Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

györgy spiró

sedulously and in accordance with the rules. If ever he was not reading or copying, by screwing up his unaided eyes Uri could see roughly as far as three doors along in the zigzagged, crisscross yard, and between his fingers up to six or seven doors along. He wanted to have keen eyesight, as his father’s remark had cut him to the quick and still rankled; there were times when, trying his eyes out in the morning, he may have seen more clearly, perhaps, but by evening he had to conclude that he was still not seeing well enough. Not long before, he had fabricated a contraption for himself out of a wooden board that could rest on the ridge of the nose, so that he did not have to look through his fingers all the time: he bored two small holes to

look through, and when he was wearing it on his nose and looking through the holes he did get a nice, if very restricted, view. The view was nice because everything was sharper and more stable, relatively speaking, than when he had simply peeked through his forefinger and thumb; in fact, it just as good as when he looked through the splayed fingers of both hands held in front of his eyes. The plank had the extra advantage that it could be held in place with just one hand, but he dared not show himself outside his own hovel with the nose-board, because people would have laughed. Indeed, he did not even dare to stand close to the window, with the device on his nose or not, because it was known throughout the yard, just like everything was known, that he was in the habit of

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