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

water. Since it was midsummer the tree must be blighted, and yet he felt a
peculiar sadness at this sign of autumn. He braced his shoulders, emptied
his glass, and started for the Welchers' pool. This meant cross- ing the
Lindleys' riding ring and he was surprised to find it overgrown with grass
and all the jumps* dismantled. He wondered if the Lindleys had sold their
horses or gone away for the summer and put them out to board.* He seemed to
remember having heard something about the Lindleys and their horses but the
memory was unclear. On he went, barefoot through the wet grass, to the Wel-
chers', where he found their pool was dry.
This breach in his chain of water disappointed him absurdly, and he felt
like some explorer who seeks a torrential headwater and finds a dead stream.
He was disappointed and mystified. It was common enough to go away for the
summer but no one ever drained his pool. The Welchers had definitely gone
away. The pool furniture was folded, stacked, and covered with a tarpaulin.

The bathhouse was locked. All the windows of the house were shut, and
when he went around to the driveway in front he saw a for-sale sign nailed
to a tree. When had he last heard from the Welchers-when, that is, had he
and Luanda last regretted an invitation to dine with them. It seemed only a
week or so ago. Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the
repres- sion of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?
Then in the distance he heard the sound of a tennis game. This cheered him,
cleared away all his apprehensions and let him regard the overcast sky and
the cold air with indifference. This was the day that Neddy Merrill swam
across the county. That was the day! He started off then for his most
difficult portage.
Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him,
close to naked, standing on the shoulders of route 424,* waiting for a
chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play,
had his car broken down, or was he merely a fool. Standing barefoot in the
deposits of the highway-beer cans, rags, and blowout patches*-exposed to all
kinds of ridicule, he seemed pitiful. He had known when he started that this
was a part of his journey-it had been on his maps-but con- fronted with the
lines of traffic, worming through the summery light, he found himself
unprepared. He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him, and
he had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation. He could have gone
back, back to the Westerhazys', where Lucinda would still be sitting in the
sun. He had signed nothing, vowed nothing, pledged nothing not even to
himself. Why, believing as he did, that all human obduracy was susceptible
to common sense, was he unable to turn back? Why was he determined to
complete his journey even if it meant putting his life in danger? At what
point had this prank, this joke, this piece of horseplay become serious? He
could not go back, he could not even recall with any clearness the green
water at the Westerhazys', the sense of inhaling the day's components, the
friendly and relaxed voices saying that they had drunk too much. In the
space of an hour, more or less, he had covered a distance that made his
return impossible.
An old man, tooling* down the highway at fifteen miles an hour, let him get
to the middle of the road, where there was a grass divider. Here he was
exposed'to the ridicule of the north- bound traffic, but after ten or