"Joyce Carol Oates - The Gravedigger's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

The GravediggerтАЩs Daughter
Joyce Carol Oates
I
IN THE CHAUTAUQUA VALLEY
prologue
тАЬIn animal life the weak are quickly disposed of.тАЭ

HeтАЩd been dead for ten years. Buried in his mangled parts for ten years. Unmourned for ten years. You
would think that she, his adult daughter, a manтАЩs wife now and the mother of her own child, would be rid
of him by now. God damn she had tried! She hated him. His kerosene eyes, his boiled-tomato face. She
gnawed her lips raw hating him. Where she was most vulnerable, at work. On the assembly line at
Niagara Fiber Tubing where the noise lulled her into a trance she heard him. Where her teeth rattled from
the conveyor belt vibrations she heard him. Where her mouth tasted like dried cow shit she heard him.
Hated him! Turning in a crouch thinking it might be a joke, a crude trick, one of her asshole co-workers
shouting into her ear. Like some guyтАЩs fingers poking her breasts through the coveralls or digging into her
crotch and sheтАЩs paralyzed unable to turn her attention away from the strips of tubing on the rubber belt
moving jerkily along and always faster than you wanted. Damned steamed-up goggles hurting her face.
Shutting her eyes breathing the foul dusty air through her mouth which she knew better than to do. An
instant of shame, soul-withering, live-or-die-what-the-hell that came over her sometimes in moments of
exhaustion or sorrow and she groped for the object on the belt that in that instant had no name, no
identity, and no purpose, risking her hand being hooked by the stamping machine and half the fingers
smashed before she could shake her head free and clear of him who spoke calmly knowing he would be
heard above the machine clatter. тАЬSo you must hide your weak ness, Rebecca.тАЭ His face close to hers as
if they were conspirators. They were not, they had nothing in common. They looked in no way alike. She
hated the sour smell of his mouth. That face that was a boiled, burst tomato. SheтАЩd seen that face
exploding in blood, gristle, brains. SheтАЩd wiped that face off her bare forearms. SheтАЩd wiped that face off
her own damn face! SheтАЩd picked that face out of her hair. Ten years ago. Ten years and almost four
months to the day. For never would she forget that day. She was not his. She had never been his. Nor
had she belonged to her mother. You could discern no resemblance among them. She was an adult
woman now twenty-three years old which astonished her, she had lived so long. She had survived them.
She was not a terrified child now. She was the wife of a man who was a true man and not a sniveling
coward and a murderer, and this man had given her a baby, a son, whom he, her dead father, would
never see. What pleasure that gave her, he would never see his grandson. Never utter his poison-words
into the childтАЩs ears. Yet still he approached her. He knew her weakness. When she was exhausted,
when her soul shrank to the size of a wizened grape. In this clamorous place where his words had
acquired a powerful machine rhythm and authority that beat beat beat her into stunned submission.

тАЬIn animal life the weak are quickly disposed of. So you must hide your weakness, Rebecca. We must.тАЭ

Chautauqua Falls, New York
1
One afternoon in September 1959 a young woman factory worker was walking home on the towpath of
the Erie Barge Canal, east of the small city of Chautauqua Falls, when she began to notice that she was
being followed, at a distance of about thirty feet, by a man in a panama hat.

A panama hat! And strange light-colored clothes, of a kind not commonly seen in Chautauqua Falls.

The young womanтАЩs name was Rebecca Tignor. She was married, her husbandтАЩs name Tignor was one
of which she was terribly vain.