"Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

In the family there were farmers, a few lawyers, two doctors, insurance brokers and bankers
and millers, hardware merchandisers, other shopkeepers. DavidтАЩs father owned a large department
store that catered to the upper-middle-class clientele of the valley. The valley was rich, the
farms in it large and lush. David always supposed that the family, except for a few neтАЩer-do-
wells, was rather wealthy. Of all his relatives his favorite was his fatherтАЩs brother Walt. Dr.
Walt, they all called him, never uncle. He played with the children and taught them grown-up
things, like where to hit if you really meant it, where not to hit in a friendly scrap. He seemed
to know when to stop treating them as children long before anyone else in the family did. Dr. Walt
was the reason David had decided very early to become a scientist.
David was seventeen when he went to Harvard. His birthday was in September and he didnтАЩt go
home for it. When he did return at Thanksgiving, and the clan had gathered, Grandfather Sumner
poured the ritual before-dinner martinis and handed one to him. And Uncle Warner said to him,
тАЬWhat do you think we should do about Bobbie?тАЭ
He had arrived at that mysterious crossing that is never delineated clearly enough to see in
advance. He sipped his martini, not liking it particularly, and knew that childhood had ended, and
he felt a profound sadness and loneliness.
The Christmas that David was twenty-three seemed out of focus. The scenario was the same,
the attic full of children, the food smells, the powdering of snow, none of that had changed, but
he was seeing it from a new position and it was not the wonderland it had been. When his parents
went home he stayed on at the Wiston farm for a day or two, waiting for CeliaтАЩs arrival. She had
missed the Christmas Day celebration, getting ready for her coming trip to Brazil, but she would
be there, her mother had assured Grandmother Wiston, and David was waiting for her, not happily,
not with any expectation of reward, but with a fury that grew and caused him to stalk the old
house like a boy being punished for anotherтАЩs sin.
When she came home and he saw her standing with her mother and grandmother, his anger
melted. It was like seeing Celia in a time distortion, as she was and would be, or had been. Her
pale hair would not change much, but her bones would become more prominent and the almost
emptiness of her face would have written on it a message of concern, of love, of giving, of being
decisively herself, of a strength unsuspected in her frail body. Grandmother Wiston was a
beautiful old lady, he thought in wonder, amazed that he never had seen her beauty before. CeliaтАЩs


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mother was more beautiful than the girl. And he saw the resemblance to his own mother in the trio.
Wordlessly, defeated, he turned and went to the rear of the house and put on one of his
grandfatherтАЩs heavy jackets because he didnтАЩt want to see her at all now and his own outdoor
clothing was in the front hall closet too near where she was standing.
He walked a long time in the frosty afternoon, seeing very little, and shaking himself from
time to time when he realized that the cold was entering his shoes or making his ears numb. He
should turn back, he thought often, but he walked on. And he found that he was climbing the slope
to the antique forest that his grandfather had taken him to once, a long time ago. He climbed and
became warmer, and at dusk he was under the branches of the tiers of trees that had been there
since the beginning of time. They or others that were identical to them. Waiting. Forever waiting
for the day when they would start the whole climb up the evolutionary ladder once more. Here were
the relicts his grandfather had brought him to see. Here was a silverbell, grown to the stature of
a large tree, where down the slopes, in the lower reaches, it remained always a shrub. Here the
white basswood grew alongside the hemlock and the bitternut hickory, and the beeches and sweet
buckeyes locked arms.