"Robert F. Young - On the River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

myself on the River, I pictured myself on it alone."
"So did I," Farrell said. And then, "Where did you live, Jill?"
"In Rapids City."
"Why, that's where I lived too. Maybe that has something to do with our meeting each other in this
strange land. IтАФI wish I had known you before."
"You know me now. And I know you."
"Yes. It's better than never having gotten to know each other at all."
They danced in silence for a while. The inn dreamed around them. Outside, beneath stars that had no
right to be, the River flowed, dark-brown and brooding in the night. At length, when the waltz to which
they were dancing came to an end, Jill said, "I think we should call it a day, don't you?"
"Yes," Farrell said, looking down into her eyes, "I suppose we should." And then, "I'll wake at
dawnтАФI know I will. Will you?"
She nodded. "That's part of it, tooтАФwaking at dawn. That, and listening for the falls."
He kissed her. She stood immobile for a moment, then drew away. "Good night," she said, and
hurried from the room.
"Good night," he called after her.
He stood in the suddenly empty room for some time. Now that she had gone, the juke box played no
more and the lights had brightened and taken on a cold cast. He could hear the River, hear it whispering
a thousand and one sad thoughts. Some of the thoughts were his, and some of them were Jill's.
At last he left the room and climbed the stairs. He paused in front of Jill's door. He raised his hand,
knuckles turned toward the panel. He could hear her in the room beyond, hear per bare feet padding on
the floor and the rustle of her dress as she slipped out of it for the night. Presently he heard the faint
whisper of sheets and the muffled creak of springs. And all the while he heard these sounds, he heard the
soft, sad susurrus of the River.
At length his hand fell to his side, and he turned and stepped across the hall and let himself into his
own room. He closed the door firmly. Love and death might go together, but love-making and dying did
not.
The sound of the River grew louder while he slept, and in the morning it was a steady murmur in his
ears. Breakfast was eggs and bacon and toast and coffee served by ghosts, and gray words spoken in
the gray light of dawn. With the rising of the sun he and Jill cast off, and soon the inn was far behind
them.
A little mist midday, they heard the roar of the falls.
It was a gentle roar at first, but it grew louder, decibel by decibel, and the river narrowed and began
flowing between bleak gray cliffs. Jill moved closer to Farrell, and Farrell took her hand. Rapids danced
around them, drenching them at sporadic intervals with ice-cold spray. The raft lurched beneath them,
turned first this way and that at the whim of the River. But it did not capsize, nor would it, for it was the
falls that stood for deathтАФnot the rapids.
Farrell kept glancing at the girl. She was staring straight ahead of her as though the rapids did not
exist, as though nothing existed except herself, Farrell, and the raft. He had not expected death to come
so soon. He had thought that life, now that he had met Jill, would linger on. But apparently this strange
country which they had somehow brought into being had no function save to destroy them.
Well, destruction was what he wanted, wasn't it? A strange encounter in a strange land could not
have changed that, any more than it could have changed it for Jill. A thought struck him, and, raising his
voice above the gurgling of the rapids and the roar of the falls, he asked, "What did you use, Jill?" "Gas,"
she answered. "And you?"
"Carbon monoxide."
They said no more.
Late in the afternoon, the River widened again, and the cliffs gradually gave way to gently sloping
banks. Beyond the banks vague hills showed, and the sky seemed to have taken on a bluer cast. The
roar of the falls was deafening now, but apparently the falls themselves were still a considerable distance