"Kate Wilhelm - April Fools' Day Forever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

not to think of it, not to remember the first time she had heard the
baby. She gazed into the fire and couldn't stop the images that
formed and became solid before her eyes. She awakened suddenly,
as in the dreams she had had during the last month or so of
pregnancy. Without thinking, she slipped from bed, feeling for her
slippers in the dark, tossing her robe about her shoulders hurriedly.
She ran down the hall to the baby's room, and at the door she
stopped in confusion. She pressed one hand against her flat
stomach, and the other fist against her mouth hard, biting her fingers
until she tasted blood. The baby kept on crying. She shook her head
and reached for the knob and turned it, easing the door open
soundlessly. The room was dark. She stood at the doorway, afraid to
enter. The baby cried again. Then she pushed the door wide open
and the hall light flooded the empty room. She fainted.
When she woke up hours later, grey light shone coldly on the bare
floor, from the yellow walls. She raised herself painfully, chilled
and shivering. Sleepwalking? A vivid dream and sleepwalking? She
listened; the house was quiet, except for its regular night noises. She
went back to bed. Martie protested in his sleep when she snuggled
against his warm body, but he turned to let her curve herself to fit,
and he put his arm about her. She said nothing about the dream the
next day.
Six months later she heard the baby again. Alone this time, in the
late afternoon of a golden fall day that had been busy and almost
happy. She had been gathering nuts with her friend Phyllis Govern.
They'd had a late lunch, and then Phyllis had had to run because it

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Wilhelm, Kate - April Fools' Day Forever.htm


was close to four. A wind had come up, threatening a storm before
evening. Julia watched the clouds build for half an hour.
She was in her studio in the barn, on the second floor, where the
odor of hay seemed to remain despite an absence of fifteen or
twenty years. She knew it was her imagination, but she liked to
think that she could smell the hay, could feel the warmth of the
animals from below. She hadn't worked in her studio for almost a
year, since late in her pregnancy, when it had become too hard to
get up the narrow, steep ladder that led from the ground floor to the
balcony that opened to the upstairs rooms. She didn't uncover
anything in the large room, but it was nice to be there. She needed
clay, she thought absently, watching clouds roll in from the
northwest. It would be good to feel clay in her fingers again. She
might make a few Christmas gifts. Little things, funny things, to let
people know that she was all right, that she would be going back to
work before long now. She glanced at the large blocks of granite
that she had ordered before. Not yet. Nothing serious yet.
Something funny and inconsequential to begin with.
Still thoughful, she left the studio and went to the telephone in the