JК
Bullet Park :: Cheever John
Страница: 10 из 131She had been a very pretty woman and would probably never lose the authority this good fortune had given her when she was younger. His face was scrubbed, decent and bright. But for its brightness it might have seemed commonplace. They spoke the responses in a clear voice.
She was, Nailles thought, in her grace and loveliness one of those women who seem to bask in the extraordinary and visionary state of holy matrimony… Regret, he thought, had not left a line on her face. She would excel in all her roles-ardent, clever, sage and loving. Matrimony seemed invented for her kind; indeed her kind might have had a hand in its invention. Someone less sympathetic than Nailles would have singled him out as one of those men who, at the summit of their perfection, would be discovered to have embezzled two million dollars from the accounts entrusted to him in order to finance the practice and blackmail of his savage and unnatural sexual appetites. The same critic would imagine her to be bored, vindictive, a secret sherry drinker who dreamed nightly of being debauched in a male harem. But to Nailles, on this rainy morning, they seemed invincible. Their honor, passion and intelligence were genuine. Their lives would not be undangerous but they would bring to their disappointments and their successes an immutable brand of common sense.
When the peace that passes understanding was dispersed among them, the priest left the altar and muttered a prayer from the vestarium. The sounds of muttered prayer seemed to Nailles to have an organic antiquity; to fall on his ear like the grating sound of a wave. The acolyte extinguished the lights of the flesh and the spirit, Nailles finished up his devotions and went down the aisle behind the strangers.
"We're the Hammers," the stranger said to the priest.
Nailles did not think this funny, anticipating the fact that almost everyone else in the neighborhood would. How many hundreds or perhaps thousands of cocktail parries would they have to live through, side by side: Hammer and Nailles. Nailles claimed not to be a superstitious man but he did believe in the mysterious power of nomenclature. He believed, for example, that people named John and Mary never divorced. For better for worse, in madness and in saneness they seemed bound together for eternity by the simplicity of their names. They might loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep and commit mayhem, but they were not free to divorce. Tom, Dick and Harry could go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death could separate John and Mary. How much worse was Hammer and Nailles.
She was, Nailles thought, in her grace and loveliness one of those women who seem to bask in the extraordinary and visionary state of holy matrimony… Regret, he thought, had not left a line on her face. She would excel in all her roles-ardent, clever, sage and loving. Matrimony seemed invented for her kind; indeed her kind might have had a hand in its invention. Someone less sympathetic than Nailles would have singled him out as one of those men who, at the summit of their perfection, would be discovered to have embezzled two million dollars from the accounts entrusted to him in order to finance the practice and blackmail of his savage and unnatural sexual appetites. The same critic would imagine her to be bored, vindictive, a secret sherry drinker who dreamed nightly of being debauched in a male harem. But to Nailles, on this rainy morning, they seemed invincible. Their honor, passion and intelligence were genuine. Their lives would not be undangerous but they would bring to their disappointments and their successes an immutable brand of common sense.
When the peace that passes understanding was dispersed among them, the priest left the altar and muttered a prayer from the vestarium. The sounds of muttered prayer seemed to Nailles to have an organic antiquity; to fall on his ear like the grating sound of a wave. The acolyte extinguished the lights of the flesh and the spirit, Nailles finished up his devotions and went down the aisle behind the strangers.
"We're the Hammers," the stranger said to the priest.
Nailles did not think this funny, anticipating the fact that almost everyone else in the neighborhood would. How many hundreds or perhaps thousands of cocktail parries would they have to live through, side by side: Hammer and Nailles. Nailles claimed not to be a superstitious man but he did believe in the mysterious power of nomenclature. He believed, for example, that people named John and Mary never divorced. For better for worse, in madness and in saneness they seemed bound together for eternity by the simplicity of their names. They might loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep and commit mayhem, but they were not free to divorce. Tom, Dick and Harry could go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death could separate John and Mary. How much worse was Hammer and Nailles.