JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 274 из 359We know that fluff isn't just fluff from the overhead rafters; the damned thing has gone to seed. But nobody else knows it, and Jack is quickly reduced to the final plea of the helpless paranoiac: You gotta believe me, doc!
Mannie Kaufman's rationalization for the increasing number of people in Santa Mira who no longer believe their relatives are their relatives is that Santa Mirans are undergoing a case of low-key mass hysteria, the sort of thing that may have been behind the Salem witch trials, the mass suicides in Guyana, even the dancing sickness of the middle ages. But below this rationalistic approach, existentialism lurks unpleasantly. These things happen, he seems to suggest, just because they happen. Sooner or later they will work themselves out.
They do, too. Mrs. Seeley, who believed her husband wasn't her husband, comes in to tell Miles that everything is fine now. Ditto the girls who were scared of their English instructor for awhile. And ditto Cousin Wilma, who calls up Miles to tell him how embarrassed she is at having caused such a fuss; of course Uncle Ira is Uncle Ira. And in every case, one other fact-a name-stands out: Mannie Kaufman was there, helping them all. Something is wrong here, all right, but we know very well what it is, thank you, Mr. Jones. We have noticed the way Kaufman's name keeps cropping up. We're not stupid, right? Damn right we're not! And it's pretty obvious that Mannie Kaufman is now playing for the visiting team.
And one more thing. At Jack Belicec's insistence, Miles finally decides to call a friend in the Pentagon and spill the whole incredible story. About his long distance call to Washington, Miles tells us: It isn't easy explaining a long, complicated story over the telephone .... And we had bad luck with the connection. At first I heard Ben and he heard me, as clearly as though we were next door to each other. But when I began telling him what had been happening here, the connection faded. Ben had to keep asking me to repeat, and I almost had to shout to make him understand me. You can't talk well, you can't even think properly, when you have to repeat every other phrase, and I signaled the operator and asked for a better connection . . . I'd hardly resumed when a sort of buzzing sound started in the receiver in my ear, and then I had to try to talk over that . . . "They," of course, are now in charge of communications coming into and going out of Santa Mira ( "We are controlling transmission," that somehow frightening voice which introduced The Outer Limits each week used to say; " We will control the horizontal . . . we will control the vertical . . . we can roll the image, make it flutter . . . we can change the focus . . ." ) .
Mannie Kaufman's rationalization for the increasing number of people in Santa Mira who no longer believe their relatives are their relatives is that Santa Mirans are undergoing a case of low-key mass hysteria, the sort of thing that may have been behind the Salem witch trials, the mass suicides in Guyana, even the dancing sickness of the middle ages. But below this rationalistic approach, existentialism lurks unpleasantly. These things happen, he seems to suggest, just because they happen. Sooner or later they will work themselves out.
They do, too. Mrs. Seeley, who believed her husband wasn't her husband, comes in to tell Miles that everything is fine now. Ditto the girls who were scared of their English instructor for awhile. And ditto Cousin Wilma, who calls up Miles to tell him how embarrassed she is at having caused such a fuss; of course Uncle Ira is Uncle Ira. And in every case, one other fact-a name-stands out: Mannie Kaufman was there, helping them all. Something is wrong here, all right, but we know very well what it is, thank you, Mr. Jones. We have noticed the way Kaufman's name keeps cropping up. We're not stupid, right? Damn right we're not! And it's pretty obvious that Mannie Kaufman is now playing for the visiting team.
And one more thing. At Jack Belicec's insistence, Miles finally decides to call a friend in the Pentagon and spill the whole incredible story. About his long distance call to Washington, Miles tells us: It isn't easy explaining a long, complicated story over the telephone .... And we had bad luck with the connection. At first I heard Ben and he heard me, as clearly as though we were next door to each other. But when I began telling him what had been happening here, the connection faded. Ben had to keep asking me to repeat, and I almost had to shout to make him understand me. You can't talk well, you can't even think properly, when you have to repeat every other phrase, and I signaled the operator and asked for a better connection . . . I'd hardly resumed when a sort of buzzing sound started in the receiver in my ear, and then I had to try to talk over that . . . "They," of course, are now in charge of communications coming into and going out of Santa Mira ( "We are controlling transmission," that somehow frightening voice which introduced The Outer Limits each week used to say; " We will control the horizontal . . . we will control the vertical . . . we can roll the image, make it flutter . . . we can change the focus . . ." ) .