"Robert A. Heinlein - The unpleasant profession of Johathan Ho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

jostling and the grimy dirt and the ever-present chance of uncouth behavior; he knew that
he was not up to it at the moment. If he had to listen to the cars screaming around the
curve as they turned north toward the Loop, he suspected that he would scream, too.
He turned away suddenly and was forced to check himself abruptly, for he was
chest to chest with a man who himself was entering the stairway. He shied away. "Watch
your step, buddy," the man said, and brushed on past him.
"Sorry," Hoag muttered, but the man was already on by.
The man's tone had been brisk rather than unkind; the incident should not have
troubled Hoag, but it did. The man's dress and appearance, his very odor, upset Hoag.
Hoag knew that there was no harm in well-worn dungarees and leather windbreaker, no
lack of virtue in a face made a trifle greasy by sweat dried in place in the course of labor.
Pinned to the bill of the man's cap was an oval badge, with a serial number and some
lettering. Hoag guessed that he was a truck driver, a mechanic, a rigger, any of the
competent, muscular crafts which keep the wheels turning over. Probably a family man
as well, a fond father and a good provider, whose greatest lapse from virtue might be an
extra glass of beer and a tendency to up it a nickel on two pairs.
It was sheer childishness for Hoag to permit himself to be put off by such
appearance and to prefer a white shirt, a decent topcoat, and gloves. Yet if the man had
smelled of shaving lotion rather than sweat the encounter would not have been
distasteful.
He told himself so and told himself that he was silly and weak. Still -- could such
a coarse and brutal face really be the outward mark of warmth and sensitivity? That
shapeless blob of nose, those piggish eyes?
Never mind, he would go home in a taxi, not looking at anyone. There was a
stand just ahead, in front of the delicatessen.
"Where to?" The door of the cab was open; the hackman's voice was impersonally
insistent.
Hoag caught his eye, hesitated and changed his mind. That brutishness again --
eyes with no depth to them and a skin marred by blackheads and enlarged pores.
"Unnh...excuse me. I forgot something." He turned away quickly and stopped
abruptly, as something caught him around the waist. It was a small boy on skates who
had bumped into him. Hoag steadied himself and assumed the look of paternal kindliness
which he used to deal with children. "Whoa, there, young fellow!" He took the boy by the
shoulder and gently dislodged him.
"Maurice!" The voice screamed near his ear, shrill and senseless. It came from a
large woman, smugly fat, who had projected herself out of the door of the delicatessen.
She grabbed the boy's other arm, jerking him away and aiming a swipe at his ear with her
free hand as she did so. Hoag started to plead on the boy's behalf when he saw that the
woman was glaring at him. The youngster, seeing or sensing his mother's attitude, kicked
at Hoag.
The skate clipped him in the shin. It hurt. He hurried away with no other purpose
than to get out of sight. He turned down the first side street, his shin causing him to limp
a little, and his ears and the back of his neck burning quite as if he had indeed been
caught mistreating the brat. The side street was not much better than the street he had left.
It was not lined with shops nor dominated by the harsh steel tunnel of the elevated's
tracks, but it was solid with apartment houses, four stories high and crowded, little better
than tenements.
Poets have sung of the beauty and innocence of childhood. But it could not have
been this street, seen through Hoag's eyes, that they had in mind. The small boys seemed
rat-faced to him, sharp beyond their years, sharp and shallow and snide. The little girls