"Robin McKinley - Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

grandfather, her only protector, and absolute master in his own house. He did what he chose, and the
choice was right because it was his.
September brought a great crop of apples from the two old trees. Mercy had always bottled them
into sealed jars, but that was a skill that had to be done just right, and Pitiable did not know how. Probity
could well have asked a neighbour to teach her, but he was too proud, so he told her to let them fall and
he would make cider of them. Most of the People made a little cider, keeping it for special days, but this
year Probity made a lot, using casks he would not now need for storage as he had less to store. He
shook himself out of his dull mood and took trouble so that the cider brewed strong and clear. He took
to drinking a tankard of it with his supper, and became more cheerful in the evenings.
Winter came, with its iron frosts, and Probity started to drink cider with his dinner, to keep the cold
out, he said. And then with his breakfast, to get the blood moving on the icy mornings. By the time the
sunrise turned back along the horizon, he was seldom without a tankard near by, from the hour he rose
until the hour at which he fell snorting, and still in his day clothes, onto his bed.
He began to beat Pitiable, using his belt, finding some fault and punishing her for it, though both of
them knew that that was not the cause. He was hurt to the heart, and sick with his own hurt, and all he
could think of was to hurt someone or something else, and doing so himself to hurt himself worse, dulling
the pain with new pain. One night Pitiable watched as he took the horse and cart he had made her and
broke them into splinters with his strong hands and dropped them into the fire.
Pitiable did not complain or ask anyone for help. She knew that anything that happened to her was a
just punishment for her having been born. Her mother and father should never have wed. By doing so
they had broken GodтАЩs law. And then Obedience, ProbityтАЩs lovely lost daughter, had died giving birth to
Pitiable. So Pitiable was both the fruit of her parentsтАЩ sin and the cause of her motherтАЩs death, and of
ProbityтАЩs dreadful hurt. Nothing that was done to her could be undeserved.
On Sunday mornings Probity did not drink. He shaved and dressed with care and took Pitiable to
church. They made an impressive pair, the big, gaunt man and the pale and silent child. Neighbours
remarked how much they meant to each other, now Mercy was gone. Once a woman asked Pitiable
why she wept in church, and Pitiable replied that it was because of her grandmother dying. The woman
clucked and said that she was a good little girlтАФhow could she have known that Pitiable had been
weeping with the pain of having to sit still on the hard bench after last nightтАЩs beating?
They came through the winter, barely, scraping out the old and mouldy stores from the year before.
Probity butchered and salted one of his ewes, saying she was too old for bearing, which was not true. So
they did not quite starve.
The mush of spring dried to the blaze of summer, and Probity pulled himself together and drank less
and worked in his fields and brought home food and kept his belt around his waist, but he did almost
nothing to provide for the coming winter. One noon in the late summer heat wave, Pitiable went out to tell
him that his dinner was on the table and found him at the door of his store shed, staring into its emptiness,
as if lost in a dream. He started when she spoke and swung on her, and snarled, тАЬThe Lord will provide.тАЭ
That evening he undid his belt and beat her for no reason at all.
From then on he was as harsh as he had been last winter, but at the same time strangely possessive.
He seemed unable to bear to let her out of his sight. Having no harvest to gather, he took to wandering
along the shore, in the manner of the truly poor and shiftless townspeople, looking for scraps of the seaтАЩs
leavings, driftwood and such, which he might use or sell. Almost at once he was lucky, finding a cask of
good sweet raisins, unspoilt, which he sold well in the town. After that he would go almost every day,
taking Pitiable with him to help search and carry, but the quiet days of the heat wave brought little to land.
That dense stillness broke, as usual, with a week of storm. ThereтАФwas a proverb in the town, тАЬThe
hotter burns the sun, the wilder blows the wind,тАЭ and so it proved that year, with gales that brought down
trees and chimneys and stripped roofs and scattered haystacks, while day and night huge rollers
thundered against the shore. On the ninth night the storm blew itself out and was followed by a dawn of
pearly calm.
Probity was up before sunrise and gulped his breakfast and pulled on his boots and told Pitiable to