"Theodore Sturgeon - The Perfect Host" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)
GRACE ... Grace . . . Grace!
Oh, my little darling, my gentle, my soft little bird with the husky voice. Miss Funny-Brows.
Little Miss Teeth. You used to laugh such a special laugh when I made up new names for you, Coral-
cache, Cadenza, Viola-voice . . . and you'll never laugh again, because I killed you.
I killed you, I killed you.
Yesterday I stopped all the clocks.
I couldn't stand it. It was wrong; it was a violation. You were dead. I drew the blinds and
sat in the dark, not really believing that it had happened--how could it happen? You're Grace,
you're the humming in the kitchen, the quick footfalls in the foyer as I come up the porch steps.
I think for a while I believed that your coming back was the most real, the most obvious
thing; in a moment, any moment, you would come in and kiss the nape of my neck; you would be
smelling of vanilla and cut flowers, and you'd laugh at me and together we'd fling up the blinds
and let in the light.
And then Tinkle struck--Tinkle, the eight-foot grandfather's clock with the basso profundo
chime. That was when I knew what was real. It was real that you were dead, it was real. . . .
I got angry at that violation, that sacrilege, that clock. What right had the clock to strike,
the hands to move? How could it go on? It was wrong. I got up and stopped it. I think I spoke to
it, not harshly, angry as I was; I said, "You don't know, do you, Tinkle? No one's told you yet,"
and I caught it by its swinging neck and held it until its ticking brain was quiet.
I told all the clocks, one by one, that you were dead--the glowing Seth Thomas ship's clock,
with its heavy threads and its paired syllables, and Drowsy the alarm, and the cuckoo with the
cleft palate who couldn't say anything but "hook-who!"
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Theodore%20Sturgeon%20-%20The%20Perfect%20Host.txt
A truck roared by outside, and I remember the new surge of fury because of it, and then the
thought that the driver hadn't been told yet ... and then the mad thought that the news would
spread from these silent clocks, from these drawn blinds, spread like a cloud-shadow over the
world, and when it touched birds, they would glide to the ground and crouch motionless, with no
movement in their jeweled eyes; when it touched machines, they would slow and stop; when it
touched flowers they would close themselves into little soft fists and bend to knuckle the earth;
when it touched people they would finish that stride, end that sentence, slowing, softening, and
would sink down and be still.
There would be no noise or confusion as the world slipped into its stasis, and nothing would
grow but silence. And the sun would hang on the horizon with its face thickly veiled, and there
would be eternal dusk.
That was yesterday, and I was angry. I am not angry today. It was better, yesterday, the
sitting in turmoil and uselessness, the useless raging up and down rooms so hollow, yet still so
full of you they would not echo. It got dark, you see, and in good time the blinds were brighter
than the walls around them again. I looked out, squinting through grainy eyelids, and saw a man
walking by, walking easily, his hands in his pockets, and he was whistling.
After that I could not be angry any more, not at the man, not at the morning. I knew only the
great cruel pressure of a fact, a fact worse than the fact of emptiness or of death-- the fact
that nothing ever stops, that things must go on.
It was better to be angry, and to lose myself in uselessness. Now I am not angry and I have no
choice but to think usefully. I have lived a useful life and have built it all on useful thinking,
and if I had not thought so much and so carefully Grace would be here with me now, with her voice
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