"Theodore Sturgeon - Slow Sculpture" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

hundredth part of what you do about bonsai but I do
know this--when you start one, it isn't often the strong
straight healthy ones you take. It's the twisted sick ones
that can be made the most beautiful. When you get to
shaping humanity, you might remember that."
"Of all the--I don't know whether to laugh in your face
or punch you right in the mouth!"
She rose. He hadn't realized she was quite this tall.
"I'd better go."
"Come on now. You know a figure of speech when you
hear one."
"Oh, I didn't feel threatened. But--I'd better go, all
the same."
Shrewdly he asked her, "Are you .afraid to ask the next
question?"
"Terrified."
"Ask it anyway."
"No."
"Then III do it for you. You said I was angryand
'afraid. You want to know what I'm afraid of."
"Yes."
"You. I am scared to death of you."
"Are you really?"
"You have a way of provoking honesty," he said with
some difficulty. "I'll say what I know you're thinking: I'm
afraid of any close human relationship. I'm afraid of some-
thing I can't take apart with a screwdriver or a mass spec-
troscope or a table of cosines and tangents. I don't know
how to handle it."
His voice was jocular but his hands were shaking.
"You do it by watering one side," she said softly, "or
by turning it just so in the sun. You handle it as if it
were a living thing, like a species or a woman or a bonsai.
It will be what you want it to be if you let it be itself and
take the time and the care."
"I think," he said, "that you are making me some kind



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of offer. Why?"
"Sitting there most of the night," she said, "I had a
crazy kind of image. Do you think two sick twisted 'trees
ever made bonsai out of one another?"
"What's your name?" he asked her.