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

around the mouth, replied: "Well now, he's not half so funny looking as some
I could name."
Scandalous, people said, the way Verena was carrying on with that
little Jew from Chicago: and him twenty years younger. The story that got
around was that they were up to something out in the old canning factory the
other side of town. As it developed, they were; but not what the gang at the
pool-hall thought Most any afternoon you could see Verena and Dr. Morris
Ritz walking out toward the canning factory, an abandoned blasted brick ruin
with jagged windows and sagging doors. For a generation no one had been near
it except school-kids who went there to smoke cigarettes and get naked
together. Then early in September, by way of a notice in the Courier, we
learned for the first time that Verena had bought the old canning factory;
but there was no mention as to what use she was planning to make of it.
Shortly after this, Verena told Catherine to kill two chickens as Dr. Morris
Ritz was coming to Sunday dinner.
During the years that I lived there. Dr. Morris Ritz was the only
person ever invited to dine at the house on Talbo Lane. So for many reasons
it was an occasion. Catherine and Dolly did a spring cleaning: they beat
rugs, brought china from the attic, had every room smelling of floorwax and
lemon polish. There was to be fried chicken and ham, English peas, sweet
potatoes, rolls, banana pudding, two kinds of cake and tutti-frutti ice
cream from the drugstore. Sunday noon Verena came in to look at the table:
with its sprawling centerpiece of peach-colored roses and dense fancy
stretches of silverware, it seemed set for a party of twenty; actually,
there were only two places. Verena went ahead and set two more, and Dolly,
seeing this, said weakly Well, it was all right if Collin wanted to eat at
the table, but that she was going to stay in the kitchen with Catherine.
Verena put her foot down: "Don't fool with me. Dolly. This is important.
Morris is coming here expressly to meet you. And what-is more, I'd
appreciate it if you'd hold up your head: it makes me dizzy, hanging like
that."
Dolly was scared to death: she hid in her room, and long after our
guest had arrived I had to be sent to fetch her. She was lying in the pink
bed with a wet washrag on her forehead, and Catherine was sitting beside
her. Catherine was all sleeked up, rouge on her cheeks like lollipops and
her jaws Jammed with more cotton than ever; she said, "Honey, you ought to
get up from there-you're going to ruin that pretty dress." It was a calico
dress Verena had brought from Chicago; Dolly sat up and smoothed it, then
immediately lay down again: "If Verena knew how sorry I am," she said
helplessly, and so I went and told Verena that Dolly was sick. Verena said
she'd see about that, and marched off leaving me alone in the hall with Dr.
Morris Ritz.
Oh he was a hateful thing. "So you're sixteen," he said, winking first
one, then the other of his sassy eyes. "And throwing it around, huh? Make
the old lady take you next time she goes to Chicago. Plenty of good stuff
there to throw it at." He snapped his fingers and jiggled his razde-dazzle,
dagger-sharp shoes as though keeping time to some vaudeville tune: he might
have been a tapdancer or a soda-jerk, except that he was carrying a brief
case, which suggested a more serious occupation. I wondered what kind of
doctor he was supposed to be; indeed, was on the point of asking when Verena