Читать книгу Ventoux онлайн

7 страница из 86

PETRARCH, The Ascent of Mount Ventoux

-

Prologue

For years the photo had been in an envelope, at the bottom of a white storage box. On the brown tape with which I had sealed the box sometime in the mid-1980s, I had written ‘Miscellaneous’. At least eight times I took it out of a dark cupboard, down from an attic, or out of a shed, and put it back without unpacking it. Now that she had suddenly turned up again, I knew immediately where to find the envelope.

Photos of other holidays are neatly arranged in albums with titles such as ‘Italy 1984’ or ‘Route 66, 1986’. This one was hidden away, deep in my memory and in a cardboard vault, until the moment came to retrieve it. Time had added a hint of orange to it.

I placed it in front of me on the dining table and absorbed the image. For minutes on end I gazed absently into the eyes of the people in the portrait. Then, slowly, the memories came. The sounds, the smells, the words. I remembered that I stared into the lens and thought: one day, later, much later, I’ll look at this photo, and I’ll remember that this was happiness. Time seemed to disappear, until I had almost become the young lad standing there. I felt the excitement, the joy, the expectation again. I felt her body against mine again.