"Henry Kuttner & CL Moore - Vintage Season" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

He saw lovely women laugh and shake their curls, and the laughter shriek into hysteria and the hysteria into music. He saw one man’s face, over and over—a long, dark, saturnine face, deeply lined, sorrowful, the face of a powerful man wise in worldliness, urbane—and helpless. That face was for awhile a recurring motif, always more tortured, more helpless than before.

The music broke off in the midst of a rising glide. The mist vanished and the room reappeared before him. The anguished dark face for an instant seemed to Oliver printed everywhere he looked,
like after-vision on the eyelids. He knew that face. He had seen it before, not often, but he should know its name— “Oliver, Oliver—” Kleph’s sweet voice came out of a fog at him.
He was leaning dizzily against the doorpost looking down into her eyes. She, too, had that dazed blankness he must show on his own face. The power of the dreadful symphony still held them both. But even in this confused moment Oliver saw that Kieph had been enjoying the experience.
He felt sickened to the depths of his mind, dizzy with sickness and revulsion because of the superimposing of human miseries he had just beheld. But Kleph—only appreciation showed upon her face. To her it had been magnificence, and magnificence only.
Irrelevantly Oliver remembered the nauseating candies she had enjoyed, the nauseating odors of strange food that drifted sometimes through the hail from her room.
What was it she had said downstairs a little while ago? Connoisseur, that was it. Only a connoisseur could appreciate work as—as advanced—as the work of someone called Cenbe.
A whiff of intoxicating sweetness curled past Oliver’s face. Something cool and smooth was pressed into his hand.
“Oh, Oliver, I am so sorry,” Kleph’s voice murmured contritely. “Here, drink the euphoriac and you wifi feel better. Please drink!”
The familiar fragrance of the hot sweet tea was on his tongue before he knew he had complied. Its relaxing fumes floated up through his brain and in a moment or two the world felt stable around him again. The room was as it had always been. And Kieph— Her eyes were very bright. Sympathy showed in them for him, but for herself she was still brimmed with the high elation of what she had just been experiencing.
“Come and sit down,” she said gently, tugging at his arm. “I am so
sorry—I should not have played that over, where you could hear it.
I have no excuse, really. It was only that I forgot what the effect
might be on one who had never heard Cenbe’s symphonies before.
I was so impatient to see what he had done with. . . with his new
subject. I am so very sorry, Oliver!”
“What was it?” His voice sounded steadier than he had expected. The tea was responsible for that. He sipped again, glad of the consoling euphoria its fragrance brought.
“A . . . a composite interpretation of . . . oh, Oliver, you know I must not answer questions!”
“But—”
“No—drink your tea and forget what it was you saw. Think of other things. Here, we will have music—another kind of music, something gay—”
She reached for the wall beside the window, and as before, Oliver saw the broad framed picture of blue water above the bed ripple and grow pale. Through it another scene began to dawn like shapes rising beneath the surface of the sea.
He had a glimpse of a dark-curtained stage upon which a man in a tight dark tunic and hose moved with a restless, sidelong pace, his hands and face starthngly pale against the black about him. He limped; he had a crooked back and he spoke familiar lines. Oliver had seen John Barryrnore once as the crook-backed Richard, and it seemed vaguely outrageous to him that any other actor should essay that difficult part. This one he had never seen before, but the man had a fascinatingly smooth manner and his interpretation of the Plantagenet king was quite new and something Shakespeare probably never dreamed of.
“No,” Kleph said, “not this. Nothing gloomy.” And she put out her hand again. The nameless new Richard faded and there was a swirl of changing pictures and changing voices, all blurred together, before the scene steadied upon a stageful of dancers in pastel ballet skirts, drifting effortlessly through some complicated pattern of motion. The music that went with it was light and effortless too. The room filled up with the clear, floating melody.
Oliver set down his cup. He felt much surer of himself now, and he thought the euphoriac had done all it could for him. He didn’t want to blur again mentally. There were things he meant to learn about. Now. He considered how to begin.
Kleph was watching him. “That Hoffia,” she said suddenly. “She wants to buy the house?”
Oliver nodded. “She’s offering a lot of money. Sue’s going to be awfully disappointed if—” He hesitated. Perhaps, after all, Sue would not be disappointed. He remembered the little silver cube with the enigmatic function and he wondered if he should mention it to Kieph. But the euphoriac had not reached that level of his brain, and he remembered his duty to Sue and was silent.
Kleph shook her head, her eyes upon his warm with—was it sympathy?
“Believe me,” she said, “you wifi not find that—important—after all. I promise you, Oliver.”
He stared at her. “I wish you’d explain.”
Kleph laughed on a note more sorrowful than amused. But it occurred to Oliver suddenly that there was no longer condescension in her voice. Imperceptibly that air of delicate amusement had vanished from her manner toward him. The cool detachment that stifi marked Omerie’s attitude, and Klia’s, was not in Kleph’s any more. It was a subtlety he did not think she could assume. It had to come spontaneously or not at all. And for no reason he was willing to examine, it became suddenly very important to Oliver that Kleph should not condescend to him, that she should feel toward hini as he felt toward her. He would not think of it.
He looked down at his cup, rose-quartz, exhaling a thin plume of steam from its crescent-slit opening. This time, he thought, maybe he could make the tea work for him. For he remembered how it loosened the tongue, and there was a great deal he needed to know. The idea that had come to him on the porch in the instant of silent rivalry between Kleph and Sue seemed now too fantastic to entertain. But some answer there must be.

