"Ward Moore - It Becomes Necessary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Ward)

It Becomes Necessary
by Ward Moore
She sat there thinking. These chairs were never designed for living women, only mannikins. You had
to be wax or plastic or whatever they made them out of, with Brancusi heads for pillared hats (the cult of
Nefertiti, like that of the Druids, domesticated for Macy's and Gimbels) and lower extremities in the best
tradition of Albert the Good. Ten years younger, and she could do a nice paper for Sociology 2тАФor
would it be European History 4?тАФon the Victorianism of the French, or, Why Was Louis Napoleon
Little? Whatever happened to feminism? Her feet ached.

Hot water. Surely there was nothing unreasonable about hot water. Fifty thousand bathtubs in lower
Manhattan, five million in New York (Oh God, why did I ever start on this, with my head for statistics?)
тАж Even in England, with the stoic revulsion against comfort, it wasn't too hard to get. Only here in
France, in mobilized, dedicated, redeemed, righteous France, with everyone sacrificing to the point of
ecstasy, was there suspicion attached to such use of patriotic resources.

She sipped the beer which she found completely revolting. I have no business here, she told herself
for the fiftieth time, no business whatever. I could be asleep in that kennel they call a hotel, or could have
gotten decently drunk, or thrown myself in the Seine (Paris is worth a MassтАФbut not to me) instead of
torturing myself with this filthy chair and this filthy drink in this filthy caf├й in this filthy city. Oh heavens тАж

He slid into the seat opposite so quickly that he was there, established, before she was aware of him.
He was big, with a crooked nose and light eyes and freckled, hairy hands which he placed on the table
like an offering. "Mrs. Fieldman?"

I don't have to answer, she assured herself, I really don't have to answer. I didn't agree to any
meeting. I've promised nothing; I'm not committed even to acknowledge my name. I can jump up and
say, Sir! or just look haughty, or walk away. But of course I've been so conditioned against making a
scene (Concord and Lexington were in bad taste, the fall of the Bastille would have shocked Emily Post
and we don't even think of the storming of the Winter Palace), I'm not going to do anything except sit
here and listen to this fat manтАФhe isn't really fat; I've just been out of the country so long that anyone
who eats steak regularly looks fatтАФand hear him patiently through. Hate him? Naturally I hate him. He's
one of them, isn't he?

"Mrs. FieldmanтАФDo you want to see my credentials, by the way?"

"No."

"That's good. Because I could hardly carry them in enemy territory, could I?"

"France isn't enemy territory," she said more pedantically than she meant because she hadn't intended
to talk to him in anything but monosyllables. "It's only one of the policing nations whichтАФ"

" 'Policing nations.' " He didn't raise his voice; he expressed his disgust softly, with a soft sneer, a soft
contempt. "The U.S. isn't a two-bit country to be policed. If there's policing to be done, we do it.
Policing nations, Third Force! Who do they think they are?"

She shrugged her shoulders. Answering rhetorical questions only got you started on a treadmill.

He made an observable effort to be soothing, earnest, confident, winning. "Mrs. Fieldman, you have
an opportunityтАФ"