"Oates, Joyce Carol - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

Persia tells her it isn't anything she has to worry about.

Duke tells her it's a white person with Negro blood or a Negro with white blood "mixed blood."

Iris asks gravely, How does that happen?

Duke says, "Sweetheart, all kinds of things happen when people get careless!"

Blood, Iris Courtney learns, is everything.

Blood. Bloodlines. Pedigree. "Purity."

At the Batavia Downs racetrack Duke Courtney explains patiently (to a woman: but not to Persia, who scarcely needs to be told) how in champion horses, power descends through bloodlines exclusively: "In predicting the performances of horses," he says, "bloodlines are everything. Nature favors the aristocrat! These beautiful creatures, in the flesh, are but the embodiment of an idea."

Grizzled-gray-haired Mr. Jacky Barrow mayor of Hammond on the Republican ticket, high-ranking "secret" officer in the local Masonic Lodge (which, at last, Duke Courtney is invited to join), explains his private views on race to a gathering of friends..

. as they are being borne choppily eastward on his yacht Erin Maid, on the Cassadaga River, to the New York State Fair in Albany, a gay noisy rowdy group of adults with here and there a wide-eyed child in tow like nine-year-old Iris Courtney. "We must keep this a White Man's country, whatever we do. These are difficult years, and this is our trust.

This is the sacred foundation laid by our forefathers.

The Republic was founded by White Men... it was established by White Men. Look: nobody, least of all me, wants to deprive the colored population of their rights, but it is a proven law on this earth. The opposite of purity is mongrelization."

The pop! of a fresh champagne bottle being uncorked.

This dazzling-bright Sunday afternoon on the river, Persia and Be urtney, the most strikIng couple in the mayor"s circle, demonstrate their dreamy stylized foxtrot as "My Foolish Heart" blares from the radio, followed by a snappy syncopated "Buttons and Bows" as everyone applauds. Then Mr. Barrow yachting cap on his head, stubby legs swaying, dances with tall lovely Mrs. Courtney, grips her so sweatily tight his fingers permanently crease her peach-colored chiffon dress.

Iris is staring as if memorizing but unaccountably falls asleep in the overhead sun, wedged between rubberized cushions as Duke Courtney's long limber legs in white linen trousers cavort across the deck..

.

and when she's wakened, her tender skin smarting as if, in sleep, she'd been soundly slapped, it's to the identical voices, shrieks of laughter, happy music she had heard hours before.

Her mommy and daddy's friends, having a good time together.

A party. On the Erin Maid.

And that night in Albany, in the plush-carpeted hotel room where the Courtneys are guests ('All expenses paid!" gloats Duke), Persia trundles her feverish little girl off for a bath, rubs cold cream-yes, deliciously cold on her sunburnt face and shoulders.

Persia has done up her heavy red-gold hair in quick pincurls smelling of setting gel, and there's a mask of cold cream too on her beautiful face... gives her a queenly haughty look. She says, "There's nothing so nice, baby, as being clean, is there. Clean outside and in." Pronouncing her words with care, not wanting to slur syllables, eyes eating up her drowsy little girl in the tub as ifthough Duke is waiting impatiently for her, there's a party in full swing in Jacky Barrow's suite, Where the hell are the Courtneys?she'd love to throw off her clothes and slip into the sudsy bubbly bathwater tart as lemon juice, herself. "Wish I had time to be clean as my little darling, always," Persia whispers, leaning dizzily to kiss Iris on her snubbed-button nose, "outside and in. Always.

Another episode the adults talk about, for a while, is how John Ritchie died.

John Elmore Ritchie, thirty-eight years old at the time of his death at Hammond City jail, August 1952, Negro, U.S. Army veteran of World War II, wounded in the Philippines and walked with a drag to his left foot... married, six children, one grandchild... worked for the Orleans County Sanitation Department, a frozen-faced black man with some mental worry he might provoke violence or harm to others if he spoke too loudly; thus he rarely raised his voice above a whisper outside of his home or church (he sang in the men's chorus at Second Calvary Zion Baptist), nor did he make abrupt unpremeditated movements with his body or look too directly at people whether black or white, and especially white.

So John Ritchie is coming home on East Avenue about 6 P.M. this latesummer day and a Hammond City police car pulls over and two policemen get out yelling to him to "stop and identify yourself," their billy clubs out and their voices raised, as if there was already some trouble, some threat.

On account of this poor sad-faced Ritchie wears eyeglasses with thick lenses, and eyeglasses on a six-foot burly Negro with a scar or a birthmark on his forehead like a fossil imprinted in rock is an extreme look close to answering the description a white woman gave police earlier that day of a coal-black Negro who threatened to assault her.

.. stopped her car turning off the Oldwick Road yelling and cursing at her pounding the hood of her car with his fist tried to smash the windshield with that same bare fist... a "stone-blind drunk" nigger with coal-black greasy oily skin and hair in tufts like "greasy black soap"... a "raving" madman.