"Чарльз Буковски. Дневник последних лет жизни (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

8/30/92 1:30 AM
Was going down the scalator at the track after the 6th race when the
waiter saw me. "You going home now?" he asked?
"I wouldn't do that to you, amigo," I told him.
The poor fellow had to bring the food from the track kitchen to the
upper floors, carrying huge amounts of trays. When their clients ran out on
them they had to pay the tab. Some of the players sat four to a table. The
waiters could work all day and still owe the track money. And the crowded
days were the worst, the waiters couldn't watch everybody. And when they did
get paid the horseplayers tipped badly.
I went down to the first floor and stepped outside, stood in the sun.
It was great out there. Maybe I'd just come to the track and stand in the
sun. I seldom thought about writing out there but I did then. I thought
about something that I had recently read, that I was probably the best
selling poet in America and the most influential, the most copied. How
strange. Well, to hell with that. All that counted was the next time I sat
down to the computer. If I could still do it, I was alive, if I coulnd't,
everything that preceded meant little to me. But what was I doing, thinking
about writing? I was cracking. I didn't even think about writing when I was
writing. Then I heard the call to post, turned around, walked in and got
back on the escalator. Going up, I passed a man who owed me money. He ducked
his head down. I pretended not to see him. It didn't do any good after he'd
paid me, he only borrowed it back. And old guy had come up to me earlier
that day: "Gimme 60 cents!" That gave him enough for a two buck bet, one
more chance to dream. It was a sad god-damned place but almost every place
was. There was no place to go. Well, there was, you could go to your room
and close the door but then your wife got depressed. Or more depressed.
America was the Land of Depressed Wives. And it was the fault of the men.
Sure. Who else was around? You couldn't blame the birds, the dogs, the cats,
the worms, the mice, the spiders, the fish, the etc. It was the men. And the
men couldn't allow themselves to get depressed or else the whole ship would
go down. Well, hell.
I was back at my table. Three men had the next table and they had a
little boy with them. Each table had a small tv set, only theirs was turned
on LOUD. The kid had it on some sitcom and that was nice of the men to the
kid look a his program. But he wasn't paying any attention to it, he wasn't
listening, he was sitting there pushing around a rolled-up piece of paper.
He bounced it against some cups, then he took it and tossed it into this cup
and that. Some of the cups were filled with coffee. But the men just went on
talking about the horses. My god, that tv was LOUD. I thought of saying
something to the men, asking them to lower the tv a bit. But the men were
black and they'd think I was racist. I left my table and walked out to the
betting windows. I was unlucky, I got in a slow line. There was an old guy
up front having trouble making his bets. He had his Form spread out across
the window, along with his programm and he was very hesitant about what he
wanted to do. He probably lived in an old folks home or and institution of
some sort but he was out or a day at the races. Well, no law against that
and no law against him being in a fog. But somehow it hurt. Jesus, I don't
have to suffer this, I thought. I had memorized the back of his head, his
ears, his clothing, the bent back. The horses were nearing the gate.