Kleph herself gave him the opening.
“I must not take too much euphoriac this afternoon,” she said, smiling at him over her pink cup. “It will make me drowsy, and we are going out this evening with friends.”
“More friends?” Oliver asked. “From your country?”
Kieph nodded. “Very dear friends we have expected all this week.”
“I wish you’d tell me,” Oliver said bluntly, “where it is you come from. It isn’t from here. Your culture is too different from ours— even your names—” He broke off as Kleph shook her head.
“I wish I could tell you. But that is against all the rules. It is even against the rules for me to be here talking to you now.”
“What rules?”
She made a helpless gesture. “You must not ask me, Oliver.” She leaned back on the chaise longue, which adjusted itself luxuriously to the motion, and smiled very sweetly at him. “We must not talk about things like that. Forget it, listen to the music, enjoy yourself if you can—” She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the cushions. Oliver saw the round tanned throat swell as she began to hum a tune. Eyes still closed, she sang again the words she had sung upon the stairs. “Come hider, love, to me—”
A memory clicked over suddenly in Oliver’s mind. He had never heard the queer, lagging tune before, but he thought he knew the
words. He remembered what Hoffia’s husband had said when he heard that line of song, and he leaned forward. She would not answer a direct question, but perhaps— “Was the weather this warm in Canterbury?” he asked, and held
his breath. Kleph hummed another line of the song and shook her head, eyes stifi closed.
“It was autumn there,” she said. “But bright, wonderfully bright. Even their clothing, you know . . . everyone was singing that new song, and I can’t get it out of my head.” She sang another line, and the words were almost unintelligible—English, yet not an English Oliver could understand.
He stood up. “Wait,” he said. “I want to find something. Back in a minute.”
She opened her eyes and smiled mistily at him, still humming. He went downstairs as fast as he could—the stairway swayed a little, though his head was nearly clear now—and into the library. The book he wanted was old and battered, interlined with the penciled notes of his college days. He did not remember very clearly where the passage he wanted was, but he thumbed fast through the columns and by sheer luck found it within a few minutes. Then he went back upstairs, feeling a strange empthess in his stomach because of what he almost believed now.
“Kleph,” he said firmly, “I know that song. I know the year it was new.”
Her lids rose slowly; she looked at him through a mist of euphoriac. He was not sure she had understood. For a long moment she held him with her gaze. Then she put out one downy-sleeved arm and spread her tanned fingers toward him. She laughed deep in her throat.
“Come hider, love, to me,” she said.