"Шервуд Андерсен. Триумф яйца (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

And so it was the doctor became shrill. He jumped up from the steps
where we had been sitting, talking and walked about. "You come from the
West. You have kept away from people. You have preserved yourself--damn
you! I haven't--" His voice had indeed become shrill. "I have entered
into lives. I have gone beneath the surface of the lives of men and
women. Women especially I have studied--our own women, here in
America."

"You have loved them?" I suggested.

"Yes," he said. "Yes--you are right there. I have done that. It is the
only way I can get at things. I have to try to love. You see how that
is? It's the only way. Love must be the beginning of things with me."

I began to sense the depths of his weariness. "We will go swim in the
lake," I urged.

"I don't want to swim or do any damn plodding thing. I want to run and
shout," he declared. "For awhile, for a few hours, I want to be like a
dead leaf blown by the winds over these hills. I have one desire and
one only--to free myself."

We walked in a dusty country road. I wanted him to know that I thought
I understood, so I put the case in my own way.

When he stopped and stared at me I talked. "You are no more and no
better than myself," I declared. "You are a dog that has rolled in
offal, and because you are not quite a dog you do not like the smell of
your own hide."

In turn my voice became shrill. "You blind fool," I cried impatiently.
"Men like you are fools. You cannot go along that road. It is given to
no man to venture far along the road of lives."

I became passionately in earnest. "The illness you pretend to cure is
the universal illness," I said. "The thing you want to do cannot be
done. Fool--do you expect love to be understood?"

We stood in the road and looked at each other. The suggestion of a
sneer played about the corners of his mouth. He put a hand on my
shoulder and shook me. "How smart we are--how aptly we put things!"

He spat the words out and then turned and walked a little away. "You
think you understand, but you don't understand," he cried. "What you
say can't be done can be done. You're a liar. You cannot be so definite
without missing something vague and fine. You miss the whole point. The
lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked
by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by
dead men. I am myself covered by crawling creeping vines that choke
me."