"Bradbury, Ray - The Illustrated Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

This night was no different from a thousand others in our time. We would wake nights and feel the cool air turn hot, feel the fire in the wind, or see the walls burned a bright color for an instant, and then we knew his rocket was over our houseЧhis rocket, and the oak trees swaying from the concussion. And I would lie there, eyes wide, panting, and mother in her room. Her voice would come to me over the interroom radio:

УDid you feel it?Ф

And I would answer, УThat was him, all right.Ф

That was my fatherТs ship passing over our town, a small town where space rockets never came, and we would lie awake for the next two hours, thinking, УNow DadТs landed in Springfield, now heТs on the tarmac, now heТs signing the papers, now heТs in the helicopter, now heТs over the river, now the hills, now heТs settling the helicopter in at the little airport at Green Village here. . . . And the night would be half over when, in our separate cool beds, Mother and I would be listening, listening. УNow heТs walking down Bell Street. He always walks . . . never takes a cab . . . now across the park, now turning the corner of Oakhurst and now . . .

I lifted my head from my pillow. Far down the street, coming closer and closer, smartly, quickly, brisklyЧfootsteps. Now turning in at our house, up the porch steps. And we were both smiling in the cool darkness, Mom and I, when we heard the front door open in recognition, speak a quiet word of welcome, and shut downstairs. . . .

Three hours later I turned the brass knob to their room quietly, holding my breath, balancing in a darkness as big as the space between the planets, my hand out to reach the small black case at the foot of my parentsТ sleeping bed. Taking it, I ran silently to my room, thinking, He wonТt tell me, he doesnТt want me to know.

And from the opened case spilled his black uniform, like a black nebula, stars glittering here or there, distantly, in the material. I kneaded the dark stuff in my warm hands; I smelled the planet Mars, an iron smell, and the planet Venus, a green ivy smell, and the planet Mercury, a scent of sulphur and fire; and I could smell the milky moon and the hardness of stars. I pushed the uniform into a centrifuge machine IТd built in my ninth-grade shop that year, set it whirling. Soon a fine powder precipitated into a retort. This I slid under a microscope. And while my parents slept unaware, and while our house was asleep, all the automatic bakers and servers and robot cleaners in an electric slumber, I stared down upon brilliant motes of meteor dust, comet tail, and loam from far Jupiter glistening like worlds themselves which drew me down the tube a billion miles into space, at terrific accelerations.

At dawn, exhausted with my journey and fearful of discovery, I returned the boxed uniform to their sleeping room.

Then I slept, only to waken at the sound of the horn of the dry-cleaning car which stopped in the yard below. They took the black uniform box with them. ItТs good I didnТt wait, I thought. For the uniform would be back in an hour, clean of all its destiny and travel.

I slept again, with the little vial of magical dust in my pajama pocket, over my beating heart.



When I came downstairs, there was Dad at the breakfast table, biting into his toast. УSleep good, Doug?Ф he said, as if he had been here all the time, and hadnТt been gone for three months.

УAll right,Ф I said.

УToast?Ф

He pressed a button and the breakfast table made me four pieces, golden brown.

I remember my father that afternoon, digging and digging in the garden, like an animal after something, it seemed. There he was with his long dark arms moving swiftly, planting, tamping, fixing, cutting, pruning, his dark face always down to the soil, his eyes always down to what he was doing, never up to the sky, never looking at me, or Mother, even, unless we knelt with him to feel the earth soak up through the overalls at our knees, to put our hands into the black dirt and not look at the bright, crazy sky. Then he would glance to either side, to Mother or me, and give us a gentle wink, and go on, bent down, face down, the sky staring at his back.



That night we sat on the mechanical porch swing which swung us and blew a wind upon us and sang to us. It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink, and we held the cold glasses in our hands, and Dad read the stereo-newspapers inserted into the special hat you put on your head and which turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three times in succession. Dad smoked cigarettes and told me about how it was when he was a boy in the year 1997. After a while he said, as he had always said, УWhy arenТt you out playing kick-the-can, Doug?Ф

I didnТt say anything, but Mom said, УHe does, on nights when youТre not here.Ф

Dad looked at me and then, for the first time that day, at the sky. Mother always watched him when he glanced at the stars. The first day and night when he got home he wouldnТt look at the sky much. I thought about him gardening and gardening so furiously, his face almost driven into the earth. But the second night he looked at the stars a little more. Mother wasnТt afraid of the sky in the day so much, but it was the night stars that she wanted to turn off, and sometimes I could almost see her reaching for a switch in her mind, but never finding it. And by the third night maybe DadТd be out here on the porch until Сway after we were all ready for bed, and then IТd hear Mom call him in, almost like she called me from the street at times. And then I would hear Dad fitting the electric-eye door lock in place, with a sigh. And the next morning at breakfast IТd glance down and see his little black case near his feet as he buttered his toast and Mother slept late.

УWell, be seeing you, Doug,Ф heТd say, and weТd shake hands.

УIn about three months?Ф

УRight.Ф

And heТd walk away down the street, not taking a helicopter or beetle or bus, just walking with his uniform hidden in his small underarm case; he didnТt want anyone to think he was vain about being a Rocket Man.

Mother would come out to eat breakfast, one piece of dry toast, about an hour later.