"Джек Керуак. Big Sur (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автораwith the boys and still once in a while that funny little smile of joy came
back as I drank, and melted away again because now the smile itself was a reminder of death, the news made me go mad anyway at the end of the three week binge, creeping up on me finally on that terrible day of St Carolyn By The Sea as I can also call it - All, all confusing till I explain. Meanwhile anyway poor Monsanto a man of letters wants to enjoy big new swappings with me about writing and what everybody's doing, and then Fagan comes into the store (downstairs to Monsanto's old rolltop desk making me also feel chagrin because it always was the ambition of my youth to end up a kind of literary businessman with a rolltop desk, combining my father's image with the image of myself as a writer, which Monsanto without even thinking about it has accomplished at the drop of a hat) - Monsanto with his husky shoulders, big blue eyes, twinkling rosy skin, that perpetual smile of his that earned him the name Smiler in college and a smile you often wondered "Is it real? " until you realized if Monsanto should ever stop using that smile how could the world go on anyway - It was that kind of smile too inseparable from him to be believably allowed to disappear - Words words words but he is a grand guy as I'll show and now with real manly sympathy he really felt I should not go on big binges if I felt so bad, "At any rate, " sez he, "you can go back a little later huh" - "Okay Lorry" - "Did you write anything? " - "I wrote the sounds of the sea, I'll tell you all about it - It was the most happy three weeks of my life dammit and now this has to happen, poor little Tyke - You should have seen him a big beautiful yellow Persian the kind they call calico" - "Well you still have my dog Homer, and how was Alf out there? " - "Alf the Sacred Burro, he ha, almost scarey, but I fed himapples and shredded wheat and everything" (and animals are so sad and patient I thought as I remembered Tyke's eyes and Alf's eyes, ah death, and to think this strange scandalous death comes also to human beings, yea to Smiler even, poor Smiler, and poor Homer his dog, and all of us) - I'm also depressed because I know how horrible my mother now feels all alone without her little chum in the house back there three thousand miles (and indeed by Jesus it turns out later some silly beatniks trying to see me broke the windowpane in the front door trying to get in and scared her so much she barricaded the door with furniture all the rest of that summer). But there's old Ben Fagan puffing and chuckling over his pipe so what the hell, why bother grownup men and poets at that with your own troubles - So Ben and I and his chum Jonesy also a chuckly pipesmoker go out to the bar (Mike's Place) and sip a few beers, at first I vow I'm not going to get drunk after all, we even go out to the park to have a long talk in the warm sun that always turns to delightful cool foggy dusk in that town of towns - We're sitting in the park of the big Italian white church watching kids play and people go by, for some reason I'm bemused by the sight of a blonde woman hurrying somewhere "Where's she going? does she have a secret sailor lover? is she only going to finish her typing afterhours in the office? what if we knew Ben what every one of these people goin by is headed for, some door, some restaurant, some secret romance" - "You sound like you stored up a lot of energy and innerest in life in those woods" - And Ben knows that for sure because he's been months in the wilderness too, alone - Old Ben, much |
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