"Joanna Russ - Second Inquisition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russ Joanna)

not like big women or short -hair--which was still new in places like
ours- women who read, although she was interested in his carpentry
and he liked that.

But she was six feet four inches tall; this was in 1925.

My father was an accountant who built furniture as a: hobby; we had a
gas stove which he actually fixed once when it broke down and some
outdoor tables and chair ' he had built in the back yard. Before our
visitor came o, the train for her vacation with us, I used to spend all my
time in the back yard, being underfoot, but once we had met her ,at the
station and she shook hands with my. father-I think she hurt him whets
she shook hands-I would watch her read and wish that she might talk to
me.

She said: "You are finishing high school?"

I was in the archway, as usual; I answered yes.

She looked up at me again, then down at her book. She said, "This is a
very bad book." I said nothing. Without looking up, she tapped one
finger on the shabby hassock on which she had put her feet. Then she
looked up and smiled at me. I stepped tentatively from the floor to the
rug, as reluctantly as if I were crossing the Sahara; she swung her feet
away and I sat down. Art close view her face looked as if every race in
the world had been mixed and only the worst of each kept; an American
Indian might look like that, or Ikhnaton from the encyclopedia, or a
Swedish African, a Maori princess with the jaw of a Slav. It occurred to
me suddenly that she might be a Negro, but no one else had ever
seemed to think so,
possibly because nobody in our town had ever seen a
Negro. We had none. They were "colored people."
She said; "You are not pretty, yes?"
I got up. I said, "My father thinks you're a freak."

"You are sixteen," she said, ".sit down," and I .sat down. I crossed my
arms over my breasts because they were (too big, like balloons. Then
she said, "I am reading a very stupid book. You will take it away from
me, yes?"

"No," I said.

"You must," she said, "or it will poison me, sure as God," and from her

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (2 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
 file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt

lap she plucked up The Green Hat: A Romance, gold letters on green
binding, last year's bestseller which I had had to .swear never to read,