JК
Something Happened :: Хеллер Джозеф
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"I climbed the rope in school today," he announces one evening when he comes home late for dinner after dark, with his eyes shining warmly and his cheeks and lips colored a healthy, handsome crimson with exercise and excitement. "I made it almost all the way up to the top. Dammit. I bet I could have touched the ceiling if I'd only had the nerve to let go and try."
"Did you touch the ceiling yet?" I ask him.
"Why do you keep asking me that?" he blurts out at me resentfully, and goes into his room.
He is moving away from me and I don't want him to. He is shutting me out. I see the doors closed to his and my daughter's rooms and think of the closed doors at the company and am reminded squeamishly of all those closed cupboard and closet doors I had to open each morning and evening back in the apartment in the city with those baited spring traps concealed behind them when we were trying to catch or kill those mice. Those were not the good old days.
"Remember," I reminisce with my wife, "those mice back in the city? That one time we had them?"
"They weren't mice," says my wife. "They were roaches."
"We had those too."
"We never had mice."
"And I was afraid I would have to kill one with a magazine?"
"And you were afraid to kill them. You didn't like to step on them. You didn't like the way they squashed. I had to do it most of the time with one of my house slippers. And neither did I."
She may be wrong.
My memory does get faulty of late, merges indistinguishably with imagination, and I must make efforts to shake them apart. I remember waking up as a child, howling from a dream my bed was crawling with roaches and I continued to see them scurrying away into invisibility all over the room for minutes after the lights blazed on and I was wide awake. It was my brother who had come to console me (who once threw a lump of coal at me), and he sat with me tenderly until I was able to stop quailing. Now I have no big brother. One of my children — I forget which one — had a bad dream years ago about snapping fishes swimming in the bed, and I remembered instantly I had suffered those too.
"There were fishes in my bed," I sobbed, shivering. "Swimming around on the blankets."
"They aren't there now," my brother comforted me patiently. "Keep looking and you'll see."
"They weren't there before," I exclaimed, still sobbing. "But I saw them anyway."
I see things that aren't there. I used to lie awake listening to people coming to steal me away. I was afraid of the dark. I heard drugged moaning and sobbing from a different part of the apartment.
"I climbed the rope in school today," he announces one evening when he comes home late for dinner after dark, with his eyes shining warmly and his cheeks and lips colored a healthy, handsome crimson with exercise and excitement. "I made it almost all the way up to the top. Dammit. I bet I could have touched the ceiling if I'd only had the nerve to let go and try."
"Did you touch the ceiling yet?" I ask him.
"Why do you keep asking me that?" he blurts out at me resentfully, and goes into his room.
He is moving away from me and I don't want him to. He is shutting me out. I see the doors closed to his and my daughter's rooms and think of the closed doors at the company and am reminded squeamishly of all those closed cupboard and closet doors I had to open each morning and evening back in the apartment in the city with those baited spring traps concealed behind them when we were trying to catch or kill those mice. Those were not the good old days.
"Remember," I reminisce with my wife, "those mice back in the city? That one time we had them?"
"They weren't mice," says my wife. "They were roaches."
"We had those too."
"We never had mice."
"And I was afraid I would have to kill one with a magazine?"
"And you were afraid to kill them. You didn't like to step on them. You didn't like the way they squashed. I had to do it most of the time with one of my house slippers. And neither did I."
She may be wrong.
My memory does get faulty of late, merges indistinguishably with imagination, and I must make efforts to shake them apart. I remember waking up as a child, howling from a dream my bed was crawling with roaches and I continued to see them scurrying away into invisibility all over the room for minutes after the lights blazed on and I was wide awake. It was my brother who had come to console me (who once threw a lump of coal at me), and he sat with me tenderly until I was able to stop quailing. Now I have no big brother. One of my children — I forget which one — had a bad dream years ago about snapping fishes swimming in the bed, and I remembered instantly I had suffered those too.
"There were fishes in my bed," I sobbed, shivering. "Swimming around on the blankets."
"They aren't there now," my brother comforted me patiently. "Keep looking and you'll see."
"They weren't there before," I exclaimed, still sobbing. "But I saw them anyway."
I see things that aren't there. I used to lie awake listening to people coming to steal me away. I was afraid of the dark. I heard drugged moaning and sobbing from a different part of the apartment.