"Arthur Tofte - Walls within Walls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tofte Arthur)

out onto the street, we had peeked up and down. We could see that all the
houses were just like ours. Each one was surrounded by a high brick wall
almost twice the height of a man. It was in our side wall that we had
discovered some months before where a small section of the bricks had
loosened. We had carefully worked out several of the bricks on our side so
that we could peep through into the yard next door.

A girl lived thereтАФa beautiful girl, with long, flowing blond hair, red
laughing lips and soft pink cheeks, her body slender and yet sturdy. She
was a little younger than we were, a month or two at most. But she was
our fairy princess, our secret playmate who never knew that we watched
her every chance we could get.

She danced for us, not ever knowing we were devouring her with our
eyes. She ran, laughing happily, around her yard. She seemed always to be
gay and bubbling over with gladness. She played games that were strange
to us. And we watched, wishing there was some way to break down the
wall that separated us.
 Her name was Elissa. We had often heard her mother come to the door
and call her. Yes, Elissa, through the past half year had been the playmate
we never could have.

Ralf and I moved around to the side wall and quickly removed the loose
bricks. We peered through. Yes, Elissa was there. It was a warm day and
she was wearing an abbreviated white tunic, a small copy of the standard
item of clothing worn by all. Never had she seemed more beautiful than
now as she lay stretched out on the ground. She lay on her back with her
legs slightly apart. She was looking up at the cloudless sky. Even from
where we were, we could hear her singing softly, a hum more than a song.

I could have wept again, looking over at Ralf and thinking this might be
the last time he could take the secret look at Elissa, the fair one.

Finally her mother called her and she went into her house. We turned
away. After resetting the bricks, we started to go back toward the house.
Instead, however, Ralf headed around to the back. I followed. Our father
had told us one time that our property was exactly the same as all the
other Class Three houses in the city. But for all our six years it had been
our whole world. We had seen nothing else.

Ralf went around touching things. The rows of corn that were just
beginning to tassle. The tomato plants. The cabbage and lettuce and
carrots and beans. He and I had helped plant the seeds, had weeded and
nurtured the growing things. It was ours as much as it was our parents.
And Ralf was leaving it all.

The wall around our house was ours too. Although most of it was built
before we were past the baby stage, we had watched our father put the last
layer or two of brick on the top. Of course all we could do to help was carry
a few bricks at a time to him. That, of course, made it our wall. Walls!