"Baker,_Kage_-_Katherine's_Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

She was miserably homesick, through the weeks of Indian summer. Without his football sweater Dick no longer looked much like Nelson Eddy; and he'd changed, as a son will change in his mother's house. The other illusion, about coming home to the South and having a big, loving family instead of living in boarding houses with Mother and Anne -- that was fading too.
She saw clearly enough that she'd better make Mrs. Loveland like her, but her attempts to help out were dismissed -- she didn't know how to cook. She and Mother and Anne had eaten in restaurants or heated Campbell's soup over Sterno cans in their rooms. She took on the task of feeding the chicks, but her decision to make a pet of the crippled black one earned her contempt even from Dick. She persisted; made it a separate pen, gave it special care, named it. It lived and grew, to Mrs. Loveland's disgust.
Her things came, in far too many crates, and Dick and Mr. Loveland grumbled as they stacked them in the barn. With them came the letter from Mother, and she cried as she read it. She could hear the weary patient voice so clearly, she could see Mother looking up at her over her spectacles, as term papers waited for grading.
_Beloved daughter,_
_I hope this finds you well and settling in. It may be difficult at first, as the life is not one to which you are accustomed. "I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty". Please believe, however, that I wish you happiness with all my heart._
_I have sent all your books, and some of the things from the Goldsborough house that you loved, as well as the rest of your trousseau. If there is anything else you require, I will send it along at the first opportunity as soon as you let me know what you lack._
_Your sister and I continue well. Anne is now understudy for the ingenue as well as in the chorus. I had occasion to meet Kurt Weill, the composer, who was dining at the table next to mine. His music is considered quite avant-garde but I found him to be a very nice little man, quite shy. What I have heard of his work so far impresses me mightily._
_I must go now, but send sincerest wishes for your continuing joy, and the earnest hope that you will find with Dick the domestic happiness for which I know you have always longed. It is not given to all of us, but may it be given to you._
_Your loving_
_Mother_
So she couldn't write to Mother about how miserable she was, not without seeming like a worthless failure, and worse; Mother would gloomily conclude that the shame and scandal of The Divorce had rubbed off on her children after all.
She endured. Most of her clothing was inappropriate for daily life on a farm. Under Mrs. Loveland's blank stare she was stupidly inept, burnt things while ironing them, broke things while washing them.
The warm weather ended and it rained, and in the leaking barn her books got soaked. She carried them into the house frantically, armloads spread and opened before the stove to dry, weeping as she peeled back wet pages from the color plates: the _Child's Garden of Verses _with its Maxfield Parrish illustrations, Kay Nielsen's _East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Myths and Enchantment Tales, The Volland Mother Goose, Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare. _When Mrs. Loveland saw them her jaw dropped.
"You still look at _picture books_?" she said.
* * * *
1938
The winter was mild, so she and Dick continued to sleep on the enclosed porch.
One night she dreamed that she was back at college, that Mother had left her at the entrance to the dormitory and she'd gone in to find that the building was dark, deserted. Everyone had gone home for Christmas. She turned in panic and hurried outside again, and to her horror saw Mother driving away.
She ran after the car, after its red winking taillights. She chased it for miles. There was brilliant moonlight, so bright it hurt her eyes, blue-white. She lost the car at last and stood there alone, sobbing, and then a strange little girl came to her and told her everything would be all right.
Then she woke, and found herself alone on a country road in her thin nightgown, in the terrifying silence of the night. Had she been sleepwalking? She was more than half a mile from the house. Teeth chattering, she hobbled back, and Dick did not wake when she crawled back into bed.
* * * *
By April she knew without doubt that the baby was on the way. She gave up any attempt to be a good farm wife, and nobody seemed to care. She luxuriated in her freedom; took long walks alone, now that spring had come and the dogwoods were flowering. Where the red clay road cut across the hills she imagined she'd walked into a Thomas Hart Benton painting. This was the only part of the South that was the way she'd dreamed it would be.
One afternoon she was passing a house set close to the road, and heard music: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1, to her astonishment, sounding scratched and tinny as though it were coming out of the horn of an old Victrola but still flowing magnificently on. She leaned against the split rail fence, listening, rapt. Someone was moving inside the house, through the window she saw someone dancing. Wild, free-form, arms flung out. A second later the woman pirouetted close to the window and saw her. She stopped dancing immediately.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Katherine, blushing. "I just -- well, the music was so beautiful. I love Tchaikovsky, but there aren't any classical radio stations here -- "
"I know," said the woman, pushing up the window the rest of the way and leaning out. Her face was pale and sharp, her gaze fixed. "It is an absolute purgatory for anyone of any culture. Or decent breeding. Tell me, are you a devotee of Beethoven?"
