"Lisa Tuttle - Meeting The Muse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

LISA TUTTLE MEETING THE MUSE It began, she fell in love, with the image of
a man. As a child she had seen his face for the first time in black and
white, hardly bigger than a postage stamp: young poet said a line below the
grainy dots of newsprint. So this was a poet, she thought, gazing at the
shadowy representation of dreamy eyes and shaggy hair, tinglingly aware that
something had entered and lodged in her heart, like the Snow Queen's love for
little Kay. Seven years later, in the poetry section of the college
bookstore, she picked up a book with the title The Memory of Trees. The
author's name, Graham Storey, seemed familiar; she glanced at the back cover
for a clue, and saw his face again. Something turned over inside her as she
stared at the picture of a poet no longer so young. Gone was the Beatles
hairstyle; his hair was cropped now. The eyes that stared out at something far
beyond her had a dreaminess contradicted by the fierceness of the rest of his
face, the thin, tight-lipped mouth, the jut of nose and chin. There was a
ferocity in him, but she sensed it would be directed more at himself than
anyone else. She sensed enduring sadness, a pain held tightly within. She
bought the book, of course, although her budget did not allow it; she could do
without a few meals if she had to. She read it straight through for the
first time that night, alone in bed, with an intensity of concentration she
seldom brought to her studies. She read each poem many times, until it was
part of her. Previously a lazy, erratic student, although bright, now, driven
by her heart, she became a scholar. The university library had a copy of his
first collection of poetry, but she also discovered poems, letters, even
essays and reviews he had written by combing through every poetry-related
publication of the past decade that she could find in the stacks. She followed
cross-references and hunches until she had compiled an impressive dossier on
him, not only his work and influences, but his life, the man himself. She
learned from a chance reference in one book that he had been in correspondence
with W.H. Auden -- and that his letters, Graham Storey's actual letters, were
in a collection in the Humanities Research Center on the University of Texas
campus -- and she, as a student, had access to them. She sat by herself in a
small, cool, well-lighted room with a box-file open on the table and picked up
the typewritten pages in her hands, raised them to her face, inhaling with
eyes closed. What might be left, besides the words, indentations and ink on
paper, after so many years? Cell fragments from the skin of his hands, a hair,
a trace of cigarette smoke. . . .? She stared and stared at the signature in
blue ink, the small, cramped hand. At first, the formality of his full name,
but the last two letters were signed simply G. How that initial reverberated,
how personal it became, how it haunted her! The fact that it was one of her
own initials did not detract but seemed to suggest a connection between them,
proof they had something in common. Her handwriting altered under the impress
of his. At first it was evident only in the way she wrote the letter G, but
soon she began to change the way she signed her name, aspiring to make her
signature more like his, and then, unconsciously (for she had too small a
sample of his to be able, consciously, to copy it) the rest of her handwriting
shifted in accord with her signature, becoming smaller, neater, more
precise. She could not have said, later, when the plan began, but it was only
natural, loving him as she did, to want to meet him, and to try to think of
ways. She entertained fantasies of meeting him by chance: she would be walking
along the Drag one day, and there he'd be, walking toward her. The English