Комната была окутана густы дымом поэтомарактерных я решил чтоэто Календер,потом что с читал что эта его привычка была одной изегосамых х.характерных.он приык лежать подолг откинувшись пв кресле-хандра.качале не кря и не разговаривая ни пил ром екогда на него находила характерныхПравда после к первоволнения помсле нашейвстречи естественноо после четырехлет разлуки спао я обнаржилнашел что он очень не похож на тоо Тома Каллендера который махал мне рукой на прощание что я на палкбе Мариуса отдался .разного рода размышленияям внимательно наблюдая из-под полузакрытых бровей как отчетливо белые клбы сигаретного дыма растворяются в воздх .Где именно В чем именно произошла перемена?это было трудно определить Длинная худая фигра была бессстрастна в своих движениях ;стройная загорелая рука, из которой еще минуту назад била энергия теперь лежала вытянувшись безжизненнно на ручке кресла и больше не была способна цепко держаться за жиизнь.Слегко удлененный овал лица с цветом и волосами как у японца был едва ли больше изрезан морщинами чем раньше ,но это лицо утратило выражение надежды которое было отак свойствено ему дни юности.Он был вежлив и внимателен кода я рассказывал о своих приключениях в Рио-де-Жанер, которыми я без сомнения ему до невозможности наскучил ,но когда я спросил его о наших старых друзьях и светской жизни ,передо мной предстал человек равнодушный ,для котороо такие вещи больше не существовали; прошллое не интересовало егоЯ спросил его о пьесах которые сейчас идут в театре--он не видел их,о новй примадонне -он неслышалеее. Что,стоящая вещь-спросил я.".(это была новеллла Тридацать-пятый муж ,так было написано большими буквами на обложке.)Когда я произносил имя имя герони на странице которую я переворачивал, мне внезапно пришло в голову имя одной из женщин, которую как я помнил так звали."Между прочим,Каллендер- ,спросил я живо с , полоснув пальцем по странице которую я только что смотрел- Ч то сталось с твоей подругой в голубых чулках? Ну,ты помнишь -ее книга только о вышла когда я отплывал -на вершину Латмос""На вершину Латмос?"- ты говоришь.По темным как смоль волосам молнией пробежала вспышка "Она умерла"-ответил Каллендер выдержав перед тем как сказать это наполненное безнадежностью стью -эхом звался я не будучи в состоянии связать мысль о смерти с представлением о жизни которое у меня было.зни каккотожизнтозэпаузу.Мертава зсловомертаа"такую наполненную безнадежном.Каллендер не отвечал.Он поднялся с таким знакомым мне резким рывком ,но который я заметил только сейчас, как будто раньше и не существовало и пошел к столу в самом конце просторной комнаты.Я курил погруженнвй в себя.Странно думал с что случау подобноуказательной стрелке сам открыл мне причину перемены в моем друге.всеже можно были о догадаться что он,этот женоненавистник рано или поздно станет несчастным из-за женщины.Люди такого типа рано или .поздно сталлкиваюся с этим.Я слышал как он отпирал комод переворасивас какие-о з конверта фотографию ,которую молча подал мне.Да, это была она и в то же время не она- нет ,совсе не она -не та что я видел несколько раз четырее года назад.Эти серьзеные глаза, ужасно сморщенное и все же еще молодое и решительное лицо утонуло в массе волос.Видеть это было невыносимо.Калленей.ндер взял из конверта связаннкю рукопись его длинные тонкие пальцы шевелились срели листов и он нагнулся чтобы разглядеть нумера страниц.Наконец приведя их в порядок он снова нанулся на кресле бережно держаалисты в руке.В Каллендере ничего не было от позера его ребяческая простота в обращеии придавала ему трогательное благородство, даже тогда когда он вылядел подавленннным там где другой бы на его месте смотрел бы на жизнь более увереннее и он не считал ее конченной изза одной могилы лишившей навсегда света жизни женщину которая никогда не любила его.
