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

bought a castle across the ocean and brought it every bit home with him? You
recall that? Well, we maybe could put my little house on a wagon and haul it
down here." But, as Dolly pointed out, the house belonged to Verena, and was
therefore not ours to haul away. Catherine answered: "You wrong, sugar. If
you feed a man, and wash his clothes, and born his children, you and that
man are married, that man is yours. If you sweep a house, and tend its fires
and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing
this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours. The way I
see it, both those houses up there belong to us: in the eyes of God, we
could put That One right out"
I had an idea: down on the river below us there was a forsaken
houseboat, green with the rust of water, half-sunk; it had been the property
of an old man who made his living catching catfish, and who had been run out
of town after applying for a certificate to marry a fifteen-year-old colored
girl. My idea was, why shouldn't we fix up the old houseboat and live there?
Catherine said that if possible she hoped to spend the rest of her life
on land: "Where the Lord intended us," and she listed more of His
intentions, one of these being that trees were meant for monkeys and birds.
Presently she went silent and, nudging us, pointed in amazement down to
where the woods opened upon the field of grass.
There, stalking toward us, solemnly, stiffly, came a distinguished
party: Judge Cool, the Reverend and Mrs. Buster, Mrs. Macy Wheeler; and
leading them, Sheriff Junius Candle, who wore high-laced boots and had a
pistol flapping on his hip. Sunmotes lilted around them like yellow
butterflies, brambles brushed their starched town clothes, and Mrs. Macy
Wheeler, frightened by a vine that switched against her leg, jumped back,
screeching: I laughed.
And, hearing me, they looked up at us, an expression of perplexed
horror collecting on some of their faces: it was as though they were
visitors at a zoo who had wandered accidentally into one of the cages.
Sheriff Candle slouched forward, his hand cocked on his pistol. He stared at
us with puckered eyes, as if he were gazing straight into the sun. "Now look
here..." he began, and was cut short by Mrs. Buster, who said: "Sheriff, we
agreed to leave this to the Reverend." It was a rule of hers that her
husband, as God's representative, should have first say in everything. The
Reverend Buster cleared his throat, and his hands, as he rubbed them
together, were like the dry scraping feelers of an insect. "Dolly Talbo," he
said, his voice very fine-sounding for so stringy, stunted a man, "I speak
to you on behalf of your sister, that good grar cious woman..."
"That she is," sang his wife, and Mrs. Macy Wheeler parroted her.
"...who has this day received a grievous shock."
That she has," echoed the ladies in their choir-trained voices.
Dolly looked at Catherine, touched my hand, as though asking us to
explain what was meant by the group glowering below like dogs gathered
around a tree of trapped possums. Inadvertently, and just, I think to have
something in her hands, she picked up one of the cigarettes Riley had left.
"Shame on you," squalled Mrs. Buster, tossing her tiny bald-ish head:
those who called her an old buzzard, and there were several, were not
speaking of her character alone: in addition to a small vicious head, she
had high hunched shoulders and a vast body. "I say shame on you. How can you