"Джон Чивер. The swimmer (Пловец, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

who's here! What a marvelous surprise! When Lucinda said that you couldn't
come I thought I'd die." She made her way to him through the crowd, and when
they had finished kissing she led him to the bar, a progress that was slowed
by the fact that he stopped to kiss eight or ten other women and shake the
hands of as many men. A smiling bartender he had seen at a hundred parties
gave him a gin and tonic and he stood by the bar for a moment, anxious not
to get stuck in any conversation that would delay his voyage. When he seemed
about to be surrounded he dove in and swam close to the side to avoid
colliding with Rusty's raft. At the far end of the pool he bypassed the
Tomlinsons with a broad smile and jogged up the garden path. The gravel cut
his feet but this was the only unpleas- antness. The party was confined to
the pool, and as he went toward the house he heard the bril- liant, watery
sound of voices fade, heard the noise of a radio from the Bunkers' kitchen,
where someone was listening to a ballgame. Sunday afternoon. He made his way
through the parked cars and down the grassy border of their drive- way to
Alewives' Lane.* He did not want to be seen on the road in his bathing
trunks but there was no traffic and he made the short distance to the Levys'
driveway, marked with a private property sign and ,a green tube* for the New
York Times* All the doors and windows of the big house were open but there
were no signs of life; not even a dog barked. He went around the side of the
house to the pool and saw that the Levys had only recently left. Glasses and
bottles and dishes of nuts were on a table at the deep end, where there was
a bathhouse or gazebo,* hung with Japanese lanterns. After swimming the pool
he got himself a glass and poured a drink. It was his fourth or fifth drink
and he had swum nearly half the length of the Lucinda River. He felt tired,
clean, and pleased at that moment to be alone; pleased with every- thing.
It would storm. The stand of cumulus cloud- that city-had risen and
darkened, and while he sat there he heard the percussiveness of thunder
again. The de Haviland trainer was still circling overhead and it seemed to
Ned that he could almost hear the pilot laugh with pleasure in the
afternoon; but when there was another peal of thunder he took off for home.
A train whistle blew and he wondered what time it had gotten to be. Four?
Five? He thought of the provincial station at that hour, where a waiter, his
tuxedo concealed by a raincoat, a dwarf with some flowers wrapped in
newspaper, and a woman who had been crying would be waiting for the local.
It was suddenly growing dark; it was that moment when the pin-headed birds
seem to organize their song into some acute and knowledgeable recogni- tion
of the storm's approach. Then there was a fine noise of rushing water from
the crown of an oak at his back, as if a spigot there had been turned. Then
the noise of fountains came from the crowns of all the tall trees. Why did
he love storms, what was the meaning of his excitement when the door sprang
open and the rain wind fled rudely up the stairs, why lead the simple task
of shutting the windows of an old house seemed fitting and urgent, why did
the first watery notes of a storm wind have for him the unmistakable sound
of good news, cheer, glad tidings? Then there was an explosion, a smell of
cordite, and rain lashed the Japanese lanterns that Mrs. Levy had bought in
Kyoto* the year before last, or was it the year before that?
He stayed in the Levys' gazebo until the storm had passed. The rain had
cooled the air and he shivered. The force of the wind had stripped a maple
of its red and yellow leaves and scattered them over the grass and the