Free David by Ray Robertson

dead,” she said. “They are so much more honest than those of the living.”
    Anyway, intercourse in exchange for corpses, life paid for in full with death. Loretta’s and mine was a match made in alchemy, if not quite in heaven. Even then, it took a few visits to Dresden before carnality became part of our covenant. At first I paid Loretta in cash, and only to read to me—Schopenhauer, Goethe, Fichte, all in their own impenetrable Teutonic tongue—because the only topic I could remember Mrs. King broaching more than once was the trip she spoke of wanting to take to Vienna, home of all of her favourite composers. And if the chances of Mrs. King making it there someday were slim before, they were a whole lot slimmer now that she’d been planted in the ground. Some people might have said that frequenting a whorehouse wasn’t the best way of honouring the recently deceased, but Loretta wouldn’t have been among them. Even if she had known why I’d come to knock on the door of our usual upstairs room more and more.
    â€œIn allem was unser Wohl und Wehe betrifft, sollen wir die Phantasie im Zügel halten: also zuvörderst keine Luftschlösser bauen; weil diese zu kostspieleg sind, indem wir gleich darauf sie unter Seufzern wieder einzureißen haben. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari. ”
    I looked up from the fire. “Only the German. Only read the German, please.”
    Loretta set the book down on her knee, slipped a double-ringed finger inside to mark the page. “But it is here, these is the author’s words.”
    â€œ Are the author’s words.”
    â€œ Are the author’s words. Because more than one. Of course.”
    Aside from the dollar I paid her, I threw in the occasional English lesson free of charge.
    â€œBut these are the author’s words,” she said. “It is Latin, yes?”
    â€œYes.” I grabbed the whiskey from the side table and inched up my drink. I’d taken to lying lengthwise on the bed while Loretta read from the chair by the fire. I held up the bottle. “May I?” Our relationship was still essentially that of buyer-seller, but lately she’d come to share a drink or two with me over the course of our hour together. The whiskey never affected her reading or anything else she did. I didn’t like people who couldn’t hold their liquor any more than I did people who didn’t drink. That didn’t leave a lot of room to like too many people.
    â€œThe way I read the Latin, it does not please you?” She upended what was left of her drink and came and stood beside the bed, stuck out her glass.
    I poured her her whiskey. “You read it fine. Just only read the German from now on, that’s all. That’s what you’re getting paid for.” I hadn’t wanted to remind either of us why we were really there, but money—who’s paying it, who’s getting it—stops any conversation you really don’t want to have. Ordinarily.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œ No? What do you mean, no ?”
    â€œI mean, until I understand why one language you do not understand is better than another language you do not understand,I stop reading.” She stayed standing where she was; sipped, looked at me over the lip of her drink. I knew she wasn’t bluffing. This was a woman, I could tell, who wasn’t the bluffing type.
    â€œâ€˜First one must live, then one may philosophize.’”
    â€œI beg pardon?” she said.
    â€œâ€˜First one must live, then one may philosophize.’ That’s what the Latin you read means in English. Approximately.”
    She sat down beside me on the bed without asking. Considering what she could have been doing on it to earn her dollar, I suppose she didn’t need to. “You know how to read?” she said. “And Latin? You read Latin too? I must say, I am much surprised.”
    â€œSurprised because I’m a