"Seond Inquisition by Joanna Russ" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 6)

outdoor tables and chair ' he had built in the back yard. Before our
visitor came o, the train for her vacation with us, I used to spend all my
time in the back yard, being underfoot, but once we had met her ,at the
station and she shook hands with my. father-I think she hurt him whets
she shook hands-I would watch her read and wish that she might talk to
me.

She said: "You are finishing high school?"

I was in the archway, as usual; I answered yes.

She looked up at me again, then down at her book. She said, "This is a
very bad book." I said nothing. Without looking up, she tapped one
finger on the shabby hassock on which she had put her feet. Then she
looked up and smiled at me. I stepped tentatively from the floor to the
rug, as reluctantly as if I were crossing the Sahara; she swung her feet
away and I sat down. Art close view her face looked as if every race in
the world had been mixed and only the worst of each kept; an American
Indian might look like that, or Ikhnaton from the encyclopedia, or a
Swedish African, a Maori princess with the jaw of a Slav. It occurred to
me suddenly that she might be a Negro, but no one else had ever
seemed to think so,
possibly because nobody in our town had ever seen a
Negro. We had none. They were "colored people."
She said; "You are not pretty, yes?"
I got up. I said, "My father thinks you're a freak."

"You are sixteen," she said, ".sit down," and I .sat down. I crossed my
arms over my breasts because they were (too big, like balloons. Then
she said, "I am reading a very stupid book. You will take it away from
me, yes?"

"No," I said.

"You must," she said, "or it will poison me, sure as God," and from her
lap she plucked up The Green Hat: A Romance, gold letters on green
binding, last year's bestseller which I had had to .swear never to read,
and she held it out to me, leaning back in her chair with that long arm
doing all the work, .the book enclosed in a cage of fingers wrapped
completely around it. I think she could have put those forgers around a
basketball. I did not take it.

"Go on," she said, "read it, go on, go away," and I found myself at the-
archway, by the foot of the stairs with The Green Hat: A Romance in
my hand. I turned it so the title was hidden. She was smiling -at me and
had her arms folded back under her head. "Don't worry," she said.
"Your body will be in fashion by the time of the next war." I met my
mother at the top of the stairs and had to hide :the book from her; my
mother said, "Oh, the poor woman!" She was carrying some sheets. I
went to my room .and read through almost the whole night, hiding the