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

doubled their shining. “You can’t, you can’t!” sobbed Clarissa,
and flung herself forward upon Leasing, her arms clasping -
his neck hard - as she wept incoherent protest upon his -
shoulder.
His arms closed automatically around her while his mind spun desperately to regain~ its balance. What had happened? Who- -
Someone brushed by him. The aunt. He knew that, but with no sense of relief even though he had half-expected that more awesome Someone at whose existence he could still only guess.
The aunt was bending over them, pulling gently at Clarissa’s shaking shoulder. And after a moment Clarissa’s grip on his neck loosened and she sat up obediently, though still catching her breath in long, uneven sobs that wrung Leasing’s heart.
He wanted desperately to do or say whatever would comfort her most quickly, but his mind and his body were both oddly slowed, - as if there were some force at work in the room which he could not understand. As if he were moving against the momentum of that singing machinery he had fancied he sensed so often—moving against It, while the other two were carried effortlessly on.
Clarissa let herself be pulled away. She moved as boneleasly as a child, utterly given up to her grief, careless of everything but that. The teari streaked her cheeks and her body drooped forlornly. She held Leasing’s hands until the last, but when he felt her fingers slipping from his the loss of contact told him, queerly, as nothing else quite had power to tell, that this was a final parting. They stood apart over a few feet of carpet, as if inexorable miles lay between them. Miles that widened with every passing second. Clarissa looked at him through her tears, her eyes unbearably bright, her lips quivering, her hands still outstretched and curved from the pressure of his clasp.
This La all. You have sewed your purpose—now go. Go and forget.
He did not know what voice had said it, or exactly in what words, but the meaning caine back to him clearly now. Go and forget.
There was strong music in the air. For one last moment. he stood in a world that glittered with beauty and color because it was Clarissa’s, glittered even in this dark apartment with its many, many mirrors. All about him be could see-
reflecting Clarissas from every angle of grief and parting, moving confusedly as she let her hands begin to drop. He saw a score of Clarissas dropping their curved hands—but he
never saw them fall. One last look at Clarissa’s tears, and then . . . and then— Lethe.

Dyke let his breath out in a long- sigh. He leaned back in
his creaking chair and looked at Leasing without expression
under his light eyebrows. Leasing blinked stupidly back. An
instant ago he had stood in Clarissa’s apartment; the touch
of her fingers was still warm in his hands. He could hear her
caught breath and see the i~eflections moving confusedly in the mirrors around them— -
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Reflections—Clarissa—I almost remembered something just then-i-” He sat up and stared at Dyke without seeing him, his brow furrowed. “Reflections,” he
said again. “Clarissa—lots of Clarissas—but no aunt! I was
looking at two women in the mirror, but I didn’t see the aunt!
I never saw her—not once! And yet I . . . wait . . . the
answer’s there, you know . . . right there, just in reach, if
I could only—”
Then it came to him in a burst of clarity. Clarissa had seen it before him; the whole answer lay in that legend she had told. The Country of the Blind! How could those sightless natives hope to see the king’s messenger who watched over the princess as she- walked that enchanted wood? How could he remember what his mind had never been strong enough to comprehend? How could he have seen that guardian except as a presence without shape, a voice without words, moving through its own bright sphere beyond the sight of theblind? - -
“Cigarette?” said Dyke, creaking his chair forward.
Leasing reached automatically across the desk. There was no further sound but the rustle of paper and the scratch of a match, for a little while. They smoked in silence, eying one another. Outside feet went by upon gravel. Men’s voices called distantly, muffled by the night. Crickets were chirping, omnipresent in the dark. -
Presently Dyke let down the front legs of his chair with a thump and reached forward to grind out his unfinished cigarette. -
“All right,” he said. “Now—are you still too dose, or can you look at it objectively?”
Leasing shrugged. “I can try.”
“Well, first we can take it as understood—at least for the
moment—that such things as these just don’t happen. The -
story’s full of holes, of course. We could tear it to pieces in -
ten minutes if we tried.”
Leasing looked stubborn. “Maybe you think—”
“I haven’t begun to thin,lc~ yet. We haven’t got to the bottom of the thing, naturally. I don’t believe it really happened exactly as you remember. Man, how could it? The whole story’s still dressed up in a sort of allegory, and we’ll have to dig deeper still to uncover the bare facts. But just as it stands—what a problem! Now I wonder—”
His voice died. He shook cut another~cigarette and scratched a match abstractedly. Through the first cloud of exhaled smoke lie went on.
“Take it all as read, just for a minute. Unravel the allegory in the allegory-the king’s daughter born in the Country of the Blind. You know, Leasing, one thing strikes me that you haven’t noticed yet. Ever think how completely childish Clarissa seems? Her absorption in trivial things, for instance. Her assumption that the forces at work about her must be protective, parental. Yes, even - that glow you spoke of that affected everything you saw and heard when you were with her. A child’s world is like that. Strong, clear colors. Nothing’s ugly because they have no basis for comparison. Beauty and ugliness mean nothing to a child. I ca-n remember a bit from my own childhood—that peculiar enchantment over whatever interested me. Wordsworth, you know—’Heaven lies about us in our infancy,’ and pM the rest. And yet she was -adult enough, wasn’t she? Past twenty, say?”
He paused, eying the tip of his cigarette. “You know,” he said, “it sounds like a simple case of arrested development, doesn’t it? Now, now, wait a minute! I only said sounds like
it. You’ve got sense enough to recognize a moron when you see one. I don’t say Clarissa was anything like that. rm just getting at something—.
“I’m thinking about my own little boy. He’s eleven now, and getting adjusted, but when he first started school he- had an I. Q. away above the rest of -the class, and they bored him. He didn’t want to play with the other kids. Got to hanging around the house reading until my wife and I realized some-:
thing had to be done about it. High I. Q. or not, a kid needs other kids to play with. He’ll never learn to make the necessary social adjustments unless he leanis young. c~-n’t;
grow up psychically quite straight unless be grows up with his own kind. Later on a high I. Q. will be a fine thing, but
- right now it’s almost a handicap to the kid.” He paused. “Well, see what I mean?” - -
Leasing - shook his head. “I can’t see anything. I’m still diszy.”
“Clarissa,” said Dyke slowly, “might—in the allegory, mind
you, not in any real sense—be the king’s daughter. She might