"Zenna Henderson - Pilgrimage2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

"Besides-" the arm was around her again, gently leading her back to the
bench, "you can't want to die and miss out on everything."
"Everything is nothing," Lea gasped, grabbing for the comfort of a well-worn
groove. "It's nothing but gray chalk writing gray words on a gray sky in a
high wind. There's nothing! There's nothing !"
"You must have used that carefully rounded sentence often and often to have
driven yourself such a long way into darkness," the voice said, unsmiling now.
"But you must come back, " you know, back to wanting to live."
"No, no!" Lea moaned, twisting. "Let me go!'"
"I can't." The voice was soft, the hands firm. "The Power sent me by on
purpose. You can't return to the Presence with your life all unspent. But
you're not hearing me, are you? Let me tell you.
"Your name is Lea Holmes. Mine, by the way, is Karen. You left your home in
Clivedale two days ago. You bought a ticket for as far as your money would
reach. You haven't eaten in two days. You're not even quite sure what state
you're in, except the state of utter despair and exhaustion-right?"
"How-how did you know?" Lea felt a long-dead something stir inside her, but
it died again under the flat monotone of her voice. "It doesn't matter.
Nothing matters. You don't know anything about it!" A sick anger fluttered in
her empty stomach. "'You don't know what it's like to have your nose pressed
to a blank wall and still have to walk and walk, day after day, with no way to
get off the treadmill-no way to break through the wall-nothing, nothing,
nothing! Not even an echo! Nothing!"
She snatched herself away from Karen's hands and, in a mad flurry of motion,
scraped her way across the concrete railing and flung herself over into the
darkness.
Endlessly tumbling-endlessly turning-slowly, slowly. Did it take so long to
die? Softly the sand received her.
"You see," Karen said, shifting in the sand to cradle Lea's head on her lap.
"I can't let you do it."
 "But-I-I-jumped!" Lea's hands spatted sideways into the sand, and she looked
up to where the lights of the passing cars ran like sticks along a picket
fence.
"Yes, you did." Karen laughed a warm little laugh. "See, Lea, there is some
wonder left in the world. Not everything is bogged down in hopelessness.
What's that other quote you've been using for an anesthesia?"
Lea turned her head fretfully and sat up. "Leave me alone."
"What was that other quote?" Karen's voice was demanding now.
" 'There is for me no wonder more,' " Lea whispered into her hands, " 'Except
to wonder where my wonder went, And why my wonder all is spent-' " Hot tears
stung her eyes but could not fall. " '-no wonder more-' " The big emptiness
that was always waiting, stretched and stretched, distorting-"No wonder?"
Karen broke the bubble with her tender laughter. "Oh, Lea, if only I had the
time! No wonder, indeed! But I've got to go. The most incredibly wonderful-"
There was a brief silence and the cars shh-ed by overhead, busily, busily.
"Look!" Karen took Lea's hands. "You don't care what happens to you any more,
do you?"
"No!" Lea said dully, but a faint voice murmured protest somewhere behind the
dullness.
"You feel that life is unlivable, don't you?" Karen persisted.