Free The Luminist by David Rocklin

unlike asking the sun to be discreet in shining.”
    He stifled a smile and waited for Mary to butcher the translation, then took the papers from her hand and held them
towards the veranda while struggling to anchor the pole. The cover of the playbill startled him with its audacity. A woman lay under a flowering vine. So vivid was the rendering that she seemed in tormented motion beneath his fingers. A winged naked infant drew a cloth over her. It whispered to the woman the way the man had whispered to this Julia, with a smile and a thief ’s heart.
    Leonora , it said. Translated by Catherine Palgrove Colebrook. London: Longman Brown, 1827 .
    â€œSuch fascination with my mother ’s work,” Julia said. “ Why, one could mistake him for a reader.”
    Mary related her words. He thought about saying something to let her know that he could read, that he could understand. But the gulf between them felt like the best vantage point from which to see her. He responded in Tamil.
    â€œ He’s embarrassed to be in your presence while holding an undressed woman,” Mary said.
    The restive audience quieted. Julia took her place in the middle of the veranda, her hands raised for silence. She glanced at the book Eligius held, then smiled. “ Friends all, I know you’ll join me in wishing my mother health and happiness, for evermore.”
    She walked off to polite applause. In a moment, the woman he’d seen at the Court, hiding beneath the spider’s curtain, strode towards him. Her eyes fell to the open text. “ Don’t let’s curse the rain! For isn’t it just a part of God’s covenant to remind us of the flood, and to renew us? Do you believe this?”
    Governor Wynfield was seated closest to Eligius, with an attractive woman whose hard features and disapproving gaze remained intent upon Catherine, who basked in Leonora’s funerary lament for her missing lover. “ Endure! Endure! yet break the heart, yet judge not God’s decree. Thy body from thy soul doth part. Oh, may He pardon thee!”
    She bowed to light applause from her audience. “ It speaks to your hearts that you ignore this weather and support the
efforts of brave souls like Stephen Ault as he struggles to shine the light of Christ across this shadowland. I apologize that my husband cannot be among you today. He saves his strength for the good works of the Court, and with the favor of peers like Governor Wynfield, a new charter for the John Company and a new body of laws shall be his legacy to Ceylon and to England.”
    â€œ Hear, hear,” Wynfield said.
    â€œAnd I apologize as well that because of these storms and the failure of this land to produce a bumper crop of worthy ser - vants, our tea and cakes have not arrived! Words cannot convey my sorrow.”
    Eligius saw Lady Wynfield exchange bemused smiles with the other wives seated near her. Their silent condemnation continued while Catherine greeted her guests and collected donations. Unfailingly, their expressions and manner molted into mocking winks when she passed them. Eligius wondered if any of them cared for her at all.
    Mary gestured to him to let the pole down. He did, and was promptly showered with a cascade of collected rainwater. He heard Julia laugh, but did not look. He didn’t want to be one more man turning to her. Instead he busied himself with folding the sheets.
    After an hour, the last of the Colebrooks’ guests departed for their own estates. Catherine returned to the veranda, sifting rupees in her hands. She shooed away her maid’s efforts to shelter her from the rain. “ So few. Christ will have to pick and choose from the afflicted, it seems.”
    â€œ Let the new boy take the money to the missionary,” Julia said. “ No one should have to go out in this.”
    â€œ I will see to it myself. You’re young and the world grows trustworthiness on trees. No, I have something