quote · Legacy record
The clock’s pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman’s form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed … … and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob’s fever-glazed face.Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his eyebrows. A well-waxed paper door slides open.
The clock’s pendulum catches the firelight, and in the rattle-breathed final moments of Jacob de Zoet, amber shadows in the far corner coagulate into a woman’s form. She slips between the bigger, taller onlookers unnoticed … … and adjusts her headscarf, the better to hide her burn. She places her cool palms on Jacob’s fever-glazed face.Jacob sees himself, when he was young, in her narrow eyes. Her lips touch the place between his eyebrows. A well-waxed paper door slides open.
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- Author or tradition
- David Mitchell
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