I Tick the right answer and justify your choice.

1 The scene is set ... .

a) at home

b) on the porch

c) outside in the street

d) in the neighbour’s yard

2 Mick’s father is … .

a) a musician

b) a clockmaker

c) a shopkeeper

d) an accountant

3 The relations in the family are … .

a) distant

b) very close

c) aggressive

d) easy-going

4 Mick’s father feels … .

a) uneasy

b) at ease

c) cheerful

d) bad-tempered

5 Mick and her father talk about … .

a) the hot dark nights

b) why she is in a big rush

c) the other kids and their mother

d) what could have happened in a different situation

6 Mick feels … .

a) puzzled

b) restless

c) lonesome

d) uninterested

7 The main reason why Mick went walking along the streets at night

was that … .

a) she liked walking

b) it was too hot to stay inside

c) she disliked the atmosphere at home

d) she wanted to go to a particular house

II Complete the following sentences putting one word in each space.

1 Mick’s father said he had so much work to do and yet ………. ……….. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. . (8) *

2 He didn’t earn much money as ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. . (7)

3 He couldn’t concentrate on his work since ………. ………. ………. ………. . (4)

4 He called Mick because ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. . (11)

5 He felt lonely because ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. . (9)

6 He felt he wasn’t a very good father because he ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. . (6)

* the number of words to write in

THE END

TEXT 14 MOON PALACE (II)

by Paul Auster

Paul Auster (b. 1947) – an American author known for works blending absurdism, crime fiction and the search for identity.

(Central Park becomes Marco’s new home. Here he seeks shelter from the pressure of the city streets. He finds food in the garbage cans. Marco even manages to stay in touch with what is going on in the world by reading newspapers left by visitors. Although life in Central Park is not very comfortable, he feels at ease because he is enjoying his solitude and he restores his balance between his inner and outer self.)

There is no question that the park did me a world of good. It gave me privacy, but more than that, it allowed me to pretend that I was not as bad off as I really was. The grass and the trees were democratic, and as I loafed in the sunshine of a late afternoon, or climbed among the rocks in the early evening to look for a place to sleep, I felt that I was blending into the environment, that even to a practiced eye I could have passed for one of the picnickers or strollers around me. The streets did not allow for such delusions. Whenever I walked out among the crowds, I was quickly shamed into the awareness of myself. <…>

(10) Each day I became a little dirtier than I had been the day before, a little more ragged and confused, a little more different from everyone else. In the park, I did not have to carry around this burden of self-consciousness. <…> If the streets forced me to see myself as others saw me, the park gave me a chance to return to my inner life, to hold on to myself purely in terms of what was happening inside me.

It is possible to survive without a roof over your head, I discovered, but you cannot live without establishing an equilibrium between the inner and the outer. The park did that for me. It was not quite a home, perhaps, but for want of any other shelter, it came very close.

(20) Unexpected things kept happening to me in there, things that seem almost impossible to me as I remember them now. Once, for example, a young woman with bright red hair walked up to me and put

a five-dollar bill in my hand – just like that, without any explanation at all. Another time, a group of people invited me to join them on the grass for a picnic lunch. <…>

Those were happy moments for me, and they helped to carry me through some darker stretches when my luck seemed to have run out. Perhaps that was all I had set out to prove in the first place: that once you throw your life to the winds, you will discover things you had never (30) known before, things that cannot be learned under any other

circumstances.

NOTES

a world of good – a great amount of good

to be bad off (Am. E.) – experiencing difficulty, esp. financial difficulty

(ant. to be well-off)

in terms of – according to someone’s way of understanding the situation

for want of – due to the lack of

it came very close – it was almost as good as home

in the first place – at the start

EXERCISES