"C M Kornbluth - The Little Black Bag" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

which the black dog had sprung its ambush. Gravely she toddled up to Dr. Full and inspected him with
her dirty forefinger in her mouth. Dr. Full's happiness had been providentially made complete; he had
been supplied with an audience.

"Ah, my dear," he said hoarsely. And then: "Preposterous accusation. "If that's what you call evidence,' I
should have told them, 'you better stick to you doctoring.' I should have told them: 'I was here before
your County Medical Society. And the License Commissioner never proved a thing on me. So
gennulmen, doesn't it stand to reason? I appeal to you as fellow members of a great profession?'

The little girl bored, moved away, picking up one of the triangular pieces of glass to play with as she left.
Dr. Full forgot her immediately, and continued to himself earnestly: "But so help me, they couldn't prove a
thing. Hasn't a man got any rights?" He brooded over the question, of whose answer he was so sure, but
on which the Committee on Ethics of the County Medical Society had been equally certain. The winter
was creeping into his bones again, and he had no money and no more wine.

Dr. Full pretended to himself that there was a bottle of whiskey somewhere in the fearful litter of his
room. It was an old and cruel trick he played on himself when he simply had to be galvanized into getting
up and going home. He might freeze there in the alley. In his room he would be bitten by bugs and would
cough at the moldy reek from his sink, but he would not freeze and be cheated of the hundreds of bottles
of wine that he still might drink, and the thousands of hours

тАвof glowing content he still might feel. He thought about that bottle of whiskey- was it back of a
mounded heap of medical journals? No; he had looked there last time. Was it under the sink, shoved
well to the rear, behind the rusty drain? The cruel trick began to play itself out again. Yes, he told himself
with mounting excitement, yes, it might be! Your memory isn't so good nowadays, he told himself with
rueful good-fellowship. You know perfectly well you might have bought a bottle of whiskey and shoved it
behind the sink drain for a moment just like this.

The amber bottle, the crisp snap of the sealing as he cut it, the pleasurable exertion of starting the screw
cap on its threads, and then the refreshing tangs in his throat, the wannth in his stomach, the dark, dull
happy oblivion of drunkenness-they became real to him. You could have, you know! You could have! he
told himself. With the blessed conviction growing in his mind-It could have happened, you know! It could
have!-he struggled to his right knee. As he did, he heard a yelp behind him, and curiously craned his neck
around while resting. It was the little girl, who had cut her hand quite badly on her toy, the piece of glass.
Dr. Full could see the rilling bright blood down her coat, pooling at her feet.




He almost felt inclined to defer the image of the amber bottle for her, but not seriously. He knew that it
was there, shoved well to the rear under the sink, behind the rusty drain where he had hidden it. He
would have a drink and then magnanimously return to help the child. Dr. Full got to his other knee and
then his feet, and proceeded at a rapid totter down the littered alley toward his room, where he would
hunt with calm optimism at first for the bottle that was not there, then with anxiety, and then with frantic
violence. He would hurl books and dishes about before he was done looking for the amber bottle of
whiskey, and finally would beat his swollen knuckles against the brick wall until old scars on them opened
and his thick old blood oozed over his hands. Last of all, he would sit down somewhere on the floor,
whimpering, and would plunge into the abyss of purgative nightmare that was his sleep.