The Brass Bed
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 1956
- Язык: английский
- Год: Lion Books
- Жанр: Романы для взрослых
Электронная книга - «The Brass Bed». Краткое содержание книги:
...and the root of it all lay hidden in the secret of THE BRASS BED.
“There you are, Felix,” Fran said. “Although you are supposed to be Harvey’s friend, you are depriving him of a simple pleasure because of a perfectly ridiculous personal feeling. What kind of friend is that, I’d like to know.”
“Would it give you pleasure to go?” I said to Harvey.
“It truly would,” he said. “In fact, I see the prospect of an exciting time. I have not shaved since morning, and if the celebration extends itself sufficiently there’s a chance I may be able to produce discernible whiskers before it’s over.”
“Oh, say,” Fran said, “that would be exciting! Felix, you are simply obligated to come, and that’s all there is to it.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll come in order to give pleasure to Harvey, but first I must have another drink.”
“I’m agreeable to that,” Harvey said. “I wouldn’t at all object to another drink myself.”
“I confess that I wouldn’t, either,” Fran said. “We’ll all have one together to prepare ourselves for others that will come later.”
We had the drink and then went over to the table where Jolly was sitting with Sid. Jolly was wearing a black dress that was cut quite low between her small breasts, and she looked very young and a little tired, and this appearance of youngness and tiredness was somehow paradoxical, or at least unusual, and made her strongly appealing.
Sid stood up and made a business of shaking hands. He seemed to have forgotten all about the last thing I’d said to him the morning we last saw each other at Jolly’s.
“How are you, Felix,” he said.
“I’m very lonely,” I said, “and longing for love and comfort.”
“They’re actually celebrating,” Fran said.
Sid scowled briefly at Fran’s remark, and then he signaled a waiter to bring two more chairs, which the waiter did, and we sat down. While the waiter was there, everyone ordered a drink, and Harvey started telling how he was a country boy and was going back to the farm to eat watermelons. I was sitting next to Jolly, and she put one of her knees against one of mine and held it there.
“Isn’t it odd,” she said, “how we just happened to come here the same night and all, especially when neither of us hardly ever comes here at all?”
“It is,” I said. “It’s destiny or something.”
Fran was talking with Harvey, and now she looked at him with an incredulous expression.
“Naked?” she said. “Actually naked?”
“Certainly naked,” Harvey said. “It’s only a lousy little creek with no one around for miles.”
“Nevertheless,” Fran said, “I find it incredible and fascinating that a grown man would swim in anything whatever with absolutely nothing on.” She turned to me. “Tell the truth, Felix. Have you ever swum naked in a creek?”
“As a boy,” I said, “I regularly swam naked in a creek, and as a man I have done it off and on as the opportunities presented themselves.”
“It’s a common practice,” Harvey said.
Sid observed that the conversation was silly, and that started an argument between him and Fran. As usual.
“I suggest we all have another drink,” I said.
“That’s a good idea,” Jolly said. “Let’s all have another drink, as Felix suggests, and then go somewhere else where it’s a little more exciting. I must say that I find Sylvester’s quite dull and disappointing. It’s overrated, that’s what it is.”
“Everyone knows that,” Fran said. “Everyone knows it’s overrated, but everyone keeps coming here just the same. Isn’t that odd?”
“It’s a habit,” Harvey said. “People are creatures of habit.”
Sid had got the attention of a waiter, and everyone began saying that he would have the same as before, and eventually the waiter got it straight as to what it was that everyone had had.
“Does everyone consent to going somewhere else where it is more exciting?” Jolly asked.
“Well,” Harvey said, “I was rather counting on catching Gloria Finch in a late act.”
“Don’t bother, Harvey,” Jolly said. “Gloria Finch is a cow.”
“Is that so?” Harvey said. “She doesn’t look like a cow in her pictures.”
“Her pictures are deceptive. It’s the way they use lights and things. It’s downright criminal the way they use lights and things to make women like Gloria Finch look like they aren’t cows.”
“Is it true that she sometimes improvises on the act in the way of discarding articles of clothing?”
“I understand that it’s true, but I maintain that it is no particular pleasure to see a cow without clothing.”
“That would depend on the cow,” Harvey said, “and I still think it might be interesting to see it.”
“Oh, come on, Harvey,” Fran said, “give it up. Perhaps I can arrange something for you a little later in the evening.”
“In that case,” Harvey said, “I’ll give it up.”
“Well, I’ll be God-damned,” Sid said.
Fran looked at him and started to say something, but at that moment the waiter brought the drinks, and everyone started drinking instead of talking.
“Since it’s agreed that we will go somewhere else,” Jolly said after a while, “it is now necessary to decide where it will be. Does anyone have an idea?”
“I have an idea,” Sid said.
Fran lowered her glass and stared at him for a moment with wide eyes.
“Really, Sid? Is it actually true that you have an idea?”
“I do,” Sid said with dignity. “It is my idea that we should go to Prince Sam’s Hallelujah House.”
“Hallelujah House?”
“That’s what it’s called. The reason it’s called that is because it’s a bar in front and a kind of tabernacle in back. There’s a preacher there who keeps exhorting about the evils of drink, and the thing to do is to drink in the front part and then go back and listen to the preacher, and after the preacher has worked up a good sweat sending you to hell for drinking, it becomes a kind of moral obligation to go back and drink some more in the front room so that he can have another whack at you, and all in all this keeps going on and on, and it’s very good for business. Besides the money he takes up in collections, it’s reported that the preacher gets a weekly salary from the till at the bar.”
“Sid,” Fran said, “you’re drunk on sociable drinks, and there isn’t a word of truth in you.”
“It’s true,” Sid said. “It’s true, and I can take you there to prove it.”
“Yes,” Harvey said, “it’s definitely true. I remember hearing of the place myself, now that Sid has mentioned it, and I admit that I am anxious to go.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Fran said. “Imagine old Sid knowing about a place like that.”
“I propose that we leave for the Hallelujah House immediately,” Jolly said. “Do you have your car, Felix?”
“No. We’re in Harvey’s.”
“Well, anyhow, we will have to divide into two groups, and Sid will have to go in the first car in order to guide us.”
“I’ll go with Sid and Fran,” Harvey said, “and Jolly and Felix can follow in my car.”
We finished the drinks and went outside and across the street to the garage where we had left the cars. Jolly and Fran and Sid had come in the Caddy that had been Kirby’s and was now Jolly’s, and Fran and Sid and Harvey got into it. Jolly sat very close to me in the front seat of Harvey’s old crate, and we followed the shining Caddy out into the country to the place that Sid had told us about.
15
It was a big wooden building that looked like a barn, except that the roof wasn’t hipped as a barn’s usually is, and all around it was a gravel parking area with a lot of cars parked in it. We stopped our own among the others and got out and went inside, and the interior was divided almost equally by a partition into the front room, which was the bar, and the back room, which was what they called the tabernacle. The bar ran along the partition side of the front room, and apparently the pulpit in the back room was also right against the partition, and sometimes when the preacher was going good and loud, it was necessary to bellow at the bartender in order to make him understand what it was you wanted. The entrance to the tabernacle was at the right end of the bar as you faced it, and this arrangement was deliberately contrived so that those at the bar could catch a few words of exhortation if they cared to listen and slip easily around behind the partition to be personally threatened with hell’s fire if the spirit moved them.