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

He did grudgingly wait. We were married right after my graduation, in the largest
Episcopalian church in Philadelphia. There were hundreds in attendance, though not a
dozen on my side of the aisle. Most of them were "codfish aristocracy," people who had
actually made money rather than being born into it. (Edward was not Episcopalian, or
anything else. The church was chosen for status and size.)
There were so many flowers that I nearly choked on their cloying ambience. I
managed not to sneeze until we were outside the church.
In retrospect I suppose it was vulgar and dishonest, if honesty mandated mutual
love and respect before holy matrimony. I did love Edward in a naive, schoolgirl way,
and Edward had reached an age and station where not having a wife and family was
considered peculiar. He set out to find an upper-class woman who was both beautiful and
educated. That my "aristocratic" family was a thousand miles away and destitute was a
real advantage to a man who wanted absolute control over his life, and especially over his
wife.
His unspeakable brutality.

Our bridal trip was to the New Jersey shore, which could be beautiful when the wind and
tide cooperated. Otherwise, the detritus of New York City befouled the beaches. It was
too cool for bathing, which I remember as a major physical disappointment—my nuptial
duties, fulfilled frequently and with no patience, left me in a state that Edward laughingly
called "saddle-sore."
I was immediately with child, but lost the little one, my only girl, in four months'
time. My third and fourth pregnancies also ended in miscarriages. It would be fifty years
before medical science Identified the Rh factor, but evidently that was our problem.
Edward blamed it on some female weakness, and I was poked at and peered inside by
specialists in New York and Boston as well as Philadelphia.
My second baby was small, two months premature, but he survived. Daniel was a
charming infant, naturally well-tempered, easily amused and amusing. After a slow start,
he grew fast, and by two was big and strong for his age.
When it became clear that he had a son and heir, Edward stopped having sexual
relations with me, at least of a kind that could result in pregnancy. What he did was
painful and degrading, and I would think a sin, for its unnaturalness. But he said it was
for my own sake, and there was nothing in the Bible about it, unless it were men done
with men.
He only came to me about once a month. He "worked late" often, though, and
gossips told me he was often seen down by Drury Lane at night, an area full of
prostitutes. In 1890 I found out that he had been supporting a mistress for years, keeping
her on the firm's books as an apprentice.
When I confronted him with this, he beat me so soundly that I lost a tooth. I
should have left him then. He apologized, weeping, for his "nature," and bought me a
ruby necklace. We made up an excuse about a carriage accident, and a dentist crafted me
a replacement tooth of porcelain.
I looked back through my diaries and found that he had beaten me fifteen times in
ten years, badly enough for me to record it. I went so far as to talk to my minister about
it, although of course I left out the sexual details.
He was a kindly man, and offered to talk to Edward, but I thought that would
certainly make things worse. He quoted scripture to me, which I already knew, about a
woman's place and obligations.
It was clear in my mind that the church and its ministers were fallible, and I still
might have left him if it were just me. But Daniel loved him madly as a child, in spite of