"Judith Merril - Death Cannot Wither" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

DEATH CANNOT WITHER
Author's note: I should like to take this opportunity to thank A. J. Budrys for the work he did on this
story. The revision and condensation he did on my own rambling earlier draft was so extensive that the
story should properly carry a joint byline.
J. M.

EDNA COLBY awoke an hour after dawn, and after no more than three hours fitful sleep. In
peignoir and mules she groped to the window, and looked out at her Dutchess County farm тАФhers and
Jack's, she reminded herself dutifullyтАФat orchard and field touched by a winter morning's first light. Just
barely winter by the calendar, but winter . . . and Jack's bed beside her own, was still as smooth, as
empty, as when she'd made it up the day before.
Separated by an authentic hand-tied rag rug and an Early American maple night-table, the two beds
were gray in the light. She stared out the window at the apple trees, at the twisted barren-bare trunks,
and whispered, "Like my own heart." She repeated the phrase, tasting each syllable, listening to the
sound of a woman bereft. Then she went downstairs, a pink ribbon adding a wistful note to her
handsomely cut hair.
She stood before the gleaming stove in the kitchen, making coffee, her eyes unseeing on the golden
knotty-pine panelling of the walls. She was thinking over how to phrase her excuses to the farm help
when they came to get Jack's instructions for the day. The coffee boiled over before she could decide on
the proper wording. She pinched her lips and wiped the stove.
"He might at least have called," she whispered sharply. "The other times, he's at least tried to cover
up." She realized suddenly that each of those only suspected other times had this morning become a
certainty too long ignored. "I'm losing him," she thought with great intensity; then, in jealous anger: "I've
lost him!" And then, finally, in purest rage, she cried out: "No!"
The kitchen door slammed loudly. "Coffee!" Jack's hearty voice cried out on a wave of cold sharp
air. "Baby, that smells good!"
Before she could react, Jack had crossed the room, embraced her warmly from one sideтАФavoiding
the coffee pot in her other handтАФand murmured fondly: "Happy anniversary, sweetheart!"
It was, indeed, eight years to the day since the cocktail party at which Edna Arkwright, Assistant
Buyer in Ladies' Wear, had met Jack Colby, who was something-or-other on Madison Avenue. She at
the age of thirty-five, chic if not specially pretty, trim-figured with the aid of a remarkable new bra, and he
of roughly the same age (actually a trifle younger), amiable, friendly, personable in a downy sort of way,
and pretty much at loose ends.
Pretty much at loose ends, and perfectly willing to have someone gather them up for him, if that
someone showed the slightest tact in the gathering. He seemed to be completely unaware of what perfect
raw material he was; content to drift, to meander pleasantly alongтАФin short, to waste himself instead of
assuming a settled, solid role in life of the sort for which his background obviously fitted him.
He had left his father's apple-country-squiredom at the usual time of youth to become an officer in
either the Army or the Air ForceтАФperhaps they had been one and the same thing at the time; Edna could
not get it quite straightтАФand, after the war, had simply accepted a position in a distant relative's firm.
That was the thingтАФthe thing about him that both attracted and angered Edna Arkwright, with her
sense of greater things to be done with one's life, with her code of aspirations that had kept her firmly
undistracted, steadfast in pursuit of her destiny. She conveyed to Jack, gradually but unflaggingly, that
there was more in him than could ever be realized by a life of effortless progressions toward old age.
What was he doing with his life, with himself? To this, of course, Jack had no ready answer.
It was plain to Edna that Jack Colby was not truly at home in the city; however much he might think
he liked it, he was growing soft underneath and certainly drinking more than he should. In her complete
sincerity of purpose, she saw in his eyes a hint of something that was, if not lost, then misplaced; she
taught him to understand that she, of all people, could best remind him where he'd left it.
 They were married five months and a few days after the cocktail party and, Jack's father having died