"Kuttner, Henry - The Children's Hour UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

THE CHILDRENТS HOUR:
Henry Kutt.ner
He sat on a bench in the little grove in front of Administration, watching the clock over the provost marshalТs door jerk its long hand toward seven. Presently, when the hour struck, he would be going in that door, and up one flight of stairs, and down the corridor to the room where Lieutenant Dyke sat waiting, as he had waited so many evenings before.
Tonight might be the night that would end it. Lessing thought perhaps it would be. Something was stirring behind
the intangible locks of his mind, and tonight that door might open which had resisted the skilled manipulations of hypnosis for so long. The door might swing wide tonight at last, and let the secret out which not even Lessing knew.
Lessing was a good hypnosis subject. Lieutenant Dyke had discovered that early in their class experiments in psychonamicsЧthat astonishing means by which a soldier can learn to desensitize his own body and feel neither pain nor hunger, when pain or hunger would otherwise be intolerable. In the process of learning, dim and untrodden corridors of the miiqd are sometimes laid bare. But seldom in any mind was such a thing to be encountered as that block in LessingТs.
He responded well to all the usual tests. Immobility and desensitization, the trick of warping the balance center, the familiar routine of posthypnotic commands, all these succeeded without a hitch, as they had suceeded with so many others. But in LessingТs brain one barrier stood up immovable. Three months in his life were locked and sealed behind adamant wallsЧunder hypnosis.
That was the strangest thing of all, for waking, he remembered those three months clearly. Under hypnosisЧthey did not exist. Under hypnosis he had no recollection that in June, July and August of two years ago he had been living a perfectly normal existence. He was in New York, a civilian then, working in an advertising office and living the patterned life that still existed for a time after December 7, 1941. Nothing had happened to make his hypnotized memory blank out with such stubborn vehemence when asked to remember.
And so began the long sessions of searching, probing, delicately manipulating LessingТs mind as a complicated machine is readjusted, or as muscles wasted and atrophied are gently massaged back to life.
Up to now, the dam had resisted. TonightЧ The first stroke of seven vibrated upon the evening air.
Lessirig got up slowly, conscious of an unaccustomed touch of panic in his mind. This was the night, he thought. There was a stirring deep down in the roots of his subconscious. He would know the truth tonightЧhe would look again upon the memory his mind had refused to retainЧand he was illogically just a little afraid to face it. He had no idea why.
In the doorway he paused for a moment, looking back. Only the twilight was out there, gathering luminously over the camp, blurring the outlines of barracks, the bulk of the hospital distantly rising. Somewhere a train hooted toward
New York an hour away. New York that held mysteriously the memory his mind rejected.

УGood evening, sergeant,Ф said Lieutenant Dyke, looking up from behind his desk.
Lessing looked at him a little uneasily. Dyke was a small, tight, blond man, sharp with nervous vigor, put together with taut wires. He had shown intense interest in the phenomenon of LessingТs memory, and Lessing had felt a bewildered sort of gratitude until this moment. Now he was not sure.
УEvening, sir,Ф he said automatically.
УSit down. Cigarette? Nervous, Lessing?Ф
УI donТt know.Ф He took the cigarette without knowing he had done it. This was the flood tide, he thought, and he had no mind for any other awareness than that. The dam was beginning to crumble, and behind it what flood waters, pent up in darkness, waited for release? There were almost inaudible little clicks in his mind as the bolts subconsciously, automatically clicked open. Conditioned reflex by -now. His brain, responsive to DykeТs hypnotic probing, was preparing itself.
A bare light swung above DykeТs desk. His eyes turned to it, and everything else began to darken. This, too, was reflexive by now. Dyke, behind him, traced a finger back along his scalp. And Lessing went under very quickly. He heard DykeТs voice, and that changed from a sound to a strong, even suction pulling somewhere in darkness. An indefinable force that drew, and guided as it drew. The dam began to go almost at once. The gates of memory quivered, and Lessing was afraid.
УGo back. Go back. Back to the summer of С41. Summer. You are in New York. When I count ten you will remember. One. TwoЧФ At ten DykeТs voice dropped.
Then again. And again. Until the long, difficult preparation for this moment proved itself, and James Lessing went back through time and.
And saw a face, white against the dark, blazing like a flame in the emptiness of the swift temporal current. Whose face? He did not know, but he knew there was a shadow behind it, darker than the blackness, shapeless and watchful.
The shadow grew, looming, leaning over him. A tinkling rhythm beat out. Words fitted themselves to it.
Between the dark and the daylight
When the night is beginning to lower
Comes a pause in the dayТs occupation
That is known as the childrenТs hourЧ

