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

Mother decided that our restaurant should remain open at night. At ten
in the evening a passenger train went north past our door followed by a
local freight. The freight crew had switching to do in Pickleville and
when the work was done they came to our restaurant for hot coffee and
food. Sometimes one of them ordered a fried egg. In the morning at four
they returned north-bound and again visited us. A little trade began to
grow up. Mother slept at night and during the day tended the restaurant
and fed our boarders while father slept. He slept in the same bed
mother had occupied during the night and I went off to the town of
Bidwell and to school. During the long nights, while mother and I
slept, father cooked meats that were to go into sandwiches for the
lunch baskets of our boarders. Then an idea in regard to getting up in
the world came into his head. The American spirit took hold of him. He
also became ambitious.

In the long nights when there was little to do father had time to
think. That was his undoing. He decided that he had in the past been an
unsuccessful man because he had not been cheerful enough and that in
the future he would adopt a cheerful outlook on life. In the early
morning he came upstairs and got into bed with mother. She woke and the
two talked. From my bed in the corner I listened.

It was father's idea that both he and mother should try to entertain
the people who came to eat at our restaurant. I cannot now remember his
words, but he gave the impression of one about to become in some
obscure way a kind of public entertainer. When people, particularly
young people from the town of Bidwell, came into our place, as on very
rare occasions they did, bright entertaining conversation was to be
made. From father's words I gathered that something of the jolly inn-
keeper effect was to be sought. Mother must have been doubtful from the
first, but she said nothing discouraging. It was father's notion that a
passion for the company of himself and mother would spring up in the
breasts of the younger people of the town of Bidwell. In the evening
bright happy groups would come singing down Turner's Pike. They would
troop shouting with joy and laughter into our place. There would be
song and festivity. I do not mean to give the impression that father
spoke so elaborately of the matter. He was as I have said an
uncommunicative man. "They want some place to go. I tell you they want
some place to go," he said over and over. That was as far as he got. My
own imagination has filled in the blanks.

For two or three weeks this notion of father's invaded our house. We
did not talk much, but in our daily lives tried earnestly to make
smiles take the place of glum looks. Mother smiled at the boarders and
I, catching the infection, smiled at our cat. Father became a little
feverish in his anxiety to please. There was no doubt, lurking
somewhere in him, a touch of the spirit of the showman. He did not
waste much of his ammunition on the railroad men he served at night but
seemed to be waiting for a young man or woman from Bidwell to come in