John Woman

Автор: Мосли Уолтер
Год: 2018
Язык: английский
Год: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2841-6
Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза

Электронная книга - «John Woman». Краткое содержание книги:

A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor — while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows. At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself — as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman’s teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past. Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world.

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John reached across the table and touched his mother’s forearm wanting further proof that she existed. The yellow posters, public address, the defeat of Annette Eubanks and Ira Carmody were long-ago dreams.

“How did you get into my apartment?”

“I went to the front gate and asked the nice Mexican guard if he would let me in.”

“Hopi,” John said.

“What?”

“Hototo is a Hopi Indian.”

“A real Indian? It’s a wonder out in the west isn’t it? You know me and Filo walk down to the beach every day — every day, even in the rain.”

“What happened to you, mom? You disappeared. I went to your house and you were gone.”

If he could have seen his face the way his mother saw it CC would have observed the pain embedded in his eyes. If he had seen through her heart he would have felt the hurt it brought her.

Lucia took one of his hands in both of hers and peered deeply into their shared ache.

“I love you, baby,” she said. “I might not have been a good mother but I love you, always have.”

“But you didn’t even know about when dad died.”

“I knew, honey. I was there when you buried him.”

“No you weren’t. I put out a chair but you never came. Violet Breen came, France Bickman came but you weren’t there.”

“I was.”

“No.”

“Listen to me, CC. When I heard about Herman I came back to New York. Filo went with me even though he might have been arrested or killed. Your father broke my heart when he kicked me out. I was willing to come take care of both of you. I knew he couldn’t work, that you were doing his job. I was proud of you but what could I do? I knew he’d’a never changed his mind. And if I took you away it would have killed him.”

“You were saying something about the funeral,” John said. Looking at Lucia he felt that she was moving away: that familiar distance.

She must have intuited this feeling because she squeezed his hand very hard. With the pain this distance was quashed.

“I was there but I stayed across the street. I loved Herman, I did, but he was right — I betrayed him. I abandoned you because he needed you more than I did. So when a stool pigeon in Filo’s crew fingered him for the cops I decided that at least I could do something for somebody. I ran with him, stuck by his side through reconstructive surgery, got a job at a movie studio as a makeup artist while he reorganized himself. I’ve tried to be a good woman... I have been.”

“If you were there why didn’t you say anything to me after the funeral?”

“I went to your father’s house and waited,” she said. “But you never came home. I waited three days then went to see France at the Arbuckle. He said your father left you some money and you had probably gone out to start a new life.”

John pulled his hand away but Lucia did not fade.

“Can you forgive me?” she pleaded.

“If I ever said the slightest thing wrong you’d kick me out the house,” he said. “I never wanted dad to know so I slept on the floor of the projection room.”

“I was wrong. Your father and you were the best things that ever happened to me but my heart had a mind of its own. Red wine and bad men were my downfall.”

After long minutes of silence he said, “I can probably get us double-decker apartments and we could live together for a while.”

“All right, CC, whatever you say.”

“Will your husband get angry at you for not coming home?”

“Filo understands me, baby. He wants me to be happy.”

The next couple of months were nearly idyllic for young Dr. John Woman. With the help of President Luckfeld and Dean James he and his mother moved into a full family unit in faculty housing. He occupied the top apartment.

Carlinda stopped coming by. He saw her in class but she avoided eye contact and spoke to him only to ask questions about his lectures. Her papers were excellent. She had come up with a powerful theory about the interplay between dialectics, technology and the interpretation of historical events. It was her notion that the present was always struggling with the past because of technology’s impact on understanding. People in the now see the past through an ever-changing, never-repeating kaleidoscope of technological experience, she wrote. How can we hope to understand what went before, even in our own nation and language group, if the ability to perceive and empathize has been altered through technology and its attendant technique?

Attached to one of these papers was a handwritten note which read:

John

I have reconciled with Arnold. The fever is over. It’s better this way.

The words rang true.

He had stopped going to see Senta. His sexual drive, he came to believe, had been in response to loneliness and isolation. Now that he had coffee with his mother every morning he no longer felt alone.

In the evenings Lucia, whose new name was Rosa Pitkin, made dinner for John and sometimes guests from the school administration and history department.

President Luckfeld and his Panamanian wife, Marte, ate with them four times in as many weeks.

“You are very lucky to have your mother in your life,” blue-eyed tawny-skinned Marte said one evening when Lucia had made lasagna filled with linguica and shiitake mushrooms. “Most Americans, I find, run away from their blood and then wonder why they’re unhappy.”

“He’s a perfect son,” Lucia agreed. “I don’t deserve him.”

John found that he spoke less and concentrated even more on his deconstructions of the interpretations of what went before.

The history department vacated his ouster then voted him department chair when Annette Eubanks suddenly decided to step down. Ira Carmody was his opponent receiving only three votes.

On the evening after John was elected chair he took his mother to a restaurant called the Country Road Diner located on the outskirts of Parsonsville. It was an old place patronized mainly by old-time locals. John liked to think that the Brother of George ate there, that maybe they had sat side by side at the counter now and then.

That evening John and his mom sat in a corner booth served by Esther Simmons, whose mother’s family had lived in the county for six generations; her father’s people had been there even longer.

John ordered chicken-fried steak while his mother had country beef stew cooked in a red wine sauce. Lucia wore a thick silver necklace and rose gold earrings studded with miner’s diamonds.

“My son the college man,” Lucia said raising her third goblet of wine. “Here I barely made it out of high school, your father never saw the inside of a classroom and you are the boss of a department... you could be university president one day.”

“Yeah,” he intoned, “I’m a real success story.”

Ordering her fourth glass of wine she touched the baby finger of her son’s left hand.

“You don’t think I get the news from home, CC?”

He noticed the concern in her face.

“I read about the old silent theater and the body and who they’re looking for,” she said.

“So you think I did it?”

“I know it.”

“How?”

“Because you were the bravest man I ever knew when you were no more than ten. Because most men need to be stronger or better armed to feel brave but you had your father’s courage.”

“The bravery that women have in a world dominated by men,” John said.

“Just like that,” Lucia agreed, slurring her words slightly. “But better because you wouldn’t hide behind anybody. And if that Chapman Lorraine came in the projection room and found you, you wouldn’t have no choice but to kill him; either that or have you and your father throw’d out on the street. I know that as sure I’m breathing.”

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