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

that was moldering in the refrigerator. They had turned off the unit and put away the dishes.
Every day Jenny cleaned the house from front to back, dusting furniture and scrubbing floors. Except
for fixing meals for Professor Tom her routine was unchanged. Sometimes, while she was working, she
would hum songs from the movie she and Jim had watched the night before. And sometimes in the middle
of dusting the living room she would drop the cloth and dance the way Ruby Keeler did in 42nd Street.
42nd Street was her favorite movie, but My Blue Heaven was her favorite song.
Sitting on the sofa in the light reflected from the screen, the automatic projector whirring behind them,
they would embrace and kiss and Jim would say, "Did you have a good day, darling?"
She would answer, "Yes, my sweet."
He would kiss her eyes and ears and nose and she would kiss his chin. They would hold each other
as tightly as they could, but nothing ever came of their ardor and the skies remained as empty as before.
"Perhaps tomorrow," Jenny would say.
Jim "would answer, "Yes, I'm sure tomorrow will be the Big Day."
But the Big Day failed to dawn and Happiness continued to hide in the hills, in the woodbine and the
wildflowers —in the green bowers of the trees.

PROFESSOR TOM had stored both their memory banks with generous helpings of information,
but for the most part these had to do with electronics, mechanical engineering, horticulture and cookery.
It was to the old movies that they were indebted for their practical education. Most of the movies were
products of the 1930's, but there some from the 'twenties and a handful from the 'forties and 'fifties. The
professor had spent a great many years and a great deal of money collecting them and naturally he had
taken them with him when he had retired to Arcturus VI to live out his sunset years in solitude and peace
in the isolated valley he had bought “—light-years removed," as he had put it, "from the malicious
machinations of mankind."
Sitting with Jenny and Jim in the living room one night, watching The Bells of St. Mary's, he had said,
"That's the way it was in those days—only that wasn't the way it really was at all."
"But how can something be true and yet not be true at all?" Jenny asked and he had laughed.
"I can see, my dear, that despite the perfection of your computerized thought processes—or even
more probably because of it—you're incapable of any non-Aristotelian thinking. Many things can be both
true and untrue. The worlds we watch upon that magic screen, my dear, are distorted reflections of
reality inhabited by the ghosts of people whose real selves were often hidden from their own eyes. A
reality powdered and perfumed and with its vitals eviscerated—a reality tailored for people who hadn't
outgrown their need to be told fairy tales before they went to bed." Professor Tom sighed. "But I'll take it
any day. For all its pious hypocrisies—for all its omissions and its untrue truths—it's a thousand times
better than the reality I lived in all my life and finally left behind. I guess when men grow old they like to
hide in caves and watch reflections on the walls."
In addition to the old movies, Professor Tom's collection comprised dozens of animated cartoons.
Jenny and Jim found them fascinating. Some featured animals drawn to look like men or men drawn to
look like animals. Others featured animals that were really meant to be animals but that talked and
sometimes lived like human beings. In one way the cartoons were more educational than the movies, for
they threw light on a certain mystery the movies were completely mum about. A mystery Professor Tom's
books—most of which were devoted to electronics and mechanical engineering—did not even mention.
In fact, if it hadn't been for the cartoons Jenny and Jim would never have learned the Secret of Life.

BUT apparently knowing the Secret of Life was not enough. The valley exchanged its green dress
for summer's golden gown. The warm days and nights began parading past the prefabricated house. But
although Jenny and Jim sat each evening on the sofa, aping the actions of the shadows on the screen, their
embraces and kisses went unrewarded. The dawn of each new day found them sitting disappointed on
their doorstep, as lonely as before.
"Maybe it's like that song that Don Ameche sings to Sonja Henie," Jenny said. "You know the one I