"John Kessel - The Invisible Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

I fell in love with Robert when I saw him work. He is never a talkative man, but in his workshop he
becomes a silent one, except for the aimless and off-key tunes that he hums, unaware.

He leans over the bench, feeds a long strip of maple through the saw, pumping the treadle steadily with
his foot. He inspects the result, measures it, marks it, and slides it into the miter box. His eyes are quiet.
His lips are closed in an expression that is the faintest prelude to a smile, but not a smile itself. His hands
are precise. He takes up a box saw. He does not hurry, he does not dawdle. A shock of hair falls into his
eyes, he brushes it away, and it falls back. In the mornings I shake sawdust from his pillow.

After we had returned from the church and had eaten our dinner, Robert changed out of his Sunday suit
and went to work on the stair rail in the front hall.

“It's Sunday,” I said, wiping my hands. “The day of rest.”

“But we aren't the sort who regulate our lives by the Bible, are we.”

He did not return my stare. “Would you have me be the kind of woman Jordan Hines prefers?”

He shrugged the canvas strap from his shoulder and set down his long toolbox. “I don't look to Jordan
Hines for my conscience. But some things are wrong. Killing a man in cold blood is wrong.”

“But killing a woman in hot passion is all right. And breaking her arm is not worth notice.”

“Don't put words in my mouth.”

“Henrietta Patterson is a mouse; she wouldn't take a step outside her kitchen without her husband's
leave—more's the pity. Name a man in this town who has been killed.”

“Susannah, can you blame me if I am troubled? This cannot go on much longer before you are found
out.”

“For every woman found out a hundred more will rise. Laura D. Fair was murdered by a mob in Seneca
Falls ten years ago. Did that stop anything?”

He knelt beside the box and took up one of the balusters he had turned on the lathe that week. “I did
not marry Laura D. Fair. At least, I didn't think I was marrying her. I married for love and a family, not
revenge and violence.”

I turned from him and went to the kitchen. He laid down the baluster and followed me. As I stood at the
counter, my back to him, he touched my shoulder.

“I didn't mean it that way,” he said. “If we never have a child, I'll still have you. That's why I'm so
worried. I could not bear to lose you.”

I had not seen my woman's bleeding in more than a month, but I wouldn't get our hopes up only to suffer
another loss. “I won't sit by and watch a woman like Henrietta Patterson pretend to be kicked by a mule
when everyone in town knows it was her drunken husband.” I turned from him and went to our room.
“Susannah!”