Petersburg CHAPTER TEN Horace took off his eyeglasses and put down his tiny paintbrush on his worktable. The goggle-rings left on his cheeks and forehead chafed. Experience told him they would look red and painful if he bothered to go and check in the glass. He looked around him. The other dark-suited gents were still hard at it under the gleaming floor-to-ceiling polished mahogany shelving. Solemn and heavy as church pews, the shelves contained many, many jewelled and enamelled fripperies in the making. Horace’s colleagues, straining their eyes through magnifiers at whatever precious tiny object they were working on, with whatever miniature instruments, were turning out more. There was an intent quietness in the back room: just the occasional mutter, in well-spoken English, or French, or playful Swiss-German. But the fine strokes of the latest layer of Horace’s latest dreaming-spires Oxford scene needed to dry. And his eyes needed a rest. A dozen silver cigarette boxes to finish by Christmas for Prince Youssoupoff’s relatives, all with prettily idealized painted decorations of English scenes: the Radcliffe Camera dome, autumn trees, mist.
What do You think about Midnight In St. Petersburg?
