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

passed into the sunlight where the red rolling grass swept up, swallowed
them. Lingering under the tree, the Judge smiled at us and, with a small
courteous bow, said: "Do I remember you offering a drumstick to anybody that
would likeit?"
He might have been put together from parts of the tree, for his nose
was like a wooden peg, his legs were strong as old roots, and his eyebrows
were thick, tough as strips of bark. Among the topmost branches were beards
of silvery moss the color of his center-parted hair, and the cowhide
sycamore leaves, sifting down from a neighboring taller tree, were the color
of his cheeks. Despite his canny, tomcat eyes, the general impression his
face made was that of someone shy and countrified. Ordinarily he was not the
one to make a show of himself. Judge Charlie Cool; there were many who had
taken advantage of his modesty to set themselves above him. Yet none of them
could have claimed, as he could, to be a graduate of Harvard University or
to have twice traveled in Europe. Still, there were those who were resentful
and felt that he put on airs: wasn't he supposed to read a page of Greek
every morning before breakfast? and what kind of a man was it that would
always have flowers in his buttonhole? If he wasn't stuck up, why, some
people asked, had he gone all the way to Kentucky to find a wife instead of
marrying one of our own women? I do not remember the Judge's wife; she died
before I was old enough to be aware of her, therefore an that I repeat comes
second-hand. So: the town never warmed up to Irene Cool, and apparently it
was her own fault. Kentucky women are difficult to begin with, keyed-up,
hellion-hearted, and Irene Cool, who was born a Todd in Bowling Green (Mary
Todd, a second cousin once removed, had married Abraham Lincoln) let
everyone around here know she thought them a backward, vulgar lot: she
received none of the ladies of the town, but Miss Palmer, who did sewing for
her, spread news of how she'd transformed the Judge's house into a place of
taste and style with Oriental rugs and antique furnishings. She drove to and
from Church in a Pierce-Arrow with all the windows rolled up, and in church
itself she sat with a cologned handkerchief against her nose: the smell of
God ain't good enough for Irene Cool. Moreover, she would not permit either
of the local doctors to attend her family, this though she herself was a
semi-invalid: a small backbone dislocation necessitated her sleeping on a
bed of boards. There were crude jokes about the Judge getting full of
splinters. Nevertheless, he fathered two sons, Todd and Charles Jr., both
born in Kentucky where their mother had gone in order that they could claim
to be natives of the bluegrass state. But those who tried to make out the
Judge got the brunt of his wife's irritableness, that he was a miserable
man, never had much of a case, and after she died even the hardest of their
critics had to admit old Charlie must surely have loved his Irene. For
during the last two years of her life, when she was very ill and fretful, he
retired as circuit judge, then took her abroad to the places they had been
on their honeymoon. She never came back; she is buried in Switzerland. Not
so long ago Carrie Wells, a schoolteacher here in town, went on a group tour
to Europe; the only thing connecting our town with that continent are
graves, the graves of soldier boys and Irene Cool; and Carrie, armed with a
camera for snapshots, set out to visit them all: though she stumbled about
in a cloud-high cemetery one whole afternoon, she could not find the Judge's
wife, and it is funny to think of Irene Cool, serenely there on a