Camilla

Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle Page B

Book: Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle Read Free Book Online
Authors: Madeleine L'Engle
wait for you, in case anything goes wrong.”
    â€œWhat could go wrong?” I asked.
    â€œWith someone like Jacques, you never know,” Luisa said. “Gosh, you’re innocent, Camilla. Where does he live?”
    Then I realized that I had no idea where Jacques lived. “I don’t know,” I said blankly. “I said I’d go to his apartment, but I don’t know where it is.”
    â€œThen we must look it up in the phone book.” Luisa sounded brisk and businesslike. “Come on.”
    In the coatroom there is a phone booth with a phone book, and Luisa dragged me to it and began leafing through the unwieldy pages of the book until she came to the
N
’s. “Nissen, Edward; Nissen, Frances; Nissen, Hans; Nissen,Jacques,” she said. Then she looked up at me and grinned. “I wouldn’t mind going to see him myself.”
    Jacques lived on West Fifty-third Street, near the Museum of Modern Art. Somehow I had never imagined him as living in that neighborhood, and I must have passed his house many times when I went to the Museum of Modern Art to study an exhibition for an art class in school or to go to one of the movies with Luisa.
    â€œWell, let’s go,” Luisa said.
    I did not want to go. I wanted to meet Frank.
    â€œWe’ll take the subway,” Luisa said.
    â€œNo. We’ll walk.”
    â€œIt’ll take much longer,” Luisa warned.
    â€œI can’t help it,” I said. “I’m going to walk.”
    So we walked. As we walked we passed an apartment building under construction and on the wooden hoarding it said RAFFERTY DICKINSON, ARCHITECT, and my heart swelled with pride, and I said, “This is one of Father’s apartments.” I wondered whether he was at the office today or whether he was there, right this minute, and whether if we waited I might see him.
    But Luisa hurried me on. “We shouldn’t have come by here. It would be terrible if we saw your father.” When we got to the Museum of Modern Art she asked, “How long are you going to be?”
    â€œI don’t know. Not long.”
    â€œMore than half an hour?”
    â€œOh, no!” I exclaimed, because I knew that what I had to say to Jacques would not take more than a few minutes.
    â€œWell, I think I’ll just go in the museum and lookaround,” Luisa said. “I’ll check in the lobby every few minutes and if you’re not there in half an hour I’m coming for you. Okay?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, and watched her go into the museum. I wanted to go in with her and look at the picture of the two old ladies picking coal off the railroad tracks and the picture that is called
White on White
, but I walked west until I got to the house where Jacques lived.
    This is the house where Jacques lives, I thought. This is the door to the house where Jacques lives. This is the elevator inside the door of the house where Jacques lives. This is the button that says sixth floor in the elevator inside the door of the house where Jacques lives.
    I kept on talking to myself like that as though everything were part of a nursery rhyme. I punched the button of the elevator—and I don’t like self-service elevators; I’m always afraid they’ll get stuck—and the door of the elevator closed as though by an unseen hand and the elevator rose with a whirring noise, slowly, slowly, and somehow it was all like a frightening Grimms’ fairy tale. The elevator stopped, the door slid open, and I stepped out and the door closed behind me and there I was, locked into a green-painted hall with five grimly closed doors, each with a brass nameplate over the doorbell. The first nameplate I looked at read JACQUES NISSEN and it was in a high state of polish. I stood there and I could not seem to draw my hands out of my pockets so that I could ring the bell. It was as though my hands had turned into black marble, like the legs of

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