"Чарльз Буковски. Бутерброд с дерьмом (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, dragging my clothing
around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress hurt me.
Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father's roses growing. They
were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun was very low but not
yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window. I felt that even
the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was
shining upon my father's house. I was like his roses, something that
belonged to him and not to me . . .

9
By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing
and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday.
There were two pillows on my chair. I sat on them but my legs and ass still
burned. My father was talking about his job, as always.
"I told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man go
from each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there . . ."
"They ought to listen to you, Daddy," said my mother.
"Please," I said, "please excuse me but I don't feel like eating . . .
"You'll eat your FOOD!" said my father. "Your mother prepared this
food!"
"Yes," said my mother, "carrots and peas and roast beef."
"And the mashed potatoes and gravy," said my father.
"I'm not hungry."
"You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!" said my father.
He was trying to be funny. That was one of his favorite remarks.
"DADDY!" said my mother in shocked disbelief. I began eating. It was
terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what they believed in,
what they were. I didn't chew any of it, I just swallowed it to get rid of
it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted, how lucky
we were to be eating good food when most of the people in the world, and
many even in America, were starving and poor.
"What's for dessert. Mama?" my father asked. His face was horrible, the
lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure. He acted as if nothing had
happened, as if he hadn't beaten me. When I was back in my bedroom I
thought, these people are not my parents, they must have adopted me and now
they are unhappy with what I have become.

10
Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn't allowed
to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom
often got dull. I would go out and walk around in the backyard, looking at
things, bugs mostly. Or I would sit on the grass and imagine things. One
thing I imagined was that I was a great baseball player, so great that I
could get a hit every time at bat, or a home run anytime I wanted to. But I
would deliberately make outs just to trick the other team. I got my hits
when I felt like it. One season, going into July, I was hitting only . 139
with one home run. HENRY CHINASKI IS FINISHED, the newspapers said. Then I
began to hit. And how I hit! At one time I allowed myself 16 home runs in a
row. Another time I batted in 24 runs in one game. By the end of the season
I was hitting .523.