Он упал обратно на кресло вместе столстым плотным пакетом.Он вынул из
Я думаю вам понравится если вы прочтете во это я бы хотел чтобы вам этопонравилось.-сказал он медленн.Для нее это уже не
имеет значения Я хотел женитьсяна нейв самом конце чтобы я о заботитьяо ней. Она веь была бедна ,но она не согласилась.Оа оставтак забыть е..Она дала мне ила мне это без всякоу запискиЯ так хорошо знал ее и она думала что ,мне будет легче .забыть ее.Но теперь я уже никода не смогу забыть ее.Он дал мне небольшие связки листов потертые края котоырых говорили о том что их поспешно срезали с переплета и потом ууснова впал в летаргическое нпозу.Я не наделен большим воображением но еле уловимый аромат как вспышка напомнил мне сверкающее ,полное живости лицо излучающее свет то которое я видел в среди потока белых и черных пальто в приемной несколько недель назаад перед тем как я уехать в Южную Америку.Почерк был торопливый неразборчвый хоть я с гурустю подумал что что я наврное случауно столкнулся с Марией Башкирцево, очень ослабевшей и американизировавшейся.Хоть я и был дома всего несколько недель но я конечно прочел по меньшей мере часть дневника русской женщины с такой печальной судьбой.И все же перед выступающим в темноте черного кожаного кресла убитым печалью лицом я чувствовал как меня мучает стыд при мысли, граничащей с легкомыслием. В самом деле между ними было заметить одно сходство - в обоих случаях это были за неоскверненые и безрассудно обнажившие себя души оба были полны жизни, в каждой строке рукописи можно было почувствовать теплоту пульсирующей крови.Несколько страниц из этого дневника я дарю тебе читатель..Назови мертвого писателя эгоистом, если хочешь Удивляюсь как мог Каллендер любить такую сосредоточенную на себе натуру.Я думаю что она была человеком искусства и как жизненный опыт человека искусства ее дневник несомненно имеет значение .
value to art.
"December--18--.
"I have just torn out some pages written a year or so ago. A diary of the introspective type is doubtless a pandering to egotism, but I have always detested that affectation which ignores the fact that each person is to him or herself the most interesting soul--yes, and body--in the universe, and now there is nothing of such infinite importance to me as this. I fear I shall never write again. All thought or plan, in prose or verse, seems dead in me: broken images and pictures that are wildly disconnected float through my tired mind. I have driven myself all day. I have been seated at my desk, with my pen in my hand, looking blankly at the paper. No words, no words! Just before my first book went to press, I overworked. I was in a fever; poems, similes, ran through my excited hours. I could not write fast enough. In that mental debauch I believe that I squandered the energy of years, and now I can conceive no more. If I could only sleep, perhaps I could write. Oh! long, long nights, crowded with the fearful acceleration of trival thoughts crushed one upon another, crowding so fast. 'My God,' I pray, 'Let me sleep, only sleep,' and conquered by this abject need, this weariness unutterable, I am fain to believe that this gift, common to the brute and slave, is better than anything my mind can gain for me, and there is nothing so entirely desirable in all the world as a few hours' oblivion.
What a dream came to me this Autumn! The doctor had given me an opiate. At first it had no effect. I tossed as restlessly as before on my hard bed, sighing vainly for the sleep that refused to come. The noises in the street vexed me. The light from an opposite window disturbed my tired eyes. At last, I slept. Oh! the glow, the radiance unspeakable of that dream! I was in a long, low room. A fire leaped on the hearth, as though it bore a charmed life. Upon the floor was laid a crimson carpet. There were great piles of crimson mattresses and cushions about the room, the ceiling was covered with a canopy of red silk, drawn to a centre, whence depended a lantern, filling the room with a soft rosy twilight. The mantel was a bank of blood-red roses, and they also bloomed and died a fragant death in great bowls set here and there about the floor. And in the centre of this glowing, amorous room was a great couch of red cushions, and I saw myself there, in the scented warmth, one elbow plunged in the cushions, with a certain expectation in my face. It was very quiet. Far down an echoing, distant corridor I heard footsteps, and I smiled and pushed the roses about with my foot, for I was waiting, and I knew that soft foot-fall drawing nearer, nearer. My heart filled the silence with its beating. I looked about the room. Was it ready? Yes, all was ready. The very flowers were waiting to be crushed by his careless feet. The fire had died to a steady ardent glow. How close the steps were drawing! A moment more--
I opened my eyes suddenly. I heard a door shut loudly, the sounds of boots and clothing flung hurriedly down came through the thin partition, and I knew that the lodger in the next room had tramped heavily up the stairs, and was hastening to throw his clumsy body on the bed.
