"Barry N. Malzberg - Gehenna" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

GEHENNA
Barry N. Malzberg
Fictionwise Publications
Copyright ©1971 Barry N. Malzberg


Edward got on the IRT downtown local at 42nd Street for Greenwich
Village. The train stopped at 33rd Street, 27th Street, 17th Street and
Christopher Circle. As it turned out he met his wife at this party.
It was a standard Greenwich Village all-of-us-are-damned gathering.
She was sitting in a corner of the room, her feet bare, listening to a man
with sad mustaches play a mandolin. Edward went over to say hello to her.
She looked at him with vague disinterest and huddled closer to the
mandolin player, who turned out—on further inspection—to be her date
for the night. But Edward was persistent—his parents had always told him
that his fearfulness was his chief detracting characteristic—and later that
night he got her address.
Two days later he showed up with a shopping bag filled with gourmet
food and asked her if she would help him eat it. She shrugged and
introduced him to her cats. Three weeks later they slept with one another
for the first time and the week after that the mandolin player and he had a
fight, at the end of which the mandolin player wished them well and left
her flat forever. Edward and Julie were engaged only a few days after that
and during the month he married her in Elktown.
They went back to New York and started life together. He gave up
mathematics, of course, and became an accountant. She gave up painting
and took to going to antique shops once a week, bringing back objects
every now and then. It was not a bad life, even if it had started out,
perhaps, a bit on the contrived side.
Three years later Edward opened the door and found Julie playing with
their year-old daughter, shaking a rattle and putting it deep into the
baby's mouth. The scene was a pleasing one and he felt quite contented
until she looked up at him and he saw that she was crying.
He put down his briefcase and asked her what was wrong. She told him
that their life had been an utter waste. Everything she wanted she had not
gotten—everything that she had gotten she did not want. She was
surrounded by things, she told him, she had prepared herself as a child to
despise. And the worst of it was that all of it was her own fault. She talked
of divorce but only by inference.
Realizing that the fault was all his, Edward said that he would check up
on some suburbs, get them a nice-sized house and some activities for her
during the day. And so, he did—all of it and they were very happy for a
while if gravely in debt—until he came home from the circus one night
with his daughter and found that Julie, feet bare, had drowned herself in
the bathtub.
****
Julie got on the IRT downtown local at 42nd Street for Greenwich
Village. The train stopped at 32nd Street, 24th Street, 13th Street and the
Statue of Christ. As it turned out, she met her husband at this party. It
was a standard Greenwich Village we-are-finding-ourselves party and he