"Wolfe, Gene - Fish Story (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

on it. Will you do that? Will you give it to me?'

"She didn't say anything, but she nodded.

"'I want you to promise me that when you're gone, if there's any possible way
for you to speak to me, or send me a message -- make any kind of signal of any
sort-- to say that there's another life after the life we know here, another
existence on the other side of the grave, you won't do it. Will you give me your
solemn promise about that, Aunt Elspeth? Please? And mean it?'

"She didn't say anything more after that, just lay there and glared at me. I
wanted to go, and I tried to a couple of times, but I couldn't make myself do
it. There she was, about the only person still left from my childhood, and she
was dying -- would probably die that night, they had said. So I sat there
instead, and I wanted to take her hand but I couldn't because of the oxygen
tent, and she kept on glaring at me and making those horrible sounds trying to
breathe, and neither of us said anything. It must have been for about an hour.

"I guess I shut my eyes -- I know I didn't want to look at her -- and leaned
back in the chair. And then, all of a sudden, the noises stopped. I leaned
forward and turned on the little light at the head of her bed, and she wasn't
trying to breathe anymore. She was still glaring as if she wanted to run me
through a grinder, but when I got up and took a step toward the door, her eyes
didn't move. So I knew she was dead, and I ought to call the nurse or something,
but I didn't."

Rab fell silent at that point, and Bruce said, "What did you do?"

"I just went out. Out of room, and out of the Intensive Care Wing, and out into
the corridor. It was a pretty long corridor, and I had to walk, oh, maybe a
hundred steps before I came to the waiting room. It was late by then, and there
was only one person in it, and that one person was me."

Rab gave us a chance to say something, but neither of us did.

"I don't mean I went in. I didn't. I just stood out in the corridor and looked
inside. And there I was, sitting in there. I had on a black turtleneck and a
whiskey-colored suede sports jacket. I remember that, because I've never owned
those clothes. It was my face behind my glasses, though. It was even my haircut.
He--I--was reading Reader's Digest and didn't see me. But I saw myself, and I
must have stood there for five minutes just staring at him.

"Then a nurse pushed past me and said, 'You can go in and see your aunt now,
Mister Sammon.' He put down his magazine and stood up and said, 'Call me Rab.'
And she smiled and said, 'You can see your Aunt Elspeth now, Rab.'

"I stepped out of the way and the nurse and I went past me and down the corridor
toward the Intensive Care Wing. I watched till they had gone through the big
double doors and I couldn't see them anymore. Then I went into the waiting room
and picked up that copy of the Reader's Digest that I had laid down and slipped