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

there was a geranium plant that bloomed, then bloomed again all year round,
and Catherine's goldfish, in a bowl on the oilcloth-covered table, fanned
their tails through the portals of the coral castle. Sometimes we worked
jigsaw puzzles, dividing the pieces among us, and Catherine would hide
pieces if she thought you were going to finish your part of the puzzle
before she finished hers. Or they would help with my homework; that was a
mess. About all natural things Dolly was sophisticated; she had the
subterranean intelligence of a bee that knows where to find the sweetest
flower: she could tell you of a storm a day in advance, predict the fruit of
the fig tree, lead you to mushrooms and wild honey, a hidden nest of guinea
hen eggs. She looked around her, and felt what she saw. But about homework
Dolly was as ignorant as Catherine. "America must have been called America
before Columbus came. It stands to reason. Otherwise, how would he have
known it was America?" And Catherine said: "That's correct. America is an
old Indian word." Of the two, Catherine was the worst: she insisted on her
infallibility, and if you did not write down exactly what she said, she got
jumpy and spilled the coffee or something. But I never listened to her again
after what she said about Lincoln: that he was part Negro and part Indian
and only a speck white. Even I knew this was not true. But I am under
special obligation to Catherine; if it had not been for her who knows
whether I would have grown to ordinary human size? At fourteen I was not
much bigger than Biddy Skinner, and people told how he'd had offers from a
circus. Catherine said don't worry yourself honey, all you need is a little
stretching. She pulled at my arms, legs, tugged at my head as though it were
an apple latched to an unyielding bough. But it's the truth that within two
years she'd stretched me from four feet nine to five feet seven, and I can
prove it by the breadknife knotches on the pantry door, for even now when so
much has gone, when there is only wind in the stove and winter in the
kitchen, those growing-up scars are still there, a testimony.
Despite the generally beneficial effect Dolly's medicine appeared to
have on those who sent for it, letters once in a while came saying Dear Miss
Talbo we won't be needing any more dropsy cure on account of poor Cousin
Belle (or whoever) passed away last week bless her soul. Then the kitchen
was a mournful place; with folded hands and nodding heads my two friends
bleakly recalled the circumstances of the case, and well, Catherine would
say, we did the best we could Dollyheart, but the good Lord had other
notions. Verena, too, could make the kitchen sad, as she was always
introducing a new rule or enforcing an old one: do, don't, stop, start: it
was as though we were clocks she kept an eye on to see that our time jibed
with her own, and woe if we were ten minutes fast, an hour slow: Verena went
off like a cuckoo. That One! said Catherine, and Dolly would go hush now!
hush now! as though to quiet not Catherine but a mutinous inner whispering.
Verena in her heart wanted, I think, to come into the kitchen and be a part
of it; but she was too like a lone man in a house full of women and
children, and the only way she could make contact with us was through
assertive outbursts: Dolly, get rid of that kitten, you want to aggravate my
asthma? who left the water running in the bathroom? which one of you broke
my umbrella? Her ugly moods sifted through the house like a sour yellow mist
That One. Hush now, hush.
Once a week, Saturdays mostly, we went to River Woods. For these trips,