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

But the question Iris wants to ask is too abstruse for the few words in her vocabulary. Why are they... the way they are?

Different from us? The same, but different?

Iris wonders why, if the Negro children stare frankly at her, at her pale drained-looking skin, her pale greenish-gray eyes, her hair that isn't brown or blond or any precise color at all, she can't stare right back?

Persia says, "They don't know any better, some of them. But we do. " Iris has been taught that "Negro" is the proper word, in two equally stressed syllables: "Negro Say it too fast, or carelessly, and you get words you don't want: "nigra," "nigger."

"Colored" is acceptable too, sometimes; it's the word Aunt Madelyn prefers. (Madelyn Daiches, whom Iris loves, isn't Iris's aunt, really, but a cousin-twice-removed of Persia's.) Aunt Madelyn has many "colored" friends, she says, women friends, and fine people they are too, but the race as a whole... "the-race-as-a-whole".

can t be trusted.

And there is Iris's Uncle Leslie (Duke Courtney's older, bachelor brother), who speaks uncomfortably of "minority populations," of 'African-American people," sometimes, even more uncomfortably, of 'African-American peoples"... as if, though he knows what he wants to say, he is at a loss to find the words to express it.

Thus Leslie Courtney hesitates to say even "Negro Will never say "colored." Or "black." (Says Leslie vehemently, "They are no more black than I am white.") When he is robbed of his camera, his wallet, and his wristwatch one summer evening in Cassadaga Park, Leslie is pained to describe his assailants to the police in terms of the pigmentation of their skin. It becomes a family joke, or one of Duke's family jokes: "Did y'all hear about the time my brother was mugged by three African-American' jigs?"

"Jig" is one of the words Iris has been told she must not say, ever.

Like "nigger," "coon," "spade," "spook," "shine." Yet when Duke uses the word everyone laughs, it's so... unexpected.

Not that Duke would say such things in his elder brother's presence; he wouldn't. To Leslie, racial and ethnic slurs, as he calls them, are an insult to all.

Leslie Courtney is a photographer with a meager income. He lives alone at the rear of a cavelike little shop at the derelict end of Main Street... a soft touch, as Duke observes, for every deadbeat who wants his or his children's pictures taken but can't afford to pay.

Leslie has been taking photographs of Iris... sometimes Iris and Persia, if Persia will consent... for many years. His weakness is for children generally; he has hundreds of photographs of Negro children, singly or in groups, since he lives in a Negro neighborhood (a "mixed" neighborhood is the slightly disapproving term Aunt Madelyn uses), of no commercial value; these, he sometimes displays in his shop window as if he were proud of them.

It has become a familiar issue, whether Leslie Courtney with his gifts should become known in Hammond as a "Negro photographer" that is, a photographer with a predominantly Negro clientele or whether, as Duke thinks, he is damaging his reputation irrevocably. If Leslie drops by for a visit and stays late, Duke will shift to this subject, painful as it is to him, for, as he sees it, his reputation too is involved. The brothers "discuss" the issue, don't exactly "quarrel," sipping Duke's whiskey... for both Courtneys like to drink and give evidence, as even a small child can observe, of liking each other, and themselves, just perceptibly more when they are drinking. Leslie says he takes photographs of human subjects with no particular reference to their race; an artist must seize beauty in what's close at hand, and certainly there is beauty in children, children of any "color," and in any case, as a so-called Caucasian, he shares in the unspeakable burden of guilt Caucasians must feel for their exploitation, over the centuries, of the African-American peoples. "Slavery," says Leslie, "is the great abomination of our country," staring and blinking as if this abomination were before him, palpable, terrible, incontestable, and Duke cannot resistlor Duke Courtney, sometimes against the grain of his own best interests, is a man who cannot resist-saying slyly, "Y'know, Les, the Caucasians didn't invent slavery, in fact: the black Africans did."

Leslie's eyes shift their focus behind the round lenses of his eyeglasses framed in thin, bright gold. He says in a trembling voice, "Yes. All right. But one abomination does not excuse, or even mitigate, another. The chain of evil must be broken at some point."

'And so it has been, and so it remains," Duke says soothingly.

"Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863."

Says Leslie, "De facto, there remain slaves."

Says Duke, "De facto, they have put themselves in that category.

The crashing sound of ice cubes being dislodged from a freezer tray.

Another time, after Leslie has gone home sullen and muttering, Persia asks Duke why on earth his brother is so emotional about Negroes; is it some sort of Christian sentiment? And Duke sighs in annoyance and says, "No. Worse. The poor bastard identifies with them...

'niggers."" But what is "black blood"?

Everyone in Hammond is talking about the custody case in which a local justice took away the two children, aged nine and four, of a woman who, divorced from her "white" husband, married a mulatto" and took up residence in a "colored neighborhood," the judge's decision being based on the premise that such a marriage was detrimental to the children's well-being. Says Aunt Madelyn, "It's a sad thing for a woman to lose her children, but you have to draw the line somewhere."

Says Persia, "They'd have to kill me before they'd take my children away.

Iris, staring at the newspaper photographs of scared-looking people, asks, "What is a 'mulatto'?"pronouncing the word with a strong "u," as in "mule," a word she knows. "Is this him? Here?"