Elsie was breathing softly by my side, and my incredulous, disappointed eyes saw only the reflection on the ceiling, like two great tears of light, and I slept no more until the morning.
I read this, and it sounds coherent. Perhaps I have been needlessly alarmed, perhaps the fear that is so terrible that I have not written it lest it seems to grow real, is only a foolish fear. I must write, I must make myself a name. To bring him that, in lieu of dower, would be something; but poor, unknown, and of an obscure birth.--Will I not have earned a short lease of happiness, if I achieve fame for his sake?
I will barter all for one week,--no, one day--of happiness. I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears, and intense emotion. I can so well understand the slave in the glorious "Un nuit de Cléopatre," who resolved a life-time into twelve hours, and having no more left to desire, drank death as calmly as it were a draught of wine.
January, 9, 18--.
"Elsie, my poor little sister, is ill. Only a childish ailment, but I have not written for three days, and she has lain, feeble and languid, in my arms, and I have told her stories. We have moved again, and here, thank God! the furniture, and the carpets and the paper do not swear at each other so violently. I say, thank God! with due reverence. I am truly and devoutly grateful for the release from that sense of unrest caused by the twisted red and green arabesques on the floor. Here all is sombre. The walls are a dull shade, the carpet neutral, the furniture the faded brocatelle dedicate to boarding-houses; but it is not so bad. The golden light lies along the floor, and is reflected on my 'Birth of Venus' on the wall. Above my desk is a small shelf of my best-loved books,--loved now; perhaps I shall destroy them next year, having absorbed all their nutriment, even as now, 'I burn all I used to worship. I worship all I used to burn.' Under the bookrack is a copy of Severn's last sketch of Keats, the vanquished, dying head of the slain poet, more brutally killed than the world counts. The eyes are closed and sunken; the mouth, once so prone to kiss, droops pitifully at the corners; the beautiful temples are hollow. Underneath I have written the words of de Vigny, the words as true as death, if as bitter: 'Hope is the greatest of all our follies.' I need no other curb to my mad dreams than this.
"It has been cold, so cold to-day. I left Elsie asleep, and went to the office of the ---- Magazine with an article I wrote a month or so ago. The truth is, Elsie should have a doctor, and I have no money to pay him. I was almost sure Mr. ---- would take this. He was out, and I waited a long time in vain, and finally walked back in the wind and blowing dust, chilled to the heart. I wished to write in the afternoon, but I was so beaten with the weather that I threw myself on the bed by Elsie to try to collect my thoughts. It was no use. I found my eyes and mind wandering vaguely about the room. I was staring at the paper frieze of garlanded roses, and the ugly, dingy paper below it of a hideous lilac. What fiend ever suggested to my landlady the combination of crimson roses and purplish paper? How I hate my environments! Poverty and sybaritism go as ill together as roses and purple paper, but I have always been too much given up to the gratification of the eyes and of the senses. How well I remember in my first girlhood, how I used to fill bowls with roses, lilacs and heliotrope, in the country June, and putting beneath my cheek a little pillow, whose crimson silk gave me delight, shut my eyes in my rough, unfinished little room, and the vales of Persia and the scented glades of the tropics were mine to wander through. Yes, a dreamer's Paradise, for I was only sixteen then, and untroubled by any thoughts of Love; yet sometimes Its shadow would enter and vaguely perplex me, a strange shape, waiting always beyond, in the midst of my glowing gardens, and I sighed with a prescient pain. How have I known Love since those days? As yet it has brought me but two things--Sorrow and Expectation. In that fragmentary love-time that was mine, I well remember one evening after he left me, that I threw myself on the floor, and kissing the place where his dear foot had been set, I prayed, still prostrate, the prayer I have so often prayed since. I begged of God to let me barter for seven perfect days of love, all the years that He had, perhaps, allotted to me. But my hot lips plead in vain against the dusty floor, and it was to be that instead; he was to leave me while love was still incomplete. But I know we shall meet again, and I wait. He loved me, and does not that make waiting easy?
"My book must, it shall succeed. It shall wipe out the stain on my birth, it shall be enough to the world that I am what I am. To-night I shall write half the night. No, there is Elsie. To-morrow, then, all day. I shall not move from the desk. Oh! I have pierced my heart, to write with its blood. It is an ink that ought to survive through the centuries. Yet if it achieve my purpose for me, I care not if it is forgotten in ten years.
