JК
Bullet Park :: Cheever John
Страница: 21 из 131He examined the photographs, bringing his very limited knowledge of womento this gallery of lewd strangers. The paper was cheap and he guessed that the pictures had been cut from those nudist magazines that one finds in some shoeshine parlors and barber shops. He was not in the least dismayed that his beloved son had chosen to collect these pictures instead of stamps, Indian arrowheads, geological specimens or numismatic rarities. He dropped the pictures into a wastebasket and looked up the spelling of the word that had concerned him. Sometime later, perhaps a month later, the boy asked: "Have you been using my dictionary?"
"Why yes," Nailles said, "and I threw away all those pictures."
"Oh," the boy said and neither of them said anything more.
On the table by the window was a tape recorder he had given the boy as a birthday present. He would no more have switched it on than he would have opened the boy's mail. His sense of these aspects of privacy was scrupulous and immutable; but had he turned on the recorder he would have heard his son's voice, lowered half an octave by reproduction, saying: "You dirty old baboon, you dirty old baboon. For as long as I can remember it seems to me that whenever I'm trying to go to sleep I can hear you saying dirty things. You say the dirtiest things in the whole world, you dirty, filthy, horny old baboon." However he didn't turn on the recorder.
He changed out of the business suit he wore to church into work clothes. He had once suggested to the vestry that early communicants be encouraged to attend church in the sports and work clothing most of them wore on Sunday, but Father Ran-some had countered by asking if he would be expected to serve the sacraments in tennis shorts. He went to the cellar, where he fueled the chain saw with gasoline and oil. South of the house was a small valley in which a grove of twelve elms had been lingeringly destroyed by the elm beetle. Nailles spent his weekends felling the dead trees and cutting and splitting the wood into fireplace lengths. The trees had preserved no trace of their lachrymose beauty. They had dropped their upper branches and shed their bark and the wood shone like bone in the winter light, half truncated and ungainly, the landscape for some nightmare or battlefield. He chose a tree and planned his cut. He was proud, in fact complacent, about his expert-ness with a chain saw and enjoyed maneuvering the howling, screaming engine and its murderous teeth. The valley was protected and was, that morning, so unseasonably warm that the dead wood had released some fragrance-a smell of spice that reminded him of the cold churches in Rome. Spring. He heard the belling of a wood dove or an owl.
"Why yes," Nailles said, "and I threw away all those pictures."
"Oh," the boy said and neither of them said anything more.
On the table by the window was a tape recorder he had given the boy as a birthday present. He would no more have switched it on than he would have opened the boy's mail. His sense of these aspects of privacy was scrupulous and immutable; but had he turned on the recorder he would have heard his son's voice, lowered half an octave by reproduction, saying: "You dirty old baboon, you dirty old baboon. For as long as I can remember it seems to me that whenever I'm trying to go to sleep I can hear you saying dirty things. You say the dirtiest things in the whole world, you dirty, filthy, horny old baboon." However he didn't turn on the recorder.
He changed out of the business suit he wore to church into work clothes. He had once suggested to the vestry that early communicants be encouraged to attend church in the sports and work clothing most of them wore on Sunday, but Father Ran-some had countered by asking if he would be expected to serve the sacraments in tennis shorts. He went to the cellar, where he fueled the chain saw with gasoline and oil. South of the house was a small valley in which a grove of twelve elms had been lingeringly destroyed by the elm beetle. Nailles spent his weekends felling the dead trees and cutting and splitting the wood into fireplace lengths. The trees had preserved no trace of their lachrymose beauty. They had dropped their upper branches and shed their bark and the wood shone like bone in the winter light, half truncated and ungainly, the landscape for some nightmare or battlefield. He chose a tree and planned his cut. He was proud, in fact complacent, about his expert-ness with a chain saw and enjoyed maneuvering the howling, screaming engine and its murderous teeth. The valley was protected and was, that morning, so unseasonably warm that the dead wood had released some fragrance-a smell of spice that reminded him of the cold churches in Rome. Spring. He heard the belling of a wood dove or an owl.