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

say: "We've been terribly sorry to hear about all your misfortunes, Neddy."
"My misfortunes?" Ned asked. "I don't know what you mean."
"Why, we heard that you'd sold the house and that your poor children..."
"I don't recall having sold the house," Ned said, "and the girls are at
home."
"Yes," Mrs. Halloran sighed. "Yes..." Her voice filled the air with an
unseasonable melan- choly and Ned spoke briskly. "Thank you for the swim."
"Well, have a nice trip," said Mrs. Halloran.
Beyond the hedge he pulled on his trunks and fastened them. They were loose
and he wondered if, during the space of an afternoon, he could have lost
some weight. He was cold and he was tired and the naked Hallorans and their
dark water had depressed him. The swim was too much for his strength but how
could he have guessed this, sliding down the banister that morn- ing and
sitting in the Westerhazys' sun? His arms were lame. His legs felt rubbery
and ached at the joints. The worst of it was the cold in his bones and the
feeling that he might never be warm again. Leaves were falling down around
him and he smelled woodsmoke on the wind. Who would be burning wood at this
time of year?
He needed a drink. Whiskey would warm him, pick him up, carry him through
the last of his journey, refresh his feeling that it was original and
valorous to swim across the county. Channel swimmers took brandy. He needed
a stimulant. He crossed the lawn in front of the Hallorans' house and went
down a little path to where they had built a house for their only daughter
Helen and her husband Eric Sachs. The Sachses' pool was small and he found
Helen and her husband there.
"Oh, Neddy," Helen said. "Did you lunch at Mother's?"
"Not really," Ned said. "I did stop to see your parents." This seemed to be
explanation enough. "I'm terribly sorry to break in on you like this but
I've taken a chill and I wonder if you'd give me a drink."
"Why, I'd love to," Helen said, "but there hasn't been anything in this
house to drink since Eric's operation. That was three years ago."
Was he losing his memory, had his gift for concealing painful facts let him
forget that he had sold his house, that his children were in trouble, and
that his friend had been ill? His eyes slipped from Eric's face to his
abdomen, where he saw three pale, sutured scars, two of them at least a foot
long. Gone was his navel, and what, Neddy thought, would the roving hand,
bed-checking* one's gifts at 3 A.M. make of a belly with no navel, no link
to birth, this breach in the succession?
"I'm sure you can get a drink at the Biswan- gers'," Helen said. "They're
having an enormous do. You can hear it from here. Listen!"
She raised her head and from across the road, the lawns, the gardens, the
woods, the fields, he heard again the brilliant noise of voices over water.
"Well, I'll get wet," he said, still feeling that he had no freedom of
choice about his means of travel. He dove into the Sachses' cold water and,
gasping, close to drowning, made his way from one end of the pool to the
other. "Lu- cinda and I want terribly to see you," he said over his
shoulder, his face set toward the Bis- wangers'. "We're sorry it's been so
long and we'll call you very soon."
He crossed some fields to the Biswangers' and the sounds of revelry there.
They would be honored to give him a drink, they would be hap- py to give him