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" ...
over dinner at the
Paris Bar
Hajo himself would turn paternal and counsel Mark on everything from health insurance to diet
... " (p. 22)
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" ...
Hajo went into the kitchen and came back five minutes later with something in his hand
that smelled of a summer roadside. "What are you drinking?"
"Chamomile.
... " (p. 23)
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" ...
On the
Upper West Side
there were ten more gourmet shops and two fewer gay bars. Young heterosexuals - young, rich and confident - swarmed down
Central Park West,
gaudy in leg warmers and pink jogging shorts over midwinter tans
... " (p. 24)
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" ...
The Berlin sun was shining on the gilt
Spirit of Victory on top of the Siegessäule
the day Mark and Hajo walked through the
Tiergarten
on their way to the hospital. Beds of red and pink tulips alternated around the
statue of Bismarck,
who stood with a sword in one hand and a drapery below the other, as though he were a
portly, exhausted torero
... " (p. 25)
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" ...
and locked himself behind the toilet door to sob out loud, but then
Hajo, skinny in his black T-shirt advertising
Kurosawa´s Ran
and his baggy boxer shorts, was tapping at the door
... " (p. 26)
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" ...
Vienna was hot and airless and deserted. They walked slowly through the
museum of natural history
and looked at dinosaur bones.
The famous horses
weren´t performing their tricks right now, it was off season, and at
the opera
Die Fledermaus
was playing only to Japanese group tours
... " (p. 26)
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" ...
Maybe the heat as they swayed in the
tram
along the brilliant, nearly deserted
Ringstrasse
recalled summer days in Charlottesville
... " (p. 26)
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" ...
Their intimacy was very deep, maybe because they were both far from
home in a hotel with the jaunty name, the
King of Hungary
... " (p. 26)
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" ...
He wished he were very thin and lined and dry-looking, an old
man with a gray pony tail and bony
Cocteau-like hands,
for that look would better correspond to the way he felt
... " (p. 27)
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" ...
Reagan´s senile shenanigans ambarrassed Mark slightly, and
Mitterand´s
cadaverous looks repelled him exactly as much as his statesmanlike style
attracted him, but their personalities were less real to Mark than the heroes
and villains on the dubbed reruns of
Dynasty
he always watched in Paris
... " (p. 28)
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" ...
hadn´t Joshua quoted the poet he was working on,
Wallace Stevens,
who´d said, "Death is the mother of beauty"?
Joshua had explained that eternal, unchanging beauty
would seem insipid and not at all beautiful - "a bore"
... " (p. 29)
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" ...
Although he avoided newspapers, he picked up the
Herald Tribune
one day and read that India was planning to require blood-test
results before granting visas to tourists
... " (p. 29)
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" ...
They looked up at the new wooden Accademia bridge, downstream
at the white stone lions sipping water at the
Guggenheim
and beyond to the old ball of the old customs house agleam even on this cloudy day
... " (p. 30)
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" ...
hadn´t Robbins called his best piece
Dances at a Gathering?
The old hymn said, "We gather together to ask the Lord´s blessing."
Now there was no Lord left to ask anything of
... " (p. 30)
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Palace Days I, pages 12 - 21
Back to Index Page
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