JК
Bullet Park :: Cheever John
Страница: 3 из 131Damn the bright lights by which no one reads, damn the continuous music which no one hears, damn the grand pianos that no one can play, damn the white houses mortgaged up to their rain gutters, damn them for plundering the ocean for fish to feed the mink whose skins they wear and damn their shelves on which there rests a single book-a copy of the telephone directory, bound in pink brocade. Damn their hypocrisy, damn their cant, damn their credit cards, damn their discounting the wilderness of the human spirit, damn their immaculateness, damn their lechery and damn them above all for having leached from life that strength, malodorousness, color and zeal that give it meaning. Howl, howl, howl.
But the adolescent, as adolescents always are, would be mistaken. Take the Wickwires, for instance, whose white house (estimated resale price: $65,000) Hazzard and the traveler were passing. If the social customs of Powder Hill were to be attacked by the adolescent the Wickwires would make a splendid target. They were charming, they were brilliant, they were incandescent, and their engagement calendar was booked solid from Labor Day to the Fourth of July. They were quite literally social workers-celebrants-using their charm and their brilliance to make things go at a social level. They were people who understood that cocktails and dinner in their time and place were as important to the welfare of the community as the village caucus, the school board and the municipal services. For a community that had so few altars-four to be exact-and none of them sacrificial, they seemed, as serious and dedicated celebrants, to have improvised a sacrificial altar on which they had literally given up some flesh and blood. They were always falling downstairs, bumping into sharp-edged furniture and driving their cars into ditches. When they arrived at a party they would be impeccably dressed but her right arm would be in a sling. He would support a game leg with a gold-headed cane and wear dark glasses. She had sprained her arm in a fall. He had broken his leg in the winter and the dark glasses concealed a mouse that had the thrilling reds and purples of a late winter moon, cloud-buried and observed by some yearning and bewildered youth. Their brilliance was not diminished by their injuries. In fact they almost always appeared with some limb in a sling, some extremity bandaged, some show of court plaster.
Their brilliance, their ardor as celebrants, is serious. After any common weekend when they have lunched and dined out for three days running the seriousness of their role can best be estimated when the light of Monday morning shines on them as they sleep. When the alarm rings he mistakes it for the telephone. Their children are away at school and he concludes that one of them is sick or in trouble. When he understands that it is the alarm and not the telephone he puts his feet onto the floor. He groans. He swears. He stands.
But the adolescent, as adolescents always are, would be mistaken. Take the Wickwires, for instance, whose white house (estimated resale price: $65,000) Hazzard and the traveler were passing. If the social customs of Powder Hill were to be attacked by the adolescent the Wickwires would make a splendid target. They were charming, they were brilliant, they were incandescent, and their engagement calendar was booked solid from Labor Day to the Fourth of July. They were quite literally social workers-celebrants-using their charm and their brilliance to make things go at a social level. They were people who understood that cocktails and dinner in their time and place were as important to the welfare of the community as the village caucus, the school board and the municipal services. For a community that had so few altars-four to be exact-and none of them sacrificial, they seemed, as serious and dedicated celebrants, to have improvised a sacrificial altar on which they had literally given up some flesh and blood. They were always falling downstairs, bumping into sharp-edged furniture and driving their cars into ditches. When they arrived at a party they would be impeccably dressed but her right arm would be in a sling. He would support a game leg with a gold-headed cane and wear dark glasses. She had sprained her arm in a fall. He had broken his leg in the winter and the dark glasses concealed a mouse that had the thrilling reds and purples of a late winter moon, cloud-buried and observed by some yearning and bewildered youth. Their brilliance was not diminished by their injuries. In fact they almost always appeared with some limb in a sling, some extremity bandaged, some show of court plaster.
Their brilliance, their ardor as celebrants, is serious. After any common weekend when they have lunched and dined out for three days running the seriousness of their role can best be estimated when the light of Monday morning shines on them as they sleep. When the alarm rings he mistakes it for the telephone. Their children are away at school and he concludes that one of them is sick or in trouble. When he understands that it is the alarm and not the telephone he puts his feet onto the floor. He groans. He swears. He stands.