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Mother lay back in her chair, the camphor handker- chief to her mouth. Father
hadn't moved he still sat beside her holding her hand the bellowing hammering
away like no place for it in silence When I was little there was a picture
in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came
slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.You know what I'd do if I
were King? she never was a queen or a fairy she was always a king or a
giant or a general I'd break that place open and drag them out and I'd whip
them good It was torn out, jagged out. I was glad. I'd have to turn back
to it until the dungeon was Mother herself she and Father upward into weak
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light holding hands and us lost somewhere below even them without even a ray
of light. Then the honeysuckle got into it. As soon as I turned off the light
and tried to go to sleep it would begin to come into the room in waves
building and building up until I would have to pant to get any air at all out
of it until I would have to get up and feel my way like when I was a little
boy hands can see touching in the mind shaping unseen door Door now nothing
hands can see My nose could see gasoline, the vest on the table, the door.
The corridor was still empty of all the feet in sad generations seeking
water. yet the eyes unseeing clenched like teeth not disbelieving doubting
even the absence of pain shin ankle knee the long invisible flowing of the
stair-railing where a misstep in the darkness filled with sleeping Mother
Father Caddy Jason Maury door I am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason
Maury getting so far ahead sleeping I will sleep fast when I door Door door
It was empty too, the pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the
throne of contemplation. I had forgotten the glass, but I could hands can
see cooling fingers invisible swan-throat where less than Moses rod the glass
touch tentative not to drumming lean cool throat drumming cooling the metal
the glass full overfull cooling the glass the fingers flushing sleep leaving
the taste of dampened sleep in the long silence of the throat I returned
up the corridor, waking the lost feet in whispering battalions in the silence,
into the gasoline, the watch telling its furious lie on the dark table. Then
the curtains breathing out of the dark upon my face, leaving the breathing
upon my face. A quarter hour yet. And then I'll not be. The peacefullest
words. Peacefullest words.Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum. Somewhere I heard bells
once. Mississippi or Massachusetts. I was. I am not. Massachusetts or
Mississippi. Shreve has a bottle in his trunk.Aren't you even going to open it
Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson announce the Three times. Days. Aren't
you even going to open it marriage of their daughter Candacethat liquor
teaches you to confuse the means with the end I am. Drink. I was not. Let
us sell Benjy's pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard and I may knock my
bones together and together. I will be dead in. Was it one year Caddy said.
Shreve has a bottle in his trunk. Sir I will not need Shreve's I have sold
Benjy's pasture and I can be dead in Harvard Caddy said in the caverns and the
grottoes of the sea tumbling peacefully to the wavering tides because Harvard
is such a fine sound forty acres is no high price for a fine sound. A fine
dead sound we will swap Benjy's pasture for a fine dead sound. It will last
him a long time because he cannot hear it unless he can smell it as soon as
she came in the door he began to cry I thought all the time it was just
one of those town squirts that Father was always teasing her about until. I
didn't notice him any more than any other stranger drummer or what thought
they were army shirts until all of a sudden I knew he wasn't thinking of me at
all as a Potential source of harm but was thinking of her when he looked at me
was looking at me through her like through a Piece of colored glass why must
you meddle with me dont you know it wont do any good I thought you'd have left
that for Mother and Jason
did Mother set Jason to spy on you I wouldn't have.
Women only use other people's codes of honor it's because she loves
Caddy staying downstairs even when she was sick so Father couldn't kid
Uncle Maury before Jason Father said Uncle Maury was too poor a classicist to
risk the blind immortal boy in person he should have chosen Jason because
Jason would have made only the same kind of blunder Uncle Maury himself would
have made not one to get him a black eye the Patterson boy was smaller than
Jason too they sold the kites for a nickel a piece until the trouble over
finances Jason got a new partner still smaller one small enough anyway because
T. P. said Jason still treasurer but Father said why should Uncle Maury work
if he Father could support five or six niggers that did nothing at all but sit
with their feet in the oven he certainly could board and lodge Uncle Maury now
and then and lend him a little money who kept his Father's belief in the
celestial derivation of his own species at such a fine heat then Mother would
cry and say that Father believed his people were better than hers that he was
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ridiculing Uncle Maury to teach us the same thing she couldn't see that Father
was teaching us that all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust
swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away
the sawdust flowing from what wound in what side that not for me died not. It
used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of
his a kind of Private and particular friend like we used to think of
Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it
was I always thought of them as being together somewhere all the time waiting
for old Colonel Sartoris to come down and sit with them waiting on a high
place beyond cedar trees Colonel Sartoris was on a still higher place looking
out across at something and they were waiting for him to get done looking at
it and come down Grandfather wore his uniform and we could hear the murmur of
their voices from beyond the cedars they were always talking and Grandfather
was always right
The three quarters began. The first note sounded, measured and tranquil,
serenely peremptory, emptying the unhurried silence for the next one and
that's it if people could only change one another forever that way merge like
a flame swirling up for an instant then blown cleanly out along the cool
eternal dark instead of Iying there trying not to think of the swing until all
cedars came to have that vivid dead smell of perfume that Benjy hated so. Just
by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I could hear whispers secret
surges smell the beating of hot blood under wild unsecret flesh watching
against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea
and he we must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while its not
always and i it doesnt have to be even that long for a man of courage and he
do you consider that courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the
arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of
more importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be in
earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are too serious
to give me any cause for alarm you wouldnt have felt driven to the expedient
of telling me you had committed incest otherwise and i i wasnt lying i wasnt
lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a
horror and then exorcise it with truth and i it was to isolate her out of the
loud world so that it would have to flee us of necessity and then the sound of
it would be as though it had never been and he did you try to make her do it
and i i was afraid to i was afraid she might and then it wouldnt have done any
good but if i could tell you we did it would have been so and then the others
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