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:
He decided to leave a note for Beth. He didn’t really care whether or not she understood, but he felt nonetheless that he should leave some sort of note. He had given her little enough in her lifetime, and he didn’t want her to think she was totally responsible for what he was going to do. Maybe she was partially responsible, but not entirely, and the least he could do for her was to leave a note to put her mind at ease.
He put the shotgun down on the floor alongside the desk, and he looked around in the desk drawer for a sheet of paper, closed the drawer, opened another one, reopened the first one, and found the pad right under his hand. He sharpened a pencil and then sat down in the desk chair and wondered what he could say to her and then thought, The hell with her, let her figure it out herself, and then relented, sighed, meticulously dated the top of the page, and wrote:
Dear Beth,
I’m not sure you will understand this. I’m not sure I understand it myself. I only know...
I’m not sure I do understand it, he thought. I’m really not sure I understand it at all. I only know that when Alan came into my office and put the question to me, when Alan asked me to do whatever it was he asked — I can hardly remember what he asked; it is only with a great effort of will that I can remember him asking at all — and I said, “Yes, sure, yes,” I knew that was the end, I knew I had to do this.
He paused, holding the pencil poised over the pad, wondering how he could tell this to Beth. How do you explain to a woman you never loved the things that mean the most to you? How do you tell her about a boy who used to lie in bed beside a frost-rimmed window imagining a universe of ice-crystal stars stretching to eternity? How do you explain a boy who rolled up his trouser cuffs and waded in the river long before winter had released its grip, his toes numb, a foolish grin on his mouth? How do you explain the dreams of youth and the gradual disappearance of the dreams, of any dream, until there was nothing left but a vast compromise with something only vaguely remembered? Where does it go? he wondered. How do you get to be forty-two years old and writing a farewell note to a woman you never wanted?
How can you tell her about a night that happened before she even existed, a night that happened before the beginning of time, when the lights of the ferris wheel traced a round-robin pattern against a starless sky? The calliope music was flooding the vacant lot upon which the carnival had pitched its travel-worn brown tents. There was the noise of barkers, and the simulated, shrieking of young girls, and the mechanical roar of the amusement machines, and the tiny pop of the .22 in his hands, and the echoing sound of the bullets spanging against the gong at the far end of the gallery.
The girl was suddenly there.
He looked up as he reloaded the rifle, and the girl was there, and suddenly his hands were wet. She looked at him somewhat shyly, a tall girl of seventeen, with long blond hair and luminous brown eyes, a faint smile on her mouth. She was wearing a pale-blue cotton frock, and her legs were long and tanned, and she wore white sneakers dulled by the dust of the vacant lot. The night opened. The world dissolved. He looked at her, and everything he had ever wanted in all his long eighteen years was suddenly there, standing not three feet away from him. He put down the rifle. He looked at the girl soundlessly, and his eyes suddenly misted. And then, without expecting to, he held out his hand to her.
The girl looked at him curiously. She studied his face. She shook her head slightly and seemed about to speak, and then her eyes fastened to his, and the night narrowed into a single direct channel, the ferris wheel, the barkers, the terrified shrieks, the laughter, all melting beyond the fringes of focus, their eyes meeting and holding with an intensity so great it excluded all else. Speechless, she took his hand.
The carnival was a part of the dream. They walked through its tinsel and glitter like figures from another time, displaced. There was a glow of unreality to the night. The lights seemed softer now, the music indistinct, the laughter muffled and far away. Only the girl was real, and even the girl was part of the dream. She would not tell him her name. They made a game of it, he trying to guess, and she repeatedly shaking her head, her laughter rising to join the music of the calliope. He bought her a jelly apple, and he watched, bewitched, as her teeth sank into the thick candy crust, and he said, “Your name is Guinevere.”
“No.”
“Elaine then?”
“No.”
Her laughter. Walking with a gentle, delicate step, the dust-covered sneakers carrying her gracefully over the lot and then to the littered sidewalk beyond, and across the town to where the river snaked in unreflecting blackness, overhung with the willows on its bank. He held her hand and guided her to the water’s edge. The grass was wet with dew. He cupped her face in one hand and whispered, “Tell me your name.”
“My name is the wind,” she said, and laughed.
“Tell me.”
“I wish you would kiss me,” she said. “Please kiss me.”
Still holding her face, feeling the hard line of her jaw beneath his fingers, he lowered his mouth, and her lips parted, and he closed his eyes and held her very tight. In that instant all the romantic visions of his youth, all the fantasies he had drawn on the nighttime ceiling of his room, the imagined legends of tall, gallant men and beautiful, delicate maidens, came alive in this girl whose name he did not know. The willows hung like teardrops caught by time.
And with this girl, with this gentle girl who lay softly cradled in his arms by the edge of the river, there came purpose and resolve. He was suddenly brimming with plans; ambition rose within him like a tower. Holding her in his arms, he spun a golden thread of reveries, whispering lest the night be shattered by sound, until at last she sighed and said, “I must go.”
“I’ll take you home,” he said softly. “Where do you live?”
“I live in the air,” she answered, and again she laughed.
“No, seriously.”
“I’ll find my way alone. I want you to stay here.”
“I want to come with you,” he said, puzzled.
“Kiss me again.”
He held her to him and kissed her again, but there was an unfamiliar panic rising within him. He did not want to let her go. Fiercely he clung to her.
“Don’t go yet,” he said. “Please.”
“I’m going. I must.”
“No. Please...”
“Do you love me?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, but...”
“Then love me,” she said, “and let me go.”
He was frightened all at once. Suddenly he was afraid that if he insisted he would lose her completely. He nodded bleakly in the darkness. “Yes,” he said. “All right.”
She rose and brushed her skirt, her long, thin fingers moving silently in the darkness.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes, tomorrow,” she said.
“Here?”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
She kissed him suddenly and swiftly and then slipped out of his arms and ran up the grassy bank. He could hear her laughter trailing behind her.
“I love you!” he called to the night.