"Carol Emshwiller - Josephine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

Josephine
by Carol Emshwiller
Top of list … always at the top of list, rain or shine, day or night: Find Josephine. Nothing can be done
until she's back here at the Old Folks Home where she belongs. Talent night she's our main attraction.
We couldn't do much without her. She wobbles on her slack wire but she hasn't fallen yet. The ceiling is
so high she can do the slack wire act in there in the living room though she has to watch out for the
chandelier. She's not much higher than four or five feet up. When she sings she tinkles out the music on a
toy xylophone. Once she brought her wind chimes down to the living room, put them in front of a fan and
sang to that.

We pretend not to see how wobbly she is. Everybody else is worse. She's the only one with the courage
to dance and sing no matter what. Or maybe it's not courage, just innocence.

Because of Josephine we often have townspeople visiting our performances. We don't know if they
come to admire her or to laugh … at her and at us.

I'm the MC, stage manager, entertainment committee. I'm less important than those who perform. I
suppose I do have some poise, though I've been told I rock from foot to foot. Why would the
Administrator pick a man like me for finding Josephine? Why pick somebody who has a limp?

No, I am the perfect person to send off to find her. Somebody she can have a good laugh at. She'll trip
me and I'll be looking up from the sidewalk, right into her greenish tan eyes. There she'll be, found at last,
but she'll run off somewhere else before I can get up and hobble after her.



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We live in a grand, though ancient mansion. It was the summer house of millionaires. They donated it to
the town for us old people. The living room and dining room are often closed off—too hard to heat.

The breakfast room is the room everyone loves best and spends the most time in. It has windows on
three sides with window seats under them. Five tables—enough for all of us. But I'm hardly ever in this
room except to eat, nor is Josephine. Too many card games and too much Bingo.

Josephine seldom comes out of her room except to eat and on show-and-tell night. (That's the only time
we open the living room and let the heat come up.) Or she comes out to run away. She's always lost. If
not right now then she would be in another minute.



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I wish I wouldn't have to be the one to find her. For the sake of the doing of a good deed, I do it.

She often says, "If not for you finding me, I'd not bother getting lost in the first place." I know that's true.