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

When I find her (or should I say, when she lets herself be found) there's such a look of … well, it's
complicated, disdain, but if that were all I wouldn't do it. There's relief, too. You'd think I'd find finding
her worth it for that look, and I might if it wasn't for my arthritis. I've been using a cane lately. (Josephine
gets lost in any kind of weather. Thank God tonight it's clear.)

You'd think by now the people in the neighborhood would bring her back when she strays, but they
don't. They're afraid of her. Her hair is wild, the look in her eyes is wild and she makes nasty comments
on their noses. She doesn't dress like anybody else. So many scarves you can't tell if she has a dress on
under them or not. That must unnerve them. And the dress, which is under them, is more like a scarf than
a dress. Everything she wears is like that, and it's always pinkish or pumpkin colored or baby blue. She
always wears big dangly glittery earrings.



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I step out on the porch. I admire the night for a few minutes as I always do. I hobble down the front
steps. Our mansion has a few acres around it and trees so you can think yourself in the country, but no
sooner out the gate and you're in town.

Sometimes I think Josephine is hiding just around the corner, watching me try to find her right from the
start. Probably wondering which direction I'll look in first. Loving how my shirt tail's out, my belt
unbuckled still. (I came straight from my bed.) Loving, especially, my big sigh.

I smooth at my mustache. I had no time to wax it and it's getting in my mouth. I can feel it's as draggled
as the rest of me.

First I check the bushes on each side of the stairs to see if she's crouching there. She can hold as still as a
frightened fawn.

I always bow when I find her. I do that because noblesse oblige. I wear my old boater just so I can take
it off to Josephine. If ever she can be found smiling (that little I've-got-you-now smile) it's because of me.

I limp off, one helpless person in search of another equally inept.

Poor Josephine, here she is, in town somewhere, but I know yearning to be in a forest instead. She often
says so.



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Once a young person came knocking on our door asking for Great Aunt Josephine. (Just like Josephine,
her eyebrows were so much the same color as her freckles they might as well not have been there.) Our
Administrator lied. He said, nobody here by that name. She said she had papers. But he said the papers