It meant nothing. He groped through blindness, searching
for reason.
And then it began to come back to him, the thing he had forgotten. A minor thing, something hardly worth remembering, surely. Something . . . no, someoneЧ And not quite so minor, after all. Someone rather important. Someone he had met casually in a place he could not quite rememberЧa bar, or in the park, or at a party somewhereЧvery casually. SomeoneЧyes, it had been in the parkЧbut who? He could remember now a flickering of green around them, leaves twinkling in sunshine and grass underfoot. A fountain where they had stopped to drink. He could remember the water, clear and colorless, trickling musically away, but he could not quite remember who had . . . who it wasЧ Everything else was coming clear except the person. Forgetfulness clung stubbornly around that figure at his side. That slender figure, smaller than himselfЧdark? Fair? No, dark.
УStabbed by a white wenchТs black eyes.Ф
He caught his breath suddenly, in a violent physical wrench, as memory deluged back with appalling violence. Clarissa! How could he have forgotten? How could he? How could even amnesia have erased her? He sat stunned, the shining flood all but blinding him. And somewhere under that pouring brightnчss was griefЧbut he would not let that break the surface yet.
Clarissa. What words were there to get all that vivid color into speech? When the barrier went down, it collapsed with such a blast of sudden glory that . . . thatЧ They had walked in the park above the Hudson, blue water marbled with deeper blue and twinkling in the sun, sliding away below them. Clear water in the fountain, tinkling down over pebbles wet and brown in the dappled shadows beneath the trees. And everything as vivid at CreationТs first morning, because of Clarissa walking beside him under the shining leaves. ClarissaЧand he had forgotten.
It was like looking back into a world a little brighter than human. Everything shone, everything glistened, every sound was sweeter and clearer; there was a sort of glory over all he saw and felt and heard. Childhood had been like that,
when the newness of the world invested every commonplace with particular glamour. GlamourЧyes, that was the word for Clarissa.
Not sveltness and slickness, but glamour, the old word for enchantment. When he was with her it had been like stepping back into childhood and seeing everything with an almost intolerable fresh clarity.
But as for Clarissa herselfЧwho had she been? What had she looked like? And above all, how could he have forgotten?
He groped backward into the shapeless fog of the past. What phrase was it that had suddenly ripped the curtaiin? Shock had all but erased it from his mind. It was like a lightning-flash forking through the darkness and vanishing again. DarknessЧblacknessЧblack eyesЧyes, that was it. УStabbed by a white wenchТs black eyes.Ф A quotation, of course, but from what? More groping. Shakespeare? Yes, УRomeo and Juliet.Ф Why, wasnТt that whatЧMercutio?Чhad said to Romeo about RomeoТs first love? The girl he loved before he met Juliet. The girl he forgot so completelyЧ -
Forgot!
Lessing sat back in his chair, letting everything else slide away for a moment in sheer amazement at the complexity of the subconscious. Something had wiped out all recollection of Clarissa from level below level of his memory, but far down in the dark, memory had clung on, disguised, distorted; hiding behind analogy and allegory, behind a phrase written by. a wandering playwright three hundred years before.
So it had been impossible, after all, to erase Clarissa entirely from his mind. She had struck so deep, she had glowed so vividly, that nothing at all could quite smudge her out. And yet only Lieutenant DykeТs skill and the chance unburial of a phrase had resurrected the memory. (For one appalling moment he wondered with a shaken mind what other memories lay hidden and shivering behind other allegorical words and phrases and innocent pictures, deep in the submarine
gulfs.) -
So he had defeated them after allЧthe bodiless, voiceless people who had stood between them. The jealous godЧthe shadowy guardiansЧ For a moment the glare of showering gold flashed in his mindТs eye blindingly. He was, in that one shutter-flash, aware of strangers in rich garments moving against confused and unfamiliar backgrounds. Then the door slammed in his face again and he sat there blinking.
Them? Defeated them? Who? He had no idea. Even in that
one magical glimpse before memory blanked out again he thought he had not been sure who they were. That much, perhaps, had been a mystery never solved. But somewhere back in the darkness of his mind incredible things lay hidden. Gods and showering gold, and people in bright clothing that blew upon a wind notЧsurely notЧof this earthЧ Bright, brightЧbrighten than normal eyes ever perceive
the world. That was Clarissa and all that surrounded her. It had been a stronger glamour than the sheer enchantment of first love. He felt sure about that now. He who walked with Clarissa shared actual magic that shed a luster on all they passed. Lovely Clarissa, glorious world as clearЧas clarissima indeedЧas a childТs new, shining world. But between himself and her, the shadowy peopleЧ Wait. ClarissaТsЧaunt? Had there been an . . . an aunt?
A tall, dark, silent woman who damped the glory whenever she was near? He could not remember her face; she was no more than a shadow behind ClarissaТs shining presence, a faceless, voiceless nonentity glowering in the background.
His memory faltered, and into the gap flowed the despair which he had been fighting subconsciously since the lustrous flood first broke upon him. Clarissa, ClanssaЧwhere was she now, with the glory around her?