"Джон Чивер. The swimmer (Пловец, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

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John Cheever. The swimmer



It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying:
"I drank too much last night." You might have heard it whispered by the
parishioners leaving church, heard it from the lips of the priest himself,
struggling with his cassock in the vestiarium* heard it from the gold links
and the tennis courts, heard it from the wild- life preserve where the
leader of the Audubon group* was suffering from a terrible hangover. "I
drank too much," said Donald Westerhazy. "We all drank too much," said
Lucinda Merrill. "It must have been the wine," said Helen Wester- hazy. "I
drank too much of that claret."
This was at the edge of the Westerhazys' pool. The pool, fed by an artesian
well with a high iron content,* was a pale shade of green. It was a fine
day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city
seen from a dis- tance-from the bow of an approaching ship-that it might
have had a name. Lisbon.* Hackensack.* The sun was hot. Neddy Merrill sat by
the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin. He was a slender
man-he seemed to have the especial slenderness of youth-and while he was far
from young he liad slid down his banister that morning and given the bronze
backside of Aphrodite on the hall table* a smack, as he jogged toward the
smell of coffee in his dining room. He might have been compared to a sum-
mer's day,* particularly the last hours of one, and while he lacked a tennis
racket or a sail bag* the impression was definitely one of youth, sport, and
clement weather. He had been swimming and now he was breathing deeply,
stertorously as if he could gulp into his lungs the components of that
moment, the heat of the sun, the intense- ness of his pleasure. It all
seemed to flow into his chest. His own house stood in Bullet Park,* eight
miles to the south, where his four beautiful daughters would have had their
lunch and might be playing tennis. Then it occurred to him that by taking a
dogleg* to the southwest he could reach his home by water.
His life was not confining and the delight he took in this observation could
not be explained by its suggestion of escape. He seemed to see, with a
cartographer's eye, that string of swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean
stream that curved across the county.* He had made a discovery, a
contribution to modern geography; he would name the stream Lucinda after his
wife. He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool, but he was
determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of himself as a
legendary figure. The day was beautiful and it seemed to him that a long
swim might enlarge and celebrate its beauty.
He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and dove in. He had
an inexplicable contempt for men who did not hurl themselves into pools. He
swam a choppy crawl, breathing either with every stroke or every fourth
stroke and counting somewhere well in the back of his mind the one-two