Her head rises and falls with the turning pages under the yellow lamp and rain pinks, rhythmless, on the window. All the sounds are soft; the rain on the glass, the shifting of the clock hands above her, the passing footfalls on the carpet. She moves gently, with reverence, as she slides her finger between the resting paper; she writes and sketches; she inks in lines with a ruler on her fingertips. A curl of hair swings into her eye and she flicks it sharply behind her ear. The wind lifts the branches of a tree outside and spatters drops harshly on the glass and she pauses, distracted.
The only attention he received was such a cold, impersonal form of human contact that when they left the cell he was grateful to be alone. Once a week three guards came in with a chair and ordered him to sit. It was never a clean shave; the electric razor they used ran on tired batteries and Mekul could feel the dull blades tug at the skin of his scalp. Each day a panel in the door was unbolted from the outside and some bread was thrown down, or old leftovers in a flimsy plastic bowl.
The gas was running slow even when Jacob opened the valves all the way, so he was careful to wait each time to make sure the flame had caught. Normally it was a race to finish by sunset, but the sky was clear and on the bridge the posts were close enough together that Jacob could see work by the light of the last lamp. At the same height above the cobbles, the driver of a cab nodded to Jacob as he passed, steam rising from his horse’s flanks. The flame was low, but steady. Jacob closed the glass door of the lamp and climbed slowly down the ladder.
She had been beautiful once, but she had always been stern. From her earliest days as a teacher she had cultivated a sense of moral certainty n every one of her actions, and as she rose through the ranks of the school it hardened and split into a set of near-military convictions. She was old and her sharply curving jaw had lapsed into straight lines and angles, and her skin was dry. It was hard for her, bit she maintained a regimental manner in her movement – she moved as though the children’s eyes were always on her, even in her flat, in her solitude, in her retirement.
