"Zenna Henderson - People 1 - Pilgrimage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

horrifying-threatening . . .
 All the lights in the bus flicked on and there was a sleepy stirring murmur. The scattered lights of the
outskirts of town slid past the slowing bus.
It was a small town. Lea couldn't even remember the name of it. She didn't even know which way she
turned when she went out the station door. She walked away from the bus depot, her feet swift and silent
on the cracked sidewalk, her body appreciating the swinging rhythm of the walk after the long hours of
inactivity. Her mind was still circling blindly, unnoticing, uncaring, unconcerned.
The business district died out thinly and Lea was walking up an incline. The walk leveled and after a
while she wavered into a railing. She clutched at it, waiting for a faintness to go away. She looked out
and down into darkness. "'It's a bridge!" she thought. "Over a river." Gladness flared up in her. "It's the
answer," she exulted. "This is it. After this-nothing!" She leaned her elbows on the railing, framing her chin
and cheeks with her hands, her eyes on the darkness below, a darkness so complete that not even a
ripple caught a glow from the bridge lights.
The familiar, so reasonable voice was speaking again. Pain like this should be let go of. Just a
momentary discomfort and it ends. No more breathing, no more thinking, no aching, no blind longing for
anything. Lea moved along the walk, her hand brushing the railing. "I can stand it now," she thought,
"Now that I know there is an end. I can stand to live a minute or so longer-to say good-by." Her
shoulders shook and she felt the choke of laughter in her throat. Good-by? To whom? Who'd even
notice she was gone? One ripple stilled in all a stormy sea. Let the quiet water take her breathing. Let its
impersonal kindness hide her-dissolve her-so no one would ever be able to sigh and say, That was Lea.
Oh, blessed water!
There was no reason not to. She found herself defending her action as though someone had questioned
it. "Look," she thought. "I've told you so many times. There's no reason to go on. I could stand it when
futility wrapped around me occasionally, but don't you remember? Remember the morning I sat there
dressing, one shoe off and one shoe on, and couldn't think of one good valid reason why I should put the
other shoe on? Not one reason! To finish dressing? Why? Because I had to work? Why? To earn a
living? Why? To get something to eat? Why? To keep from starving to death? Why? because you have
to live! Why? Why? Why!
"And there were no answers. And I sat there until the grayness dissolved from around me as it did on
lesser occasions. But then-" Lea's hands clutched each other and twisted painfully.
"Remember what came then? The distorted sky wrenched open and gushed forth all the horror of a
meaningless mindless universe-a reasonless existence that insisted on running on like a ! faceless clock-a
menacing nothingness that snagged the little thread of reason I was hanging onto and unraveled it and
unraveled it." Lea shuddered and her lips tightened with the effort to regain her composure. "That was
only the beginning.
"So after that the depths of futility became a refuge instead of something to run from, its negativeness
almost comfortable in contrast to the positive horror of what living has become. But I can't take either
one any more." She sagged against the railing. "And I don't have to." She pushed herself upright and
swallowed a sudden dry nausea. "The middle will be deeper," she thought. "Deep, swift, quiet, carrying
me out of this intolerable-"
And as she walked she heard a small cry somewhere in the lostness inside her. "But I could have loved
living so much! Why have I come to this pass?"
Shhh! the darkness said to the little voice. Shhh! Don't bother to think. It hurts. Haven't you found it
hurts? You need never think again or speak again or breathe again past this next inhalation ....
Lea's lungs filled slowly. The last breath! She started to slide across the concrete bridge railing into the
darkness-into finishedness-into The End.
"You don't really want to." The laughing voice caught her like a splash of water across her face.
"Besides, even if you did, you couldn't here. Maybe break a leg, but that's all.
"Break a leg?" Lea's voice was dazed and, inside, something broke and cried in disappointment, "I've
spoken again!"