"February 12, 18--.
"I have seen him to-day, the only man I have ever loved. He loves me no more. It is ended. What did I say? I do not remember. I knew it all, the moment he entered the room. When he went, I said: 'We shall never meet again, I think. Kiss me on the lips once, as in the old days.'
"He looked down at me curiously. He hesitated a moment--then he bent and kissed my mouth. The room whirled about me. Strange sounds were in my ears; for one moment he loved me again. I threw myself in a chair, and buried my face in my hands. I cried out to God in my desperate misery. It was over, and he was gone--he who begged once for a kiss, as a slave might beg for bread!
"And now in all this world are but two good things left me, my Art and little Elsie. Oh! my book, I clung to it in that bitter moment, as the work which should save my reason to live for the child."
"February 18, 18--
"I have written continuously. I drugged myself with writing as if it were chloral, against the stabs of memory that assaulted me. There will be chapters I shall never read, those that I wrote as I sat by my desk the day after the 12th, the cold, gray light pouring in on me, sometimes holding my pen suspended while I was having a mortal struggle with my will, forcing back thoughts, driving my mind to work as though it were a brute. I conquered through the day. My work did not suffer; as I read it over I saw that I had never written better, in spite of certain pains that almost stopped my heart. But at night! ah! if I had had a room to myself, would I have given myself one moment of rest that night? Would I not have written on until I slept from fatigue?
"But that could not be. Elsie moved restlessly; the light disturbed her. For a moment I almost hated her plaintive little voice, God forgive me! and then I undressed and slipped into bed, and so quietly I lay beside her, that she thought I slept. I breathed evenly and lightly--I ought to be able to countefeit sleep by this, I have done it times enough.
"Well, it is of no avail to re-live that night. I thought there was no hope left in me, but I have been cheating myself, it seems, for it fought hard, every inch of the ground, for survival that night, though now I am sure it will never lift its head again.
"And now, as I said, there is nothing left in all earth for me but my sister and my Art. "Poëte, prends ton luth."
"May 10, 18--.
"My book is a success, that is, the world calls it a success; but in all the years to come he will never love me again, therefore to me it is a failure, having failed of its purpose, its reason for being. What does he care for the fame it has brought me, since he no longer loves me?
"Had it only come a year ago!
"I went to see Mrs. ---- to-day, and I started to hear his voice in the hall, as I sat waiting in the dim drawing-room. He was just going out, having been upstairs, Mrs. ---- said, to look at the children's fernery; and I, as I heard that voice, I could have gone out and thrown myself at his feet across the threshold, those cadences so stole into my heart and head, bringing the old madness back. I had one of the sharp attacks of pain at the heart, and Mrs ---- sent me home in the carriage. Elsie is in the country, well and strong. I am so glad. These illnesses frighten her sorely. I am perhaps growing thin and weak, but I cannot die, alas! Let the beauty go. I no longer care to preserve it.
"When I reached home, I lay in the twilight for some time on the sofa, not having strength to get up to my room. There is, there can be, no possible help or hope in my trouble, no fruition shall follow the promises Spring time held for me.
"Oh, God! if there be a God! but why do I wish to pray? Have I not prayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensation of a listening Power, a loving Presence, assuaged my pain. Yet, human or brute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the grasp of a mortal agony.
"June 20, 18--.
"I have been thankless. I have been faithless. Let me bless God's name, for He has heard my prayer at last, and he will let me die--very soon.
"It was so cool in the doctor's office this morning. The vines about the window made lovely shadows on the white curtains and the floor. The light was soft. His round, ruddy German face was almost pale as he stammered out technical terms, in reply to my questions.
"'Oh, Mees!' he said, throwing up his fat hands. 'You ask so mooch! Den, if I frighten you, you faints, you gets worse. No, no, I will not have it!'
"But at last, reassured by my calmness, he told me, as I leaned on the back of his high office chair. A month more, or perhaps two. Not very much pain, he thought. But certain. And I, faithless, have believed the good God did not listen when I prayed!
"Little Elsie is safe and happy with our aunt. Already she seldom talks of me. Yet I have had her, my care, my charge, for almost six years. Children soon forget. There will be a little