Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Edgardo Franzosini

At that point Rembrandt woke up, got out of bed, and dragged himsel f to a corner of the room where there was a pitcher and a basin, and splashed generous handfuls of water onto his face. Then he started to cough. A dry cough that hurt his sides and made him feel l ike vomiting. In the end he spit up a thick, foaming substance, a kind of clot, and the water in the basin turned red. FOR A FEW days, l ike a wounded animal , it seems appropriate to say, Bugatti wandered in the vicinity of the zoo, without summoning the courage to enter or even get too close. To go beyond a certain l imit. He roamed the streets around Antwerpen- Centraal rai lway station with his temples throbbing and his head in a fog. The giant howitzers started to thunder in the morning, raising clouds of black smoke into the air. The Germans, people were saying, have doubled their contingent opposite the forti f ications that surrounded the city. From the station square Rembrandt noticed a pair of chasseurs standing guard in front of the zoo. What are they guarding? he wondered. What are they protecting? Then he left, started to wander again, walking aimlessly down streets l ittered with shattered glass and chunks of plaster, coming across columns of soldiers moving from one neighborhood to another,

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