"Трумэн Капоте. The grass harp (Луговая арфа, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

medicine-naming you as the inventor, naturally. Now the point is. Dolly, you
must sit down and write out a complete formula for us."
Dolly's face loosened; and the labels scattered on the floor, skimmed.
Leaning her hands on the table she pushed herself upward; slowly her
features came together again, she lifted her head and looked blinkingly at
Dr. Ritz, at Verena. "It won't do," she said quietly. She moved to the door,
put a hand on its handle. "It won't do: because you haven't any right,
Verena. Nor you, sir."
I helped Catherine clear the table: the ruined roses, the uncut cakes,
the vegetables no one had touched. Verena and her guest had left the house
together; from the kitchen window we watched them as they went toward town
nodding and shaking their heads. Then we sliced the devil's-food cake and
took it into Dolly's room.
Hush now! hush now! she said when Catherine began light' ing into That
One. But it was as though the rebellious inner whispering had become a
raucous voice, an opponent she must outshout: Hush now! hush nowl until
Catherine had to put her arms around Dolly and say hush, too.
We got out a deck of Rook cards and spread them on the bed. Naturally
Catherine had to go and remember it was Sunday; she said maybe we could risk
another black mark in the Judgment Book, but there were too many beside her
name already. After thinking it over, we told fortunes instead. Sometime
around dusk Verena came home. We heard her footsteps in the hall; she opened
the door without knocking, and Dolly, who was in the middle of my fortune,
tightened her hold on my hand. Verena said: "Collin, Catherine, we will
excuse you."
Catherine wanted to follow me up the ladder into the attic, except she
had on her fine clothes. So I went alone. There was a good knothole that
looked straight down into the pink room; but Verena was standing directly
under it, and all I could see was her hat, for she was still wearing the hat
she'd put on when she left the house. It was a straw skimmer decorated with
a cluster of celluloid fruit. "Those are facts," she was saying, and the
fruit shivered, shimmered in the blue dimness. "Two thousand for the old
factory. Bill Tatum and four carpenters working out there at eighty cents an
hour, seven thousand dollars worth of machinery already ordered, not to
mention what a specialist like Morris Ritz is costing. And why? All for
youl"
"All for me?" and Dolly sounded sad and failing as the dusk. I saw her
shadow as she moved from one part of the room to another. "You are my own
flesh, and I love you tenderly; in my heart I love you. I could prove it now
by giving you the only thing that has ever been mine: then you would have it
all. Please, Verena," she said, faltering, "let this one thing belong to
me."
Verena switched on a light. "You speak of giving," and her voice was
hard as the sudden bitter glare. "All these years that I've worked like a
fieldhand; what haven't I given you? This house, that..."
"You've given everything to me," Dolly interrupted softly. "And to
Catherine and to Collin. Except, we've earned our way a bit: we've kept a
nice home for you, haven't we?"
"Oh a fine home," said Verena, whipping off her hat Her face was full
of blood. "You and that gurgling fool. Has it not struck you that I never