"John Kessel - Buffalo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

Keun. Have
his mistakes followed him across the Atlantic to undermine
his purpose? Does Darrow think him a jumped-up cockney? A
moment of doubt overwhelms him. In the end, the future
depends as much on the open mindedness of men like Darrow as
it does on a reorganization of society. What good is a
guild of samurai if no one arises to take the job?

Wells doesn't like the trend of these thoughts. If human
nature lets him down, then his whole life has been a waste.

But he's seen the president. He's seen those workers on
the road. Those men climbing the trees risk their lives
without complaining, for minimal pay. It's easy to think of
them as stupid or desperate or simply young, but it's also
possible to give them credit for dedication to their work.
They don't seem to be ridden by the desire to grub and
clutch that capitalism rewards; if you look at it properly
that may be the explanation for their ending up wards of the
state. And is Wells any better? If he hadn't got an
education he would have ended up a miserable draper's
assistant.

Wells is due to leave for New York Sunday. Saturday
night finds him sitting in his room, trying to write, after
a solitary dinner in the New Willard. Another bottle of
wine, or his age, has stirred something in Wells, and
despite his rationalizations he finds himself near despair.
Moura has rejected him. He needs the soft, supportive
embrace of a lover, but instead he has this stuffy hotel
room in a heat wave.

He remembers writing _ T_ h_ e _ T_ i_ m_ e _ M_ a_ c_ h_ i_ n_ e, he
and Jane
living in rented rooms in Sevenoaks with her ailing mother,
worried about money, about whether the landlady would put
them out. In the drawer of the dresser was a writ from the
 court that refused to grant him a divorce from his wife
Isabel. He remembers a warm night, late in August--much
like this one--sitting up late after Jane and her mother
went to bed, writing at the round table before the open
window, under the light of a parafin lamp. One part of his
mind was caught up in the rush of creation, burning,
following the Time Traveler back to the sphinx, pursued by
the Morlocks, only to discover that his machine is gone and
he is trapped without escape from his desperate circumstances.
At the same moment he could hear the landlady, out in the
garden, fully aware that he could hear her, complaining to
the neighbor about his and Jane's scandalous habits. On the
one side, the petty conventions of a crabbed world; on the