"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

didn't feel I had the intellect or drive to become a professional astronomer—there were
only two or three women so employed in the whole country—but I did aspire to teach.
(Professor Sarah Whiting was my mentor there, an intense, energetic woman who
wanted more for me than I wanted for myself. The year I graduated, she found her true
protegee in Annie Jump Cannon, who wound up, at Harvard, becoming the first famous
woman astronomer in America. I met Annie some years later, and she confided that her
whole career pivoted on a fluke of fate: she was getting through Harvard working as a
maid, when an exasperated astronomer yelled at his assistant, "My maid could do a better
job than that!" She could indeed, and she got the job.)
Insofar as I could divine my future, I saw a period of teaching in a school for girls
somewhere in New England, eventually to meet a man whom I could tolerate or even
love, and settle into the roles of wife and mother. At Wellesley I fell into church work,
teaching Bible class to children aged six through nine, and I adored it, and assumed that
would continue as well. Of course the only reliable thing that one can say about one's
future is that it will not turn out the way you planned it. People who have no interest in
your future pass through your life and change it forever.
In my case it was nothing so direct and dramatic as Annie Jump Cannon's
exasperated astronomer. I was asked—ordered—to go to dinner and the opera.
Meeting the monster.

It happened to be St. Valentine's Day, and most of the women in my dormitory were
getting ready for a ball at Harvard. The house-mistress came knocking on doors, totally
flustered, asking whether anyone was free—her brother was in Boston on business, and
he needed a companion. He'd accepted an invitation to dinner and the opera with two
associates and their wives, and didn't want to be a fifth wheel, odd man out; whatever it
was we said in those days. I was the only one who had no plans for the evening, so there
was no room for discussion: I was "it."
I didn't much like the housemistress, a prissy stern woman; nor was I in any mood
to be sociable, cross with my flux just starting—
but I agreed sweetly, privately promising myself that I would give her brother an
engagement he would not soon forget.
The evening began impressively. When I came down I found not the usual hired
cab, but a well-appointed Brewster coach, complete with footman. (That would be like a
liveried driver in a Cadillac today.) It was even warm inside, with a brazier.
It was a swift and comfortable ride into the city, but I held on to my resolve to
make this Mr. Tolliver pay dearly for taking me away from my studies. Warned by the
ostentatious coach that he would be wealthy and not modest, I was not surprised when we
pulled up at the Parker House.
A servant led me to a lounge where the great man was waiting with his guests. I
was not immediately impressed. Edward Tolliver was a tall, powerful-looking man,
coarse-featured and loud. He was cordial but stiff with me and the other women; hearty
with the men.
At dinner I was only as ladylike as I had to be, offering opinions more freely than
I normally would do, but he actually seemed to like that, and was amused by my
unladylike appetite. I was starving, hours past my normal suppertime, and had a large
Porterhouse steak and plenty of claret with it—actually one of the most enjoyable meals
I'd ever been served. And one of the best I would ever have, as a human.
He was nine years older than me, too young to have fought in the war. He had a
law degree from Harvard but practiced in Philadelphia, so we did have that in common,
as well as Southern origins, which surprised both of us. Neither of us retained much of