"Sheri S. Tepper - Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

DURING THE NIGHT, Marianne was awakened by a steady drum-
ming of rain, a muffled tattoo as from a thousand drumsticks
on the flat porch roof, a splash and gurgle from the rainspout
at the corner of the house outside Mrs. Winesap's window,
bubbling its music in vain to ears which did not hear. "I hear,"
whispered Marianne, speaking to the night, the rain, the comer
of the living room she could see from her bed. When she lay
just so, the blanket drawn across her lips, the pillow crunched
into an exact shape, she could see the amber glow of a lamp
in the living room left on to light one corner of the reupholstered
couch, the sheen of the carefully carpentered shelves above it,
the responsive glow of the refinished table below, all in a kindly
shine and haze of belonging there. "Mine," said Marianne to
the room. The lamplight fell on the first corner of the apartment
to be fully finished, and she left the light on so that she could
see it if she woke, a reminder of what was possible, a promise
that all the rooms would be reclaimed from dust and dilapi-
dation. Soon the kitchen would be finished. Two more weeks
at the extra work she was doing for the library and she'd have
enough money for the bright Mexican tiles she had set her heart
upon.
 "Mine," she said again, shutting her eyes firmly against the
seductive glow. She had spent all Cloud-haired mama's jewelry
on the house. The lower floor, more recently occupied and in
a better state of repair, was rented out to Mrs. Winesap and
Mr. Larken—whose relationship Marianne often speculated
upon, varyingly, as open windows admitted sounds of argument
or expostulation or as the walls transmitted the unmistakable
rhythm of bedsprings—and the shimmy part was occupied by
Marianne herself. "Not so slummy anymore," she hummed to
herself in the darkness. "Not so damn slummy."
If she had been asked, she could not have said why it had
been so important to have rooms of her own, rooms with softly
glowing floorboards, rooms with carefully stripped woodwork
painted a little darker than the walls, all in a mauvey, sunset
glow, cool and spacious as a view of distant mountains, where
there had been only cracked, stained plaster with bits of horse-
hair protruding from it to make her think for weary months
that she was trying to make a home in the corpse of some great,
defunct animal. At the time she had not known about old
plaster, old stairs, old walls, nothing about splintered wood-
work and senile plumbing—either balky or incontinent. Some-
thing in the old house had nagged at her. "Buy me, lady. You're
poor. I'm poor. Buy me, and let us live together."
Perhaps it had been the grace of the curved, beveled glass
lights above the front door and the upstairs windows. Perhaps
it had been the high ceilings, cracked though they were, and
the gentle slope of the banisters leading to the second floor.
Perhaps the dim, cavelike mystery of the third floor beneath
the flat roof. Perhaps even the arch of branches in the tangled