"Bukowski, Charles - Short Stories Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bukowski Charles)

Charles Bukowski. Short stories collection


Confession of a Coward
God, she thought lying in bed naked and re-reading Aldington's Portrait
of a Genius, But... he's an impostor! Not D.H. Lawrence, but her husband-
Henry-with his bauble of a belly and all the hair he never combed and the
way he stood around in his shorts, and the way he stood naked before the
window like an Arabian and howled; and he told her that he was turning into
a toad and that he wanted to buy a Buddha and that he wanted to be old and
drown in the sea, and that he was going to grow a beard and that he felt as
if he was turning into a woman.
And Henry was poor, poor and worthless and miserable and sick. And he
wanted to join the Mahler Society. His breath was bad, his father was insane
and his mother was dying of cancer.
And besides all this, the weather was hot, hot as hell.
"I've got a new system," he said. "All I need is four or five grand.
It's a matter of investment. We could travel from track to track in a
trailer."
She felt like saying something blas+ like, "We don't have four or five
grand," but it didn't come out. Nothing came out: all the doors were closed
and all the windows were down, and it was in the middle of the desert-not
even vultures-and they were about to drop the Bomb. She should have stayed
in Texas, she should have stayed with Papa-this man is a goon, a gunnysack,
a gutless no-nothing in a world of doers. He hides behind symphonies and
poetic fancies; a weak and listless soul.
"Are you going to take me to the museum?" she asked.
"Why?"
"They're having an Art Exhibit."
"I know."
"Well, don't you want to see Van Gogh?"
"To hell with Van Gogh! What's Van Gogh to me?"
The doors closed again and she couldn't think of an answer.
"I don't like museums," he continued. "I don't like museum-people."
The fan was going but it was a small apartment and the heat held as if
enclosed in a kettle.
"In fact," he said, peeling off his T-shirt and standing in just his
shorts, "I don't like any kind of people."
Amazingly, he had hair on his chest.
"In fact," he continued, pulling his shorts down and over the end of
one foot, "I'm going to write a book some day and call it Confession of a
Coward."
The doorbell rang like a rape, or the tearing of ripe flesh.
"Jesus Christ!" he said like something trapped.
She jumped off the bed, looking very white and unpeeled. Like a candy
banana. Aldington and D.H. Lawrence and Taos fell to the floor.
She ran to the closet and began stuffing herself inside the flying
cloth of female necessaries.
"Never mind the clothes," he said.