"Well, yes -- "
"Please, come in. Will you come in?" said the woman. She ducked inside and slammed the window. By the time Katherine had come reluctantly up the path, the woman was standing at the open door.
"I am Amelia DuPlessis Hickey," she said, inclining in a queenly sort of way. "I would introduce my dear husband, but he is currently traveling abroad on necessary business. Please, do come in! And you would be?"
"Katherine MacQuarrie," she replied, and then added, "Loveland."
"I see," said the woman, as the music behind her wound down to hissing silence. "Would that be of the Greenville MacQuarries? With the DeLafayette MacQuarrie who perished at Gettysburg?"
"I don't think so," said Katherine, stepping across the threshold. "I'm afraid I don't know a lot about my father's people -- "
"Ah! Well, things happen," said Mrs. Hickey graciously. "Won't you stay for tea?"
"Why, thank you," said Katherine, and recoiled as something sprang up out of a packing box beside her and screamed.
"Now, Peaseblossom, that won't do!" said Mrs. Hickey. "I really must apologize, Mrs. Loveland. Pray allow me to introduce my beautiful little geniuses: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and the baby, Mustardseed!"
She was referring to the pale and sullen children who crouched together in the corner. The two boys wore only overalls, rolled up thickly at the ankles; the girl wore a flour-sack dress. They had retreated behind what appeared to be a wooden model of the Brooklyn Bridge. From the pieces scattered on the bare floor, it seemed that they themselves had been constructing it. They were fox-faced, emaciated, staring with enormous dark eyes. A whimper from the floor drew her attention to an ashen baby waving its skinny arms from an apple box.
After a moment of appalled silence Katherine said:
"How clever. You named them after the fairies in _Midsummer Night's Dream, _I guess?"
"I adore Shakespeare. Another passion of mine. My grandfather, Zadoc DuPlessis (for we are of the Chaney County DuPlessises, you see) had the good fortune to see the immortal Junius Booth in Charleston where, I believe, he was portraying Hamlet," said Mrs. Hickey, stoking up the stove. She put a saucepan of water on the burner. Katherine looked around. The room was as filthy as a bare room can be. There were ancient books stacked everywhere, piled against the walls, and three crates of phonograph records. In the corner by the window was, yes, a Victrola with its morning-glory trumpet.
"Gosh, how lucky," said Katherine. There were no chairs, so she wandered over to the children. "How are you all today?"
They shrank back. The little girl bared her teeth.
"I do beg your pardon," said Mrs. Hickey, coming swiftly to her side. "They are terribly shy with strangers. We have, alas, nearly no social life. Now, you come out here and be ladies and gentlemen for our caller! Perhaps then we'll go out for a Co-colee."
The children blinked and scrambled out, lining up awkwardly against the wall.
"They do love Coca-Cola," said Mrs. Hickey.
It was two hours before Katherine could get away. Mrs. Hickey told her life story: her family had once owned most of three counties, but of course The War had altered their circumstances, though not so grievously she hadn't been raised with the best of everything and taught to appreciate all that was exquisite in the arts.
And she'd given it all up for love; so now she rusticated here, teaching her brilliant offspring herself. The boys were clearly destined to be engineers, why, they'd made that bridge themselves from nothing more than slatwood, all you had to do was show them a picture and they'd build anything! And little Peaseblossom had inherited a love of great literature, she just devoured books. The children listened to all this silent and expressionless.
Later, back at the Lovelands', Katherine went out to feed the chickens. She picked up the little black hen and buried her face in its feathers, feeling her hot tears spilling, and prayed that she wouldn't turn out like Mrs. Hickey.
* * * *
Summer came and went, and Autumn arrived with cornshocks and pumpkins, and in the early hours of October 30 Katherine went into labor. Dick joked about the baby being a little Halloween goblin as he drove her to the hospital in town. She wasn't laughing by the time they got to the hospital. The pains were terrible.
The nurses got her into a room and Dick told her he had to get back, that he'd come see her that evening. She begged him to tell the nurses to give her something for the pain. The head nurse came in and told her they were having difficulty locating Dr. Jackson; as soon as they heard from him they'd give her something.
All the interminable morning and afternoon, they were unable to find him, had no idea where he might be, and at last they gave Katherine drugs anyway. The relief was blissful, unbelievable, and she received with floaty equanimity the news that the baby was turned wrong. "Well, just turn it around," she told them, smiling.