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 was a huge and gaudy juke box in the room, but it was disconnected at night when the tabernacle was open, because it interfered with the singing of hymns. The bartender was a massive black man with a completely naked scalp and a high shine and an incredible number of glittering gold teeth which were constantly in evidence, and it turned out that this bartender was no one but Prince Sam himself. The patrons were light and dark, about evenly divided, and they sat at the bar and at tables in a sea of sawdust. The sawdust was shaped to form a narrow path around the end of the bar and through the door into the tabernacle, and there was a big sign with a flaming arrow pointing toward the door, and printed in red block letters below the arrow were the words: THE SAWDUST TRAIL.
“This is obviously an interesting and busy establishment,” Jolly said, “and it is my opinion that it would greatly simplify matters if we were all to order the same thing to drink.”
“I agree, Jolly,” Fran said, “and I am also convinced that we had better keep the drink itself on the simple side, for I have a feeling that Prince Sam would be impatient with such things as martinis and manhattans and similar elaborate mixtures.”
“True,” Jolly said. “Prince Sam, in spite of his passion for gold teeth, is obviously a simple fellow, and I have an idea that he might take it as an insult if we were to order anything more complicated than a highball. I require a little sweetness with my whiskey, and I therefore suggest bourbon in ginger ale.”
“Is bourbon and ginger ale satisfactory to everyone?” Fran asked.
“Hell, no,” Harvey said. “There’s a very popular theory that people who put ginger ale into whiskey drinks ought to be shot. I want soda.”
I asked for soda too, and murmured that I subscribed to the shooting theory. Nobody seemed to hear me.
There were no waiters or waitresses, and it was clearly the custom for people at the tables to go to the bar for their own drinks, so we found a table and sat down, all of us except Sid, and Sid remained at the bar to deliver the order. The preacher behind the partition was exhorting loudly at the moment about the evils of hard liquor, and it was his position that it was the devil’s drink, which was not in my opinion a particularly original position among preachers, and every once in a while the exhortation would be punctuated by someone in the congregation shouting amen or hallelujah, and one penitent kept disturbing the sermon by shouting that he was nothing but a bum and had always been nothing but a bum from an early age but that he had now seen the light and was resolved to do better in the future, and this penitent made such a nuisance of himself that he was finally ejected forcibly from the tabernacle. He returned to the bar and started drinking again, and at that time Sid came over to our table with the five bourbons in ginger ale on a tin tray. He sat down and spread the glasses around, and Fran looked at him sternly.
“Sid,” she said, “you sneaky little bastard, you’re always talking about being a sociable drinker and turning up your snotty nose at honest folk who drink for sensible reasons, and all the time you knew all about this Hallelujah House and have obviously been coming here regularly, because you call Prince Sam by name and are clearly acquainted with him.”
“I come here now and then to study human nature,” Sid said.
“Did you hear that?” Fran appealed to the rest of us. “I have absolutely devoted years of my life to establishing a spirit of confidence and trust between me and this little sneak, and now I discover that he has the effrontery and ingratitude to lie to me in a perfectly brazen manner.” She turned and concentrated on Sid again. “What’s the matter with you, Sid? In what way have I failed you? Why is it that you can’t simply confess that you’ve been an underhanded alcoholic all this time you’ve been trying to act so virtuous and everything?”
“Damn it,” said Sid, “I am not an alcoholic. I come here to study human nature, and take an infrequent drink in the process out of deference to Prince Sam’s business. I am a very serious student of human nature, to tell the truth, and you have simply never understood me.”
“I certainly concede that,” Fran said. “I concede that I have not fully understood you, and I don’t mind admitting that I am positively stunned. I really can’t understand how you could have been a confirmed alcoholic all this time without my even suspecting it.”
Sid gulped some of his drink desperately, and Fran drank some of hers sadly, and the rest of us drank some of ours in our own ways for our own reasons. In the tabernacle, someone banged out a few chords on a piano, and the congregation began to bawl out the words of a hymn.
Jolly contacted me with a knee and said, “I find that quite appealing, Felix, I really do. Don’t you find it appealing?”
“It’s good and loud,” I said.
“The thing about it is,” she said, “it just shows what can be done in the matter of getting along with each other when people only try. I consider Prince Sam truly noble to permit the tabernacle to exist in his back room.”
“He is not only noble but also very shrewd, and I would bet dollars to dimes that this combination is one that results in a fat bank account.”
“Are you being cynical, Felix? I wish you wouldn’t be cynical.”
“I am not being cynical. I am only pointing out that those who have repented and received salvation are apt to have a drink in their rejoicing, and those who have been convinced of their damnation are apt to have several in their despair.”
“Well, I confess that it may be incidentally true, but I can’t accept it as Prince Sam’s calculated purpose. His brow is far too noble for it. I am tremendously impressed by his noble brow. Have you noticed it?”
“I am of the opinion that the nobility of his brow is exaggerated by the baldness of his head.”
“Felix, darling, you depress me. This is because I love you and am vulnerable where you are concerned, and it disturbs me to see the deterioration of your character. I have noticed this deterioration especially in our personal relationship.”
“Is that so? I was under the impression that my character had lately become irreproachable in our relationship.”
“That’s because you are chronically befuddled, Felix, and can’t tell the difference between nobility and simple pig-headedness.”
“Do you feel, perhaps, that I should take turns with Sid?”
“What?”
“Never mind. I concede that I’m a degenerate in order to end this discussion.”
We had by this time finished the first round of drinks, and Sid gathered the glasses and put them on the tin tray and returned to the bar for refills. Fran watched him go and made a tch-ing sound with her tongue against her teeth.
“I absolutely cannot comprehend the monstrous deception of that little devil,” she said. “It is terribly disconcerting to think that you know someone like the palm of your own hand and then to discover suddenly that you have been deceived all along.”