"Knight, Damon - Watching Matthew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

Du bist verrьckt, mein Kind.
Du mus' fahren nach Berlin,
Wo die Verrьckten sind.
La la, la la, la. Here's the high school, a crouching monster with two mouths like doorways, one open, one shut. Yellow buses are unloading students from the Valley, most of them Nisei. Your old classmate Roku is not among them; he lives in town now, where his father has a store. Anyhow, he hangs around with the lettermen.
Three juniors are huddled on the lawn near the entrance. One of them, Red Nichols, says "Hi, Brain," then seizes his own pants-leg, pulls it tight, and farts. The others laugh.
You go inside to your locker. Right 17, left 31, right 10. The multiple slamming of lockers reminds you of the movie last Saturday at the Rialto, when the vast German dreadnought echoed to the tread of marching men. A sudden explosion. White-uniformed officers are racing past. "Spurlos versenkt!" Red Nichols fails in his sailor suit, punctured by flying shrapnel. Black blood pours from his nose and mouth. He holds his arms up in mute appeal, but you step over him and follow the crowd into American History.
Mr. Mueller is talking about England at the time of the American Revolution. "And a loaf of bread cost only two dee."
You raise your hand. "The d is for denarius. It's pronounced 'pence.'"
Mueller smiles with pleasure. "Well, I never heard that before."
Later somebody passes you a note. "Draconian meeting changed to eleven o'clock." The Draconian is the school magazine; it comes out twice a year. At eleven you get an excuse and a dirty look from Mr. Phillips. You're failing algebra, not doing the homework, which means to Phillips that you're lazy, but those strings of symbols are Chinese to you. You made a cartoon about that for the school newspaper, The Guide; it did not amuse Phillips, to whom algebra is as clear as the alphabet.
The Draconian staff was hand-picked by Miss Fessenden, and that's why you are on it, although Dick Mayfield wishes you weren't. He looks annoyed when he sees you come in. Dick is a big square-headed blond in a letterman's sweater that has three stripes and two pins. The reason he is the editor is that he likes to run things.
You sit down next to Margaret Hicks, across from Heather Boyd and Virginia Copeland, both well-groomed seniors in pastel sweater sets and pearls.
"Well, I see we're all here," says Dick, "so let's get started. Heather, do we have any new stuff to read?"
"No."
"Okay. That's actually good, because where we stand now, we have to turn in the whole magazine by next Friday, or the printer can't do it before graduation week. That right, Heather?'
"Yes."
"And, we only have sixteen pages to fill, and, what, twenty-two pages of stuff that we already decided we more or less like, not counting the contents page and my introduction that I haven't written yet."
"How long will the introduction be?" Virginia asks.
"Well, it depends what else is in the magazine, doesn't it? Probably a page and a half, but I could keep it down to one page, easy. So, what the heck, call it one page for the introduction and one for the contents page, that means there's room for fourteen pages of other stuff. So we're eight pages over. You got the stories, Heather?" "No, I thought you had them."
"Oh, sorry." Dick reaches behind him, stretches easily to the bookshelf and brings back a manila folder. He opens it on the table. "Okay, here," he says, holding up a manuscript you recognize as your own. He dangles it from one comer. "This thing I never did like, and it's seven pages long, so there's the problem practically solved. Any objections?"
"What didn't you like, Dick?" Margaret asks.
"It's crazy. Little naked people walking around on a star?" You clear your throat. "Jupiter isn't a star."
He gives you a can't-believe-this look. "It isn't? What is it then?"
"It's a planet."
Dick looks at the ceiling. Virginia says, "I kind of liked the little Jupiterians. I thought they were cute."
After a moment Dick tosses the typescript onto the middle of the table and folds his arms. "Okay, tell me what you want to do." Looked at the right way, he's wearing a hangman's noose that pushes his head to one side; he is dangling from a gibbet, cross-eyed, and his tongue is out.
"Let's all copy down the names of the stories and poems and how many pages they are, and then mark the ones we think we should leave out," Virginia says.
"Okay, fine, do it." Dick hands the list to Virginia, who begins reading the titles aloud. You are so frozen with resentment that you put a mark beside your own story. Then the worst of the three poems, for a total of eight pages. But when Virginia tallies the votes, your story has survived. Missing are the two next-longest stories and one of the poems. That leaves two stories and two poems, and Dick's introduction. It will be a sad little issue, just what everybody expects of The Draconian, but you are feeling a curious mixture of elation and guilt. Now your story will be part of the permanent record, where any scholar can dig it up and quote it indulgently when he writes his biography of you. Forty years ahead, when Dick Mayfield is still in jail for wife-beating and mopery.
At noon you take your lunch box out the back way to the slope above the bleachers, where if you lie flat in the grass you can't be seen from the school above or the bleachers below. Through your mucosa I smell the cut grass, and I sample the sandwich while you eat it: white bread not quite stale, greasy margarine, lettuce, spiced baloney almost overripe.
For the hard-boiled egg you have salt and pepper shakers borrowed from the kitchen; Father would not approve if he knew, but he doesn't, because you always put them back. The egg yolk is blue-green outside, and you're thinking of a story you will never write, about a scientist who takes his vat-grown superchildren to another world, an empty blue-green world where they grow up wise and strong, but so godlike in intelligence that they can no longer be bothered talking to their creator. The title you are thinking of is "Promised Land."
Then half a pickle, the emerald of vegetables.

IN THE AFTERNOON you get out of class again to work on the school paper. The Guide is put to bed on Tuesday, folded and mimeographed on Wednesday, distributed on Thursday. You type a stencil from a layout pasted up by Margaret. The stencil is a sandwich of backing sheet, cushion sheet (like angels' toilet paper), and the blue waxy stencil itself on top. The type bar striking the stencil pushes the wax aside, leaving an impression through which the ink can ooze. When you type the wrong letter, you paint over it with correction fluid, wait for the fluid to dry, then type the right letter.
Fred Furlong, the editor, takes no part in these work sessions and is rarely seen in the Guide office, but today he looks in. "Miriam here?" Miriam Arnesen, the girls' sports editor, a bovine blonde, is Fred's girlfriend.
"Haven't seen her."
Fred comes farther into the room, smiling. He is a good-looking boy, dark-haired, wearing a beige cashmere sweater. "Matt, I hear you've got a good story coming up in the Draconian. Congratulations."
"Thanks."
"We ought to talk sometime. You want to come over after school today?"
"Uh, sure."
"Here's the address." He hands you a card. "See you later." He waves and is gone.
You have a feeling something is happening that you don't understand. Fred is out of your class in two senses: he is a senior, two years ahead of you, and his family is one of the richest in Dog River. You have a box Brownie; Fred has a movie camera.
You go back to your typing, make two errors side by side, correct them badly. The center pops out of an o; the stencil is mined. You start another.
Miriam Arnesen comes in and deposits something in the wire basket. She is large and pink, with Valkyrie braids and pale eyelashes. "Have you seen Fred?" she asks.
"Yes, about half an hour ago. He was looking for you."
Her smile is slow and placid. "Oh, well, he'll find me."
Suddenly you wonder: what if Fred gave you a false address, so that he and all his friends can laugh at you tomorrow? Your heart is thudding. "Miriam, do you know where Fred lives?"
"Sure."
"What's the address?"
"One ten Churchill. Why?"
"He asked me over there after school."