"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

He invested in them, and he called out to them, pleading with the voice of a child. And tomorrow
answered:
"Come, liddle boy. Ve fix."

Anybody Else Like Me?

QUIET MISERY IN a darkened room. The clock spoke nine times with a cold brass voice. She
stood motionless, lean-ing against the drapes by the window, alone. The night was black, the house
empty and silent.
"Come, Lisa!" she told herself. "You're not dying!"

She was thirty-four, still lovely, with a slender white body and a short, rich thatch of warm red hair.
She had a good dependable husband, three children, and security. She had friends, hobbies, social
activities. She painted mediocre pictures for her own amusement, played the piano rather well, and wrote
fair poetry for the University's literary quarterly. She was well-read, well-rounded, well-informed. She
loved and was loved.
Then why this quiet misery?
Wanting something, expecting nothing, she stared out into the darkness of the stone-walled garden.
The night was too quiet. A distant street lamp played in the branches of the elm, and the elm threw its
shadow across another wing of the house. She watched the shadow's wandering for a time. A lone car
purred past in the street and was gone. A horn sounded raucously in the distance.
What was wrong? A thousand times since childhood she had felt this uneasy stirring, this crawling of
the mind that called out for some unfound expression. It had been particularly strong in recent weeks.

She tried to analyze. What was different about recent weeks? Events: Frank's job had sent him on the
road for a month; the children were at Mother's; the city council had recommended a bond issue; she had
fired her maid; a drunk had strangled his wife; the University had opened its new psycho-physics lab; her
art class had adjourned for the summer.
Nothing there. No clue to the unreasoning, goalless urge that called like a voice crying in mental
wilderness: "Come, share, satisfy, express it to the fullest! "
Express what? Satisfy what? How?
A baby, deserted at birth and dying of starvation, would fell terrible hunger. But if it had never tasted
milk, it could not know the meaning of the hunger nor how to case it.
"I need to relate this thing to something else, to something in my own experience or in the
experience of others. " She had tried to satisfy the urge with the goals of other hungers: her children, her
husband' s lovemaking, food, drink, art, friendship. But the craving was something else, crying for its
pound of unknown flesh, and there was no fulfillment.
"How am I different from others? " she asked herself. But she was different only in the normal ways
that every human being is different from the exact Average. Her in-telligence was high, short of genius,
but superior. To a limited extent, she felt the call of creativity. Physically, she was delicately beautiful. The
only peculiarities that she knew about seemed ridiculously irrelevant: a dark birth-mark on her thigh, a
soft fontanel in the top of her long narrow head, like the soft spot in an infant's cranium. Silly little
differences!
One big difference: the quiet misery of the unfed hun-ger.
A scattering of big raindrops suddenly whispered on the walk and in the grass and through the foliage
of the elm. A few drops splattered on the screen, spraying her face and arms with faint points of
coolness. It had been oppressively hot. Now there was a chill breath in the night.
Reluctantly she closed the window. The oppression of the warm and empty house increased. She
walked to the door opening into the walled garden.
Ready for a lonely bed, she was wearing a negligee over nothing. Vaguely, idly, her hand fumbled at