"Nancy Kress - Stalking Beans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Stalking Beans
Nancy Kress
SOMETIMES I TRY TO MAKE MY WIFE ANGRY.
I CLUMP in from the dairy in boots fouled by cow dung; I
let the hearth fire die; I spill greasy mutton on the fresh
cloth Annie insists on laying each night as if we were still
gentry and not the peasants we have become. I wipe my
nose with the back of my hand, in imitation of our
neighbors. I get drunk at the alehouse. I stay away all night.
It's like fighting a pillow. All give, and feathers
everywhere. Annie's pretty face flutters into wispy dismay,
followed by wispy forgiveness. "Oh, Jack, I understand!"
she cries and falls on my neck, her curlsтАФ that but for me
would be bound in a fashionable coifтАФ filling my mouth.
"I know how hard our fall in the world is for you!" Never a
word about how hard it is for her. Never a word of anger.
Never the accusation,
You are to blame. Always, she invites me to sink into
her understanding, to lie muffled in it as in the soft beds we
once owned, to be soundlessly absorbed.
Sometimes it takes every fiber of my muscles not to hit
her.
Only when, drunk, I traded our best cow to a dwarf for
a sack of beans did Annie show a flash of the anger she
should feel by right. "YouтАж didтАж what?" she said, very
deliberately. Her pale eyes sparkled and her thin, tense
body relaxed for one glorious moment into anger. I took a
step toward her and Annie, misunderstanding, cried, "Keep
away from me!" She looked wildly around, and her eye fell
on the shelf with our one remaining book, bound in red
leather and edged with gold. She seized it and threw it at
me. She missed. It fell into the fire, and the dry pages
blazed with energy.
But she couldn't make it last. A second later her
shoulders drooped and she stared at the fire with stricken
eyes. "Oh, JackтАФI'm sorry! The book was worth more
than the cow!" Then she was on my neck, sobbing. "Oh,
Jack, I understand, I do, I know your pride has been so
badly injured by all this, I want to be a good wife to you
and understandтАж" Her hair settled into my mouth, over
my nose.
Desperate, I said, "I cast away the beans in the forest,
and vomited over them!"
"Oh, Jack, I understand! It's not your fault! You
couldn't help what happened!"
What kind of man can never help what happens to him?
I can't bring myself to touch her body, even by chance.
When one of us rolls toward the center of the sagging
mattress, I jerk away, as if touched by rot. In the darkest
part of the night, when the fire has gone out, I hear her