"George R. R. Martin - Portraits of His Children" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"She remembered it," Cantling said. "She remembered it all those years. Helen got custody, they moved
away, I didn't see her much, but Michelle always remembered, and when she was all grown up, after
Helen was gone and Michelle was on her own, there was this time she got hurt, and IтАж IтАж"

"Yes," said Leighton. "I know."
The police were the ones that phoned him. Detective Joyce Brennan, that was her name, he would never
forget that name. "Mister Cantling?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Mister Richard Cantling?"

"Yes," he said. "Richard Cantling the writer." He had gotten strange calls before. "What can I do for
you?"

She identified herself. "You'll have to come down to the hospital," she said to him. "It's your daughter,
Mister Cantling. I'm afraid she's been assaulted."

He hated evasion, hated euphemism. Cantling's characters never passed away, they died; they never
broke wind, they farted. And Richard Cantling's daughterтАж "Assaulted?" he said. "Do you mean she's
been assaulted or do you mean she's been raped?"

There was a silence on the other end of the line. "Raped," she said at last. "She's been raped, Mister
Cantling."

"I'll be right down," he said.

She had in fact been raped repeatedly and brutally. Michelle had been as stubborn as Helen, as stubborn
as Cantling himself. She wouldn't take his money, wouldn't take his advice, wouldn't take the help he
offered her through his contacts in publishing. She was going to make it on her own. She waitressed in a
coffeehouse in the Village, and lived in a large, drafty, and run-down warehouse loft down by the docks.
It was a terrible neighborhood, a dangerous neighborhood, and Cantling had told her so a hundred times,
but Michelle would not listen. She would not even let him pay to install good locks and a security system.
It had been very bad. The man had broken in before dawn on a Friday morning. Michelle was alone. He
had ripped the phone from the wall and held her prisoner there through Monday night. Finally one of the
busboys from the coffeehouse had gotten worried and come by, and the rapist had left by the fire escape.

When they let him see her, her face was a huge purple bruise. She had burn marks all over her, where the
man had used his cigarette, and three of her ribs were broken. She was far beyond hysteria. She
screamed when they tried to touch her; doctors, nurses, it didn't matter, she screamed as soon as they
got near. But she let Cantling sit on the edge of her bed, and take her in his arms, and hold her. She cried
for hours, cried until there were no more tears in her. Once she called him "Daddy," in a choked sob. It
was the only word she spoke; she seemed to have lost the capacity for speech. Finally they tranquilized
her to get her to sleep.

Michelle was in the hospital for two weeks, in a deep state of shock. Her hysteria waned day by day,
and she finally became docile, so they were able to fluff her pillows and lead her to the bathroom. But she
still would not, or could not, speak. The psychologist told Cantling that she might never speak again. "I
don't accept that," he said. He arranged Michelle's discharge. Simultaneously he decided to get them
both out of this filthy hellhole of a city. She had always loved big old spooky houses, he remembered,