Descriere
He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though thefashion of the time did something to disguise it — was inthe act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from therafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or lessthe shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand ortwo of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’sfather, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from theshoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moonin the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually,in the breeze which never ceased blowing through theattic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stonyfields, and fields watered by strange rivers, and they hadstruck many heads of many colours off many shoulders, andbrought them back to hang from the rafters. So too would Orlando,he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too youngto ride with them in Africa or France, he would steal away fromhis mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his atticroom and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with hisblade. Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull bumped onthe floor and he had to string it up again.....
