JК
Something Happened :: Хеллер Джозеф
Страница: 379 из 398) He seems to know his way about the stone passageways of my brain much better than I do, for he reappears in different settings, often reading a newspaper with one ankle crossed comfortably over his knee, biding his time. He thinks he's got more time than I have. (He hasn't.) I think there's a sauna, for many of the more affluent, better-bred occupants of my thoughts seem the type that likes to scorch itself leisurely after playing squash. I suspect there's a homosexual haunt located somewhere secret. Tiny shops are all about at which wicked contraband is exchanged by grimy, unshaven men who know how. Grimy, unshaven men expose themselves to me and to children of both sexes and go unpunished. All crimes go unpunished.
Vile these evil, sordid, miniature human beings who populate my brain, like living fingers with faces and souls. Some wear hats. People suffer. I suffer. Children wander. Women weep. Mothers lie on deathbeds. I am afraid — I have been afraid — a screaming, wailing, or sobbing might start at any instant inside my ears, be taken up by other tortured voices from within, and never stop. I would not know if I was imagining it. It would not matter. I would hear it. Minikins move, and I can feel them, and dirty, cynical old men with sharp crutches and pointy beards pass with insinuating glints in their cruel, unscrupulous eyes. They hurt. Ugolino eats a head: mine (that son of a bitch).
No one will help. (Only my wife's sister verges close enough to that delicate nerve of truth we want unbared, but her front is callous, her motives unkind, and I want to hit her.)
"Give the kid away," she as much as commands with taunting relish in her rasping, obtrusive way, attacking, pressing her advantage, and we must unite to resist her and beat her back.
"Good for you! It serves you right," is what I hear her snarling invidiously at us in my own voice and words. "I'm glad it happened. Ha, ha. I'm glad it happened to you because I know you, instead of to people I don't know who live far away."
I want to hit her because I feel she sees inside me and steals my thoughts, compelling me to repudiate them.
We want to get rid of him. We want to give him away. And need people in positions of respectable authority to tell us. We haven't nerve to do it alone. What will people we know think of us?
Unfeeling.
Inhuman.
We want to give him away and are afraid.
(Other people we hear about in Connecticut, New York, Long Island, and New Jersey intend to keep theirs. Why?)
"Don't," my wife's sister has warned consistently almost from the first day there was no longer any doubt (which was too soon). "Do it fast. Don't be hypocrites. The longer you wait, the worse it's going to be for everybody."
That suggestion was monstrous.
Vile these evil, sordid, miniature human beings who populate my brain, like living fingers with faces and souls. Some wear hats. People suffer. I suffer. Children wander. Women weep. Mothers lie on deathbeds. I am afraid — I have been afraid — a screaming, wailing, or sobbing might start at any instant inside my ears, be taken up by other tortured voices from within, and never stop. I would not know if I was imagining it. It would not matter. I would hear it. Minikins move, and I can feel them, and dirty, cynical old men with sharp crutches and pointy beards pass with insinuating glints in their cruel, unscrupulous eyes. They hurt. Ugolino eats a head: mine (that son of a bitch).
No one will help. (Only my wife's sister verges close enough to that delicate nerve of truth we want unbared, but her front is callous, her motives unkind, and I want to hit her.)
"Give the kid away," she as much as commands with taunting relish in her rasping, obtrusive way, attacking, pressing her advantage, and we must unite to resist her and beat her back.
"Good for you! It serves you right," is what I hear her snarling invidiously at us in my own voice and words. "I'm glad it happened. Ha, ha. I'm glad it happened to you because I know you, instead of to people I don't know who live far away."
I want to hit her because I feel she sees inside me and steals my thoughts, compelling me to repudiate them.
We want to get rid of him. We want to give him away. And need people in positions of respectable authority to tell us. We haven't nerve to do it alone. What will people we know think of us?
Unfeeling.
Inhuman.
We want to give him away and are afraid.
(Other people we hear about in Connecticut, New York, Long Island, and New Jersey intend to keep theirs. Why?)
"Don't," my wife's sister has warned consistently almost from the first day there was no longer any doubt (which was too soon). "Do it fast. Don't be hypocrites. The longer you wait, the worse it's going to be for everybody."
That suggestion was monstrous.