Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1963
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Let’s go,” he said sharply, but Barker was standing in their path again, his obese body wedged into the small entrance area between the counters. He held out the wooden chest, smiled wanly at Diane, and said, “Would madam care to open it?”
“Thank you,” Diane said, and this time there was an unmistakable lilt to her voice, and she arched one eyebrow coquettishly. She smiled at the old man, a lazy, mysterious smile, and then she slowly lifted the lid of the chest.
The beam of sunlight from the open window caught the contents of the box, magnified the hundreds of thick gold coins which were heaped inside. The sight of the coins was startling to Michael. He had held no preconceived notion of what the chest contained and now that it was opened, splashed with sunlight, each coin glittering with a thick circular life of its own, he caught his breath in wonder and surprise and unconsciously moved closer to the heavy chest as Barker set it down on the countertop.
“Doubloons,” Barker said. “Spanish doubloons. They are worth a fortune, sir.” His eyes met Diane’s over the open chest. There was a fine sheen of sweat on Diane’s forehead and her upper lip. The old man’s mouth was twitching slightly. His hand on the open lid of the chest had begun to tremble.
“Would you like to examine one, sir?” he asked, but he did not deliver the words to Michael. He spoke to Diane, and his eyes held hers in a steady gaze now, and she smiled back at him in a frozen, sleepy-eyed way, her eyes meeting the old man’s over the open box like a challenge. Michael picked up one of the coins. It was heavy and thick, inscribed with Spanish lettering and the name of a monarch and a seventeenth-century date. The chest was full of them. He wanted suddenly to pick them up and let them trickle through his open fingers.
“Would you like that coin, sir?” Barker said. There was a tremor in the old man’s voice now.
“It’s very beautiful,” Michael whispered.
“It is very very beautiful, sir. Would you like it, sir?”
“How... how much is it?”
“There is a price, sir.”
“What’s the price?”
“What do you think the coin is worth, sir?”
“I have no idea.”
“It is worth a great deal, sir.”
“Well, how much?”
“Make me an offer, sir.”
“I told you,” Michael said, annoyed, “I don’t know how much it’s worth.” He had become irritated suddenly and irrationally, irritated by the old man’s trembling hand and by the frozen smile on Diane’s face, and by the dust and suffocating heat of the shop, and the rush of noise outside, and irritated too by the sight of the gleaming coins in the old wooden chest.
“I will accept a reasonable offer, sir,” Barker persisted.
“I told you I...”
“For two coins then, sir? Would you make an offer for two of the coins?”
“If I don’t know what one is worth, how can I...”
“Three, sir? Will you barter for three?”
He looked into the old man’s eyes, and he saw what was there, and the old man’s meaning cracked sharply into his mind, and he felt a sudden chill.
“A dozen coins, sir?” Barker said, and he leaned closer, and his eyes turned to Diane, coveted her in one swift glance, and somehow assured her, assured her of something certain that was about to happen, and Michael realized with a shock that he wanted those coins, he desired those coins in the wooden chest, he wanted them desperately, and it was then that his eyes narrowed and the dust in the shop took on a new and different smell.
“Two dozen coins, sir? I am willing to trade. I am willing to barter.”
Michael held the single doubloon in his hand and he looked at the glittering heap of coins and felt suddenly weak. He began shaking his head, the ticking of the clocks loud in his ears, the dust motes recklessly climbing the golden shafts, Diane blond and smiling her cold fixed evil smile, the old man leaning forward and wheezing heavily, anxiously awaiting his answer, evil, and the stench of evil in his own nostrils, suffocating him. He reached for Diane’s arm blindly, and he dropped the doubloon onto the gleaming pile of coins and shoved past the old man. Barker reached out as if to stop them, and his thick fingers traveled the length of Diane’s naked arm caressingly as she rushed past, recoiling from his touch, and went swiftly down the steps into the street, Michael following behind her, the expensive camera swinging from his neck.
They stopped on the sidewalk. The sun was still intense. Behind them the steps rose to the ugly pink wall and the beckoning red arrow. His hand shook as he fumbled for the cigarettes in the pocket of his white shirt.
“He recognized us,” Diane whispered, and suddenly she began to shiver.
“Yes,” Michael answered quickly, taking her elbow. His eyes would not meet hers. “He knew we were tourists.”
On the Sidewalk, Bleeding
The boy lay bleeding in the rain.
He was sixteen years old, and he wore a bright purple silk jacket, and the lettering across the back of the jacket read THE ROYALS. The boy’s name was Andy, and the name was delicately scripted in black thread on the front of the jacket, just over the heart. Andy.
He had been stabbed ten minutes ago. The knife had entered just below his rib cage and had been drawn across his body violently, tearing a wide gap in his flesh. He lay on the sidewalk with the March rain drilling his jacket and drilling his body and washing away the blood that poured from his open wound. He had known excruciating pain when the knife ripped §cross his body, and then sudden comparative relief when the blade was pulled away. He had heard the voice saying, “That’s for you, Royal!”, and then the sound of footsteps hurrying into the rain, and then he had fallen to the sidewalk, clutching his stomach, trying to stop the flow of blood.
He tried to yell for help, but he had no voice. He did not know why his voice had deserted him, or why the rain had become so suddenly fierce, or why there was an open hole in his body from which his life ran redly, steadily. It was 11:30 P.M., but he did not know the time.
There was another thing he did not know.
He did not know he was dying. He lay on the sidewalk, bleeding, and he thought only, That was a fierce rumble, they got me good that time, but he did not know he was dying. He would have been frightened had he known. In his ignorance, he lay bleeding and wishing he could cry out for help, but there was no voice in his throat. There was only the bubbling of blood from between his lips whenever he opened his mouth to speak. He lay silent in his pain, waiting, waiting for someone to find him.
He could hear the sound of automobile tires hushed on the muzzle of rain-swept streets, far away at the other end of the long alley. He lay with his face pressed to the sidewalk, and he could see the splash of neon far away at the other end of the alley, tinting the pavement red and green, slickly brilliant in the rain.
He wondered if Laura would be angry.
He had left the jump to get a package of cigarettes. He had told her he would be back in a few minutes, and then he had gone downstairs and found the candy store closed. He knew that Alfredo’s on the next block would be open until at least two, and he had started through the alley, and that was when he’d been ambushed. He could hear the faint sound of music now, coming from a long, long way off, and he wondered if Laura was dancing, wondered if she had missed him yet. Maybe she thought he wasn’t coming back. Maybe she thought he’d cut out for good. Maybe she’d already left the jump and gone home. He thought of her face, the brown eyes and the jet-black hair, and thinking of her he forgot his pain a little, forgot that blood was rushing from his body. Someday he would marry Laura. Someday he would marry her, and they would have a lot of kids, and then they would get out of the neighborhood. They would move to a clean project in the Bronx, or maybe they would move to Staten Island. When they were married, when they had kids...