"Kuttner, Henry - The Children's Hour UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

There seemed to be a power in her akin to the power of that omnipotence, as if she had absorbed some of it from long nearness to the source.
Or was it that Someone stayed his hand rather than strike her forcibly back to her place in the pattern, rather than let her guess—yet—the extent of his power?
“Turn,” said Clarissa. “Turn around, We’re going wrong again.”
- He struggled with the wheel. “I can’t. . . I can’t,” he told her, almost breathless. She gave him a dazzling dark glance and leaned over to take the wheel herself.
Even for her it was hard. But slowly she turned the car, while traffic blared irritably behind them, and slowly they broke out of the pattern’s grip again and rounded another corner, heading noitii~, the lights of Jersey swimming unfocused in the haze of their delirium.
This was no normal drunkenness. It was increasing by leaps and bounds. This, thought Leasing dimly, is His next step. He won’t let her see what he’s doing, but he knows he’s got to stop- us now, or we’ll break the pattern and prove our independence.
The tall, narrow buildings shouldering together along the streets were like tall trees in a forest, with windows for motionless leaves. No two windows on the same level, or quite alike. Infinite variety with infinitesimal differences, all of them interlacing and glimmering as they drove on and on through the stony forest. Now Leasing could see among the trees, and between them, not transparently but as if through some new dimension. He could see the streets that marked -off this forest into squares and oblongs, and his dazed mind.
remembered another forest, checkered into squares—Looking
Glass Land. -
He was going south again through the forest.
“Clarissa—help me,” he said distantly, wrestling again with the wheel. Her small white hands came out of the dark to cover 1~is.
A shower of light from a flickering window poured down upon them, enveloping Clarissa as Zeus enveloped Danae. The jealous god, the jealous god— Leasing laughed and smacked the wheel in senseless triumph.
There was a light glimmering ahead through the frees-. He would have to go softly, he warned himself, and tiptoed forward over the. . . the cobbled road. Without surprise he saw that he was moving on foot through a forest in darkness, quite alone. He was still drunk. Drunker than ever, he thought with mild pride, drunker, probably, than any mortal ever was before. Any mortal. The gods, now— People were moving through the trees ahead. He knew
they must not see him. It would shock them considerably if~hey did; he remembered the garishly dressed people of his other dream, and the young man with the whip. No, it would be better to stay hidden this time if he could. The forest was wheeling and dipping around him behind a haze of obscurity, and nothing had very much coherence. The - ringing in his ears was probably intoxication, not actual sound.
The people were sQmberly clad in black, with black hoods that covered their hair and framed pale, intolerant faces.
They were moving in a long cohnnn through the trees. Leasing watched them go by for what seemed a long while. Some of the women. canied work bags over their arms and knitted as they walked. A few of the men read from small books and stumbled now and then on the cobblestones. There was no laughter.
Clarissa came among the last. She had a gay little face beneath the black cap, gayer and more careless than he had ever seen her in this . . . this world. She walked lightly, breaking into something like a dance step occasionally that called down upon her the frowns of those who walked behind. She did not seem to care.
Leasing wanted to call to her. He wanted to call so badly that it seemed to him she sensed it, for she began to fall behind, letting first one group pass her and then another, until she walked at the very - end of the column. Several girls in a cluster looked back a few times and giggled a lit-
tle, but said nothing. She fell farther back. Presently the procession turned a corner and Clarissa stopped in the middle of the road, watching them go. Then she laughed and performed a solemn little pirouette on one toe, her black skirts swinging wide around her.
Leasing stepped from behind his tree and took a step toward her, ready to speak her name. But he was too late. Someone else was already nearer than he. Someone else— Clarissa called out gayly in a language -he did not know, and then there was a flash of crimson through the trees and a figure cloaked from head to heels in bright red came up to her and took her into its embrace, the red folds swinging forward to infold them both. Clarissa’s happy laughter was smothered beneath the stooping hood.
- Leasing stood perfectly still. It might be another woman, he told himself fiercely. It might be a sister or an aunt. But it was probably a man. Or— He squinted slightly—nothing focused very well in his
present state, and things tended to slip side-wise when he tried to fix his eyes upon them—but this time he was almost sure of what he saw. He was almost sure that upon Clarissa’s lifted face in the dimness of the woods a light was falling softly—from the hood above her. A light, glowing from within the hood. A shower of light. Danae, in her shower of gold.
The woods tilted steeply and turned end for end. Leasing was beyond surprise as he fell away, spinning and whirling through darkness, falling farther and farther from Clarissa in the woods. Leaving Clarissa alone in the embrace of her god.
When the spinning stopped he was sitting in his car again, with traffic pouring ‘noisily past on the left. He was parked, somewhere. Double-parked, with the motor running. He blinked. -
“I’ll get out here,” Clarissa told him matter-of-factly. “No, don’t bother. You’ll never find a parking place, and I’m so sleepy. Good night, darling. Phone me in the morning.”
He could do nothing but blink. The dazzle of her eyes
and her smile was a little blinding, and that haze still diffused all his efforts to focus upon her face. But he could see enough. They were exactly where they had started, at the curb before her apartment house.
“Good night,” said Clarissa again, and the door closed behind her.

There was silence in the office after Leasing’s last words.
Dyke sat waiting quietly, his eyes on Leasing’s face, his shadow moving a little - on the desktop under the swinging light. After a moment Leasing said, almost defiantly,
“Well?” -
Dyke smiled slightly, stirring in his chair. “Well?” he
echoed.
“What are you thinking?”
Dyke shook his head. “I’m not thinking at all. It isn’t time yet for that—unless the story ends there. It doesn’t, does it?”
Leasing looked thougthful. “No. Not quite. We met once
more.” -
“Only once?” Dyke’s eyes brightenect “That must be when your memory went, then. That’s the most interesting scene of all. Go on—what happened?”
Lessing closed his eyes. His voice came slowly, as if he were remembering bit by bit each episode of the story he told.
“The phone woke me next morning,” he said. “It was Clarissa. As soon as I heard her voice I knew the time had come to settle things once and for all—if I could. If I were бllowed. I didn’t think—He—would let me talk it out with her, but I knew I’d have to try. She sounded upset on the phone. Wouldn’t say why. She wanted me to come over right away.” - -
She was at the door when he came out of the elevator, holding it open for him against a background of mirrors in which no motion stirred. She looked fresh and - lovely, and Lessing marveled again, as he had marveled on waking, that the extraordinary drunkenness of last night had left no ill effects with -either of them this morning. But she looked troubled, too; her eyes were too bright, with a blinding blackness that dazzled him, and the sweet serenity was gone from her face. He exulted at that. She was awakening, then, from the long, long dream.
The first thing he said as he followed her into the apartment was, -
“Where’s your aunt?”
Clarissa glanced vagtiely around. “Oh, out, I suppose. Never mind her. Jim, tell- me—did we do something wrong last night? Do you remember what happened? Everything?”
“Why -I. . . I think so.” He was temporizing, not ready yet in spite of his decision to plunge into these deep waters.
“What happened, then? Why does it worry me so? Why can’t I remember?” - Her troubled eyes searched his face
anxiously. He took her hands. They were cold and trembling a little.
“Come over here,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the matter, darling? Nothing’s wrong. We had a few drinks and took a long ride, don’t you remember? And then I brought you
back here and you said good night and went in.” -