"Oates, Joyce Carol - We Were the Mulvaneys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

Strange to be awake at this hour, and downstairs, alone. The big old farmhouse creaking in the wind. How many people had lived here, died here. Since 1849. You thought such thoughts in solitude, before dawn. Before the life of the household began. Now there was only the wind, and the tick-tick-ticking of a dozen clocks to indicate that Time is a joke, doesn't exist. Yet you need to believe.

The first time Tnsha came to stay overnight at High Point Farm, when they were in fifth grade, she'd said, shivering wide-eyed Oh! is it like this all the tinie, doesn't it scare you, Marianne? as if the wind in the chimney were a ghost, hoo-hoo-hooing through the night. Marianne had laughed, feeling flattered, superior. Everything at High Point Farm was special, even a ten-year-old knew that.

It was true she'd be returning to school. Next week. That was arranged. First, she would have to meet with Mr. Hendrie the principal of Mt. Ephrairn High and Mrs. Langley the guidance counsellor. Marianne and her parents, that is. At least Morn, if Dad refused to come. There were so many rumors circulating, Mr. Hendrie had told Mom, so many unverified, disturbing things being said. About Marianne, and Zachary Lundt. And a group of seniors involved in drinking, late-night partying... sexual misconduct. Mr. Hendrie and Mrs. Langley hoped to discuss these matters before Marianne resumed classes and Mom would be involved, of course. Marianne had the idea that her mother had already spoken with Mr. Hendtie and Mrs. Langley on the phone at length, possibly she'd even gone to see them. Marianne didn't ask, and didn't know.

There was also the therapist "Jill James" recommended by the minister of the little country church in South Lebanon. "Jill James"-she insisted you call her that, no formalities-was a Christian therapist, a rarity in our secular times, with a master's degree in adolescent and family counselling from the State University at Port Oriskany. She was Mom's age, maybe oldet, stout and big-boned with a broad, shiny face colored like Crayola and a handshake brisk and hearty as Dad's. Her office at the Eastgate Shopping Center was bright cheery colors, too, hanging ferns and macrame on the walls and piped-in soothing music, Marianne had seen "Jill James" just Once, and was scheduled to see her again, this very day. She'd prepared certain words she must say, repeat, offered like small semiprecious gems, all she had to offer. I don't remember. I'm as much to blame as. I was drinking, I'm so ashamed. My pride and vanity. Can't bear false witness. "Jill James" had her own words to offer, of course. For that was what they did, adults: uttered their words prepared beforehand, as you uttered yours.

If she walked barefoot in the snow, it might be a test. In her numbed, exalted state she'd become invulnerable!

She was standing at the window, looking out. It was still snowing, but more thinly. The wind had lessened. Beyond the barns, the eastern sky was lightening in that cracked, cobwebby way of winter mornings. A dull sun barely penetrating cloud. Marianne could not see Mt. Cataract from here, but she knew its location, its promise. A hand! A hand raised in greeting! If she set out for Mt. Cataract, thirty miles away, how far would she get?

You Mulvaneys. Hot skit. The bunch of you.

She would have to move swiftly, before Mom woke. Before

Patrick, Judd, Mike woke. Before the day began, the clamor and commotion of early morning at High Point Farm.

There was Troy, the border collie, handsome dog, stretched out asleep on the dog-haired carpet along the interior wall, near the heating duct, of the living room; wheezing faintly, utterly content. He hadn't noticed Marianne at all: what a watchdog. And in a sagbottomed easy chair, gazing at Marianne with unperturbed slate-blue eyes, was beautiful Snowball, purely white, with her Persian-pug nose and thick, fur-tufted paws. Snowball had been watching Marianne all along as if it weren't out of the ordinary, Marianne in her nightgown, barefoot, prowling the shadowy house.

Can't. Can't bearfalse witness. Don't YOU understand!

She would have said, yes of course she'd be returning to school on Monday, even as she made her way through the dining room, through the kitchen (there was Feathers on his perch, puffed out to a filmy yellow ball twice his size, tiny head tucked beneath tiny wing), into the back hail strewn with boots, curry combs, stacks of newspapers, items in transition from useful to trash, to the back door. She would open it quietly, she would step outSide.Jesus!Jesusf He was beckoning to her, He would guide her. He had been guiding her all along.

But: she'd stepped on something, something grisly, a small rubbery thing, about the size of a grape. Stepped on it with her bare right foot and recoiled, in disgust.

She knew what it was, before switching on the light. Ugh! Ununmistakably, a rodent's heart.

One of the cats had left it there on the carpet. He, or she, had caught and devoured a mouse, all but the inner organs, left scattered about the house like morbidly pranicish offerings. Mariarme felt a stab of nausea even as she thought calmly It'- what cats do: their nature.

Hadn't Morn explained to Marianne when she'd been a little, little girl. Cats aren't cruel deliberately, they're carnivores, hunters, it's their nature to catch mice, rats, even rabbits (especially, at High Point Farm, baby rabbits), and birds. If you loved a cat you would have to look the other way, accept his nature and forgive him. Like the dogs, capable of such cruelty sometimes. Even Troy, even Silky. Hunting winter-weakejied deer in the woods, circling a stricken pregnant doe tearing at her belly with their teeth to bring her down. Yelping, yipping. A frenzy of bloodlust in the snow. Muzzles wet with blood Marianne had never witnessed such a horror, but she'd seen part-devoured deer carcasses, she knew. Dogs you love, who love you, with their savage need nonetheless to dig at, gnaw at, even roll luxuriantly in the carcasses of once-living things.

Why? Marianne had asked.

Because, Mom had said.

Yes hut why? Marianne asked.

Because it's nature, honey, Mom said. And nature isn't evil.

Snowball, flufFy--white, elegant, with her disdainful pug face and fastidious ways, had followed after Marianne and was twining herself around Marianne's leg, hoping to be petted. Marianne whispered, "Snowball, did you do this? Aren't you ashamed!" The white cat sniffed at the rubbery-red thing on the carpet with a show of slightly repelled innocence.

Another of the cats, lean rangy bony-headed E.T., leapt from his perch on top of the refrigerator, to hurry and join them. E.T. was a neutered torn with a crackling, inquisitive purr. "E.T., did you do this?" E.T. too sniffed at the rodent remains as if he'd never seen anything quite like it before, but was not actively interested. As Corinne, the mother of the household, the keeper of the family, would have sighed in these circumstances, Marianne sighed. There was relief in her annoyance, as if she'd awakened from a disagreeable trance. She had a chore to be done, however distasteful. All thought of leaving the warm house, drifting off in subzero winds into the woods beyond the back pasture, had vanished.

With some tissue, she lifted the tiny heart from the stained carpet, and located other part-devoured innards amid the clutter in the hall, part of a sinewy little tail, and carried them at arm's length into the bathroom. Did not look at what she held but dropped it into the toilet, and flushed. A stab of nausea returned, like a fist rising from her bowels, and she saw again the shadowy backseat of the Corvette, a boy's thin-cheeked, contorted face and angry eyes. But she did not weaken. She did not gag, begin to vomit. She was all right.

Not all the rodent remains had been flushed away so she tried again, wincing at the noisy plumbing, the groaning pipes so like merriment, derision. This time, thank God, everything disappeared forever in a splashing swirl of bluish-tinged water.

Blessed be they that mourn: for they shall he comforted.