and watched the thick, white jet, driven upwards as it were in angry defiance and looking black against the clear atmosphere, to break high in the air and sink back into the darkness, where the water gleamed white again. He kept staring at it until a gust of wind took hold of the jet and bent it towards him, raining icy drops on his face, but he remained where he was, listening and staring. Then he walked a few steps - stood still - and walked again, but very slowly, listening to an inner voice. It was true, then - really true - that he was here, far, far away from everything he had longed so intensely to leave. And he walked still more slowly, furtively, like one who has escaped from prison.
At the corner of the street there was a restaurant. He made for it, and on his way found a tobacco shop, where he bought some cigarettes, picture cards and stamps. Waiting for his steak, he drank big gulps of claret, while he wrote to his parents; to his father: "I have been thinking of you very often today" - it was true enough - and to his mother: "I have already got a small present for you, the first thing I bought here in Rome." Poor mother - how was she? He had often been impatient with her these last years. He unpacked the thing and had a look at it - it was probably meant for a scent-bottle. He added a few words to his mother's card that he