"Theodore Sturgeon - The Perfect Host" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

through and over the edge, to slip and catch and slip again, finally to teeter to a precarious
stop.
Apparently its trailer was loaded with light steel girders; one of them slipped over the
tractor's crumpled shoulder and speared down toward us.
Our companion of the minuet, on the truck ahead, had finished his dance, and, turned to us,
was bowing low, smiling, looking up through his eyebrows at us. The girder's end took him on the
back of the head. It did not take the head off; it obliterated it. The body struck flat and lay
still, as still as wet paper stuck to glass. The girder bit a large piece out of the tailgate and
somersaulted to the right, while I braked and swerved dangerously away from it. Fortunately there
were no cars coming toward us.
There was, of course, a long, mixed-up, horrified sequence of the two truck drivers, the one
ahead and the one who came down later from the viaduct and was sick. Ambulances and bystanders and
a lot of talk . . . none of it matters, really.
No one ever found out who the dead man was. He had no luggage and no identification; he had
over ninety dollars in his pocket. He might have been anybody--someone from show business, or a
writer perhaps, on a haywire vacation of his own wild devising. I suppose that doesn't matter
either. What does matter is that he died while Grace was in a very close communion with what he
was doing, and her mind was wide open for his fantasy. Mine is, generally, I suppose; but at that
particular moment, when I had seen the smash above and the descending girder, I was wide awake, on
guard. I think that had a lot to do with what has happened since. I think it has everything to do
with Grace's--with Grace's--
There is no word for it. I can say this, though. Grace and I were never alone together again
until the day she died. Died, died, Grace is dead.
Grace!
I can go on with my accursed useful thinking now, I suppose.
Grace was, of course, badly shaken, and I did what I could for her over the next few weeks. I
tried my best to understand how it was affecting her. (That's what I mean by useful thinking--
trying to understand. Trying and trying--prying and prying. Arranging, probing, finding out.
Getting a glimpse, a scent of danger, rooting it out--bringing it out into the open where it can
get at you.) Rest and new clothes and alcohol rubdowns; the theater, music and music, always
music, for she could lose herself in it, riding its flux, feeling and folding herself in it,
following it, sometimes, with her hushed, true voice, sometimes lying open to it, letting it play
its colors and touches over her.
There is always an end to patience, however. After two months, knowing her as I did, I knew
that there was more here than simple shock. If I had known her less well--if I had cared less,
even, it couldn't have mattered.
It began with small things. There were abstractions which were unusual in so vibrant a person.
In a quiet room, her face would listen to music; sometimes I had to speak twice and then repeat
what I had said.
Once I came home and found supper not started, the bed not made. Those things were not
important--I am not a fusspot nor an autocrat; but I was shaken when, after calling her repeatedly
I found her in the guest room, sitting on the bed without lights. I had no idea she was in there;
I just walked in and snapped on the light in the beginnings of panic because she seemed not to be
in the house; she had not answered me.
And at first it was as if she had not noticed the sudden yellow blaze from the paired lamps;
she was gazing at the wall, and on her face was an expression of perfect peace. She was wide awake-
-at least her eyes were. I called her: "Grace!"
"Hello, darling," she said quietly. Her head turned casually toward me and she smiled--oh,
those perfect teeth of hers!--and her smile was only partly for me; the rest of it was inside,
with the nameless things with which she had been communing.