"Robert F. Young - Flying Pan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

FLYING PAN
by ROBERT F. YOUNG

Marianne Summers worked in a frying-pan factory. For eight hours every day and for five days every
week she stood by a production-line conveyor and every time a frying pan went by she put a handle on
it. And all the while she stood by one conveyor she rode along on another—a big conveyor with days
and nights over it instead of fluorescent tubes, and months standing along it instead of people. And every
time she passed a month it added something to her or took something away, and as time went by she
became increasingly aware of the ultimate month—the one standing far down the line, waiting to put a
handle on her soul.
Sometimes Marianne sat down and wondered how she could possibly have gotten into such a rut,
but all the while she wondered she knew that she was only kidding herself, that she knew perfectly well
why. Ruts were made for untalented people, and if you were untalented you ended up in one; moreover if
you were untalented and were too stubborn to go home and admit you were untalented, you stayed in
one.
There was a great deal of difference between dancing on TV and putting handles on frying pans: the
difference between being graceful and gawky, lucky and unlucky, or—to get right back to the basic truth
again—the difference between being talented and untalented. No matter how hard you practiced or how
hard you tried, if your legs were too fat, no one wanted you and you ended up in a rut or in a frying-pan
factory, which was the same thing, and you went to work every morning and performed the same tasks
and you came home every night and thought the same thoughts, and all the while you rode down the big
conveyor between the merciless months and came closer and closer to the ultimate month that would put
the final touches on you and make you just like everybody else. . . .
Mornings were getting up and cooking breakfasts in her small apartment and taking the bus to work.
Evenings were going home and cooking lonely suppers and afterward TV. Weekends were writing letters
and walking in the park. Nothing ever changed and Marianne had begun to think that nothing ever would.
...
And then one night when she came home, she found a flying frying pan on her window ledge.

It had been a day like all days, replete with frying pans, superintendents, boredom and tired feet.
Around ten o'clock the maintenance man stopped by and asked her to go to the Halloween Dance with
him. The Halloween Dance was a yearly event sponsored by the company and was scheduled for that
night. So far, Marianne had turned down fifteen would-be escorts.
A frying pan went by and she put a handle on it. "No, I don't think so," she said.
"Why?" the maintenance man asked bluntly.
It was a good question, one that Marianne couldn't answer honestly because she wasn't being honest
with herself. So she told the same little white lie she had told all the others: "I—I don't like dances."
"Oh." The maintenance man gave her the same look his fifteen predecessors had given her, and
moved on. Marianne shrugged her shoulders. I don't care what they think, she told herself. Another
frying pan went by, and another and another.
After a while, noon came, and Marianne and all the other employees ate frankfurters and sauerkraut
in the company cafeteria. The parade of frying pans recommenced promptly at 12:30.
During the afternoon she was approached twice more by would-be escorts. You'd have thought she
was the only girl in the factory. Sometimes she hated her blue eyes and round pink face, and sometimes
she even hated her bright yellow hair, which had some of the properties of a magnet. But hating the way
she looked didn't solve her problems—it only aggravated them—and by the time 4:30 came she had a
headache and she heartily despised the whole world.
Diminutive trick-or-treaters were already making the rounds when she got off the bus at the corner.
Witches walked and goblins leered, and pumpkin candles sputtered in the dusk. But Marianne hardly
noticed.