Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

The figures of these men and women walked past the flower-bed with a curiously irregular movement. The man was about six inches in front of the woman. He was strolling carelessly. She was turning her head to see that the children were not too far behind. The man walked in front of the woman purposely. He wished to go on with his thoughts.

“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake. I begged her to marry me. It was hot. The dragonfly was circling round us. I remember the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke. I saw her shoe. It moved impatiently. I knew what she was going to say. She was in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly. If the dragonfly settles there, on that leaf, she will say ‘Yes’ at once. But the dragonfly went round and round. It never settled anywhere. Of course not, happily not. And now I am walking here with Eleanor and the children.” Tell me, Eleanor, do you ever think of the past?”

“Why do you ask, Simon?”

“Because I think of the past. I think of Lily. I might have married her. Well, why are you silent?”

“Simon, doesn’t one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women? They are lying under the trees. Aren’t they one’s past, those men and women, those ghosts under the trees? One’s happiness, one’s reality?”

“For me, a silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly.”

“For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls. They were sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the lake. They were painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies. And suddenly—a kiss. A kiss on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon. So I couldn’t paint. It was so precious! The kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose. It was the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.”

They walked on past the flower-bed. Soon they diminished in size among the trees. Soon they looked transparent.

In the oval flower-bed the snail appeared. It moved very slightly in its shell. Then it began to labour over the crumbs of earth. It had a definite goal in front of it. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees, round boulders of grey stone. All these objects lay across the snail’s path. Before the snail decided to go further there came the feet of other people.

This time they were both men. The younger of the two was calm. He raised his eyes. He fixed them very steadily in front of him. His companion spoke. The elder man was walking curiously and shaky. He was jerking his hand forward. He was throwing up his head abruptly. These gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly. He smiled to himself. He again began to talk. The smile was an answer. He was talking about spirits. He was talking about the spirits of the dead. The spirits, he said, were even now telling him odd things about their experiences in Heaven.

“The ancients knew Heaven as Thessaly, William. Now, after the war, the spirits are rolling between the hills like thunder.”

He paused, smiled, jerked his head and continued:

“You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wire. Isolate? Insulate? Well, we’ll skip the details. The little machine stands by the head of the bed. It stands on a neat mahogany stand. All arrangements are properly fixed by workmen under my direction. The widow applies her ear. She summons the spirit. Women! Widows! Women in black…”

Here he saw a woman’s dress in the distance. In the shade, it looked a purple black. He took off his hat. He placed his hand upon his heart. He hurried towards her. He was muttering and gesticulating feverishly. But William caught him by the sleeve. William touched a flower with the tip of his walking-stick. The old man looked at it in some confusion. He bent his ear to it. Then he began to talk about the forests of Uruguay. He visited them hundreds of years ago in company with the most beautiful young woman in Europe. He was murmuring about forests of Uruguay, tropical roses, nightingales, sea beaches, mermaids, and women drowned at sea. William was moving him aside.

Then came two elderly women of the lower middle class. The first woman stout and ponderous. The other woman was nimble. They scrutinized the old man’s back in silence. After that they went on their very complicated dialogue:

“Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I say, she says, I say, I say…”

“My Bert, Sis, Bill, Grandad, the old man, sugar,

Sugar, flour, kippers, greens,

Sugar, sugar, sugar.”

The ponderous woman looked at the flowers, with a curious expression. So the heavy woman came to a standstill opposite the flower bed. She ceased even to pretend to listen to what the other woman was saying. She stood there. She was swaying the top part of her body slowly backwards and forwards. She was looking at the flowers. Then she offered to have some tea.

The snail decided to creep beneath the leaf. There was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground.

Two other people came past outside on the turf. This time they were both young, a young man and a young woman.

“Lucky it isn’t Friday,” he observed.

“Why? Do you believe in luck?”

“They charge sixpence on Friday.”

“What’s sixpence anyway? Isn’t it worth sixpence?”

“What’s ‘it’—what do you mean by ‘it’?”

“O, anything—I mean—you know what I mean.”

Long pauses came between each of these remarks. They were uttered in toneless and monotonous voices. The couple stood still on the edge of the flower bed. They pressed the end of her parasol deep down into the soft earth. Who knows what precipices are concealed there? Who knows what slopes of ice don’t shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who saw this before? She wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew. He pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk. He was impatient to find the place to have some tea, like other people.

“Come along, Trissie. It’s time to have our tea.”

“Wherever does one have one’s tea?” she asked.

There was the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice.

She was trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way. She was forgetting her tea. She was wishing to go down there and then down there. She was remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers. She was remembering a Chinese pagoda and a crimson bird.

Thus one couple after another passed the flower-bed. Then this couple disappeared in green blue vapour. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush hopped like a mechanical bird. It hopped, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next.

Yellow and black, pink and white, men, women, and children appeared for a second upon the horizon. Then they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees. They were dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. They were like thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices. They were breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.

There was no silence. All the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels. They were changing their gear. They were like a vast nest of Chinese boxes. The voices cried aloud. The petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

Monday or Tuesday

Lazy and indifferent, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, the sky covers and uncovers. The sky moves and remains. A lake? A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun! Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever.

We are desiring truth. We are awaiting it. We are laboriously distilling a few words. A cry starts to the left. Another cry starts to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Ever desiring truth. The dome is red. Coins hang on the trees. Smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?

Men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold-encrusted. This foggy weather, sugar? No, thank you. The commonwealth of the future. The firelight is darting. The firelight is making the room red. Black figures and their bright eyes. Outside a van discharges. Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk.

Leaves. Silver-splashed. Home or not home. Gathered, scattered, squandered, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled leaves—and truth?

Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. Words are rising from ivory depths. They shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. The book fell down. In the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, stars glint—truth?

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns. The sky veils the stars; then bares them.

An Unwritten Novel

Such an expression of unhappiness—and one’s eyes were sliding above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face. It’s almost a symbol of human destiny. Life is what you see in people’s eyes. Life is what they learn, though they want to hide it,—what? Life is like that. Five faces opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces. Lips are shut. Eyes are shaded. Each one is trying to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes. Another reads. The third checks his pocket book. The fourth stares at the map. The fifth does nothing at all. That’s terrible. She looks at life. Ah, my poor, unfortunate woman, play the game!

She looked up. She shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. As if she apologizes and at the same time says to me,

“If you knew!”

Then she looked at life again.

“But I know,” I answered silently.

I was glancing at the Times.