"Dick,_Philip_K._Confessions of a Crap Artist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

At the doorway, Elsie began to scream. Bonnie appeared -- he saw her white, wide-eyed face -- but she said nothing; she stood gripping the doorknob... she had been in the bedroom. "Mind your own business," he yelled at the children. "Go on," he yelled. "Get out of here." He ran a few steps toward them; Bonnie remained where she was, but the baby turned and fled.
Kneeling down, he got a good grip on his wife and lifted her to a sitting position. A ceramic ashtray that she had made had broken; he began collecting the pieces with his left hand, supporting her with his right. She slumped against him, her eyes open, her mouth slack; she seemed to be glaring down at the floor, her forehead wrinkled, as if she were trying to make sense of what had happened. Presently she unbuttoned two buttons of her shirt and put her hand inside, to stroke her chest. But she was too dazed to talk.
He said, by way of explanation, "You know how I feel about getting that damn stuff. Why can't you get it yourself? Why do I have to go down and get it?"
Her head swung upward, until she gazed directly at him. The dark color of her eyes reminded him of that in his children's eyes: the same enlargement, the depth. They, all of them, reacted by this floating backward from him, this flying further and further along a line that he could not imagine or follow. All three of them together... and he, left out. Facing only this outer surface. Where had they gone? Off to commune and confer. Accusation shining at him... he heard nothing, but saw very well. Even the walls had eyes.
And then she got up and past him, not easily, but with a squeezing push of her hand; her fingers thrust him away, toppling him. In motion she had terrific strength. She bowled him over in order to get away. Kicked him aside, just to spring up. Heels, hands -- she walked over him and was gone, across the room, not moving lightly but striking the asphalt tile floor with the soles of her feet, impacting so that she gained good traction -- she could not afford to fall. At the door she made a mistake with the knob; she had a moment in which she could not go any further.
At once he was after her, talking all the way. "Where are you going?" No reply could be expected; he did not even wait. "You have to admit you know how I feel. I'll bet you think I stopped off and had a couple of drinks at the Western. Well, I've got news for you."
By then she had the door open. Down the cypress needle path she went, only her back visible to him, her hair, shoulders, belt, legs and heels. Showed me her heels, he thought. She got to the car, her Buick parked in the garage. Standing in the doorway he watched her back out. God, how fast she can go backward in that car... the long gray Buick off down the driveway, its nose, its grill and headlights facing him. Through the open gate, onto the road. Which way? Toward the sheriff's house? She's going to turn me in, he thought. I deserve it. Felony wife-beating.
The Buick rolled out of sight, leaving exhaust smoke hanging. The noise of its engine remained audible to him; he pictured it going along the narrow road, turning this way and that, both car and road turning together; she knew the road so well that she would never go off, not even in the worst fog. What a really superb driver, he thought. I take off my hat to her.
Well, she'll either come back with Sheriff Chisholm or she'll cool off.
But now he saw something he did not expect: the Buick reappeared, rolling into the driveway, narrowly missing the gate. Christ! The Buick rolled up and halted directly ahead of him. Fay jumped out and came toward him.
"How come you're back?" he said, speaking as matter-of-factly as possible.
Fay said, "I don't want to leave the kids here with you."
"Hell," he said, dumbfounded.
"May I take them?" she said, facing him. "Do you mind?" Her words poured out briskly.
"Suit yourself," he said, having trouble speaking. "For how long did you mean? Just for right now?"
"I don't know," she said.
"I think we ought to be able to talk this over," he said. "We should be able to sit down about it. Let's go on inside. Okay?"
Passing by him, into the house, Fay said, "Do you mind if I try to calm the children?" She disappeared beyond the edge of the kitchen cabinets; presently he heard her calling the girls, somewhere off in the bedroom area of the house.
"You don't have to worry about any more rough stuff," he said, following after her.
"What?" she said, from within one of the bathrooms, hers, which was off their bedroom and which the girls used occasionally.
"That was something I had to get out of my system," he said, blocking the doorway as she started out of the bathroom.
Fay said, "Did the girls go outside?"
"Very possibly," he said.
"Would you mind letting me past?" Her voice showed the strain she felt. And, he saw, she held her hand inside her shirt, against her chest. "I think you cracked a rib," she said, breathing through her mouth. "I can hardly get my breath." But her manner was calm. She had gotten complete control of herself; he saw that she was not afraid of him, only wary. That perfect wariness of hers... the quickness of her responses. But she had let him haul off and let fly -- she hadn't been wary enough. So, he thought, she's not such a hot specimen after all. If she's in such darn good physical shape -- if those exercises she takes in the morning are worth doing -- she should have been able to block my right. Of course, he thought, she's pretty good at tennis and golf and ping pong... so she's okay. And she keeps her figure better than any of the other women up here... I'll bet she's got the best figure in the whole Marin County PTA.

While Fay found and comforted the children, he roamed about the house, looking for something to do. He carried a pasteboard carton of trash out to the incinerator and set fire to it. Then, taking a screwdriver from the workshop, he tightened up the large brass screws that held the strap to her new leather purse... the screws came loose from time to time, dumping one end of her purse at odd moments. Anything else? he asked himself, pausing.
In the living room the radio had stopped playing classical music and had started on some dinner jazz. So he went to find another station. And then, while he tuned the dial, he began thinking about dinner. It occurred to him to go into the kitchen and see how things were going.
He found that he had interrupted her while she was making the salad. A half-opened can of anchovies lay on the sideboard, beside a head of lettuce, tomatoes, and a green pepper. On the electric range -- a wall installation that he had supervised -- a pot of water boiled. He turned the knob from _hi_ to _sim_. Picking up a paring knife, he began to peel an avocado... Fay had never been good at peeling avocados -- she was too impatient. He always did that job himself.


(four)

In the spring of 1958 my older brother Jack, who was living in Seville, California, and was then thirty-three, stole a can of chocolate-covered ants from a supermarket and was caught by the store manager and turned over to the police.
We drove down from Marin County, my husband and I, to make sure that he had gotten through it all right.
The police had let him go; the store hadn't pressed charges, although they had made him sign a statement admitting that he had stolen the ants. Their idea was that he would never dare steal a can of ants from them again, since, if he were caught a second time, his signed statement would put him in the city jail. It was a horse-trading deal; he got to go home -- which was all he would be thinking about, with his limited brain -- and the store could count on his absence from then on -- he would not even dare be seen in the store, or even rooting around the empty orange crates in the rear by the loading dock.
For several months Jack had rented a room on Oil Street near Tyler, which is in the colored district of Seville, although colored or not it is one of the few interesting parts of the town. There are little dried-up stores twenty to a block that set out on the sidewalk every morning a stack of bedsprings and galvanized iron tubs and hunting knives. Always, when we were in our teens, we used to imagine that every store was a front for something. The rent there is cheap, too, and with that loathesome little job of his at that crooked tire outfit, plus his expenses for clothes and going out with his pals, he has always had to live in such places.
We parked in a 25 cent an hour lot and jaywalked across the street, among the yellow busses, to the rooming house. It made Charley nervous to be down in such a district; he kept peering at his trousers to see if he had walked on anything -- obviously psychological, because in his work he is always up to his ass in metal filings and sparks and grease. The pavement was covered with gum wrappers and spit and dog urine and old contraceptives, and Charley got that grim disapproving Protestant expression.
"Just make sure you wash your hands after we leave," I said.
"Can you get venereal disease from lamp posts or mail boxes?" Charley asked me.
"You can if you have that sort of mind," I said.
Upstairs in the damp, dark hall we rapped on Jack's door. I had been there only once before, but I recognized his room by the great stain on the ceiling, probably from an ancient overflowed toilet.
"You suppose he thought they were a delicacy?" Charley asked me. "Or did he disapprove of a supermarket stocking ants?"
I said, "You know he's always loved animals."
From within the room we could hear stirrings, as if Jack had been in bed. The time was one-thirty in the afternoon. The door did not open, however, and presently the stirrings died down.
"It's Fay," I said, close to the door.
A pause, and then the door was unlocked.
The room was neat, as it of course would have to be if Jack were to live there. Everything was clean; all objects were stacked in order, where he could find them, and of course he had carried this to the shopping newses: he had a pile of them, opened and flattened, stacked by the window. He saved everything, especially tinfoil and string. The bed had been turned back, to air it, and he seated himself on the exposed sheets. Placing his hands on his knees he gazed up at us.
He had, because of this crisis, reverted to wearing the clothes that, as a child, he had worn around the house. Here again was the pair of brown corduroy slacks that our mother had picked out for him back in the early 'forties. And he had on a blue cotton shirt -- clean, but so repeatedly washed that it had turned white. The collar was almost nothing but threads and all the buttons were off it. He had fastened the front together with paperclips.
"You poop," I said.
Roaming around, Charley said, "Why do you save all this junk?" He had come upon a table covered with small washed rocks.