"Avram Davidson - The Golem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

The Golem
by Avram Davidson


The grey-faced person came along the street where old Mr. and Mrs. Gumbeiner lived. It was afternoon,
it was autumn, the sun was warm and soothing to their ancient bones. Anyone who attended the movies
in the twenties or the early thirties has seen that street a thousand times. Past these bungalows with their
half-double roofs Edmund Lowe walked arm-in-arm with Leatrice Joy and Harold Lloyd was chased by
Chinamen waving hatchets. Under these squamous palm trees Laurel kicked Hardy and Woolsey beat
Wheeler upon the head with a codfish. Across these pocket-handkerchief-sized lawns the juveniles of the
Our Gang comedies pursued one another and were pursued by angry fat men in golf knickers. On this
same street—or perhaps on some other one of five hundred streets exactly like it.

Mrs. Gumbeiner indicated the grey-faced person to her husband.

"You think maybe he's got something the matter?" she asked. "He walks kind of funny, to me."

"Walks like a golem,," Mr. Gumbeiner said indifferently.

The old woman was nettled.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "I think he walks like your cousin Mendel."

The old man pursed his mouth angrily and chewed on his pipestem. The grey-faced person turned up the
concrete path, walked up the steps to the porch, sat down in a chair. Old Mr. Gumbeiner ignored him.
His wife stared at the stranger.

"Man comes in without a hello, goodbye, or howareyou, sits himself down, and right away he's at home
… The chair is comfortable?" she asked. "Would you like maybe a glass of tea?"

She turned to her husband.

"Say something, Gumbeiner!" she demanded. "What are you, made of wood?"

The old man smiled a slow, wicked, triumphant smile.

"Why should I say anything?" he asked the air. "Who am I? Nothing, that's who."

The stranger spoke. His voice was harsh and monotonous.

"When you learn who—or, rather, what—I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror." He bared
porcelain teeth.

"Never mind about my bones!" the old woman cried. "You've got a lot of nerve talking about my
bones!"

"You will quake with fear," said the stranger. Old Mrs. Gumbeiner said that she hoped he would live so
long. She turned to her husband once again.

"Gumbeiner, when are you going to mow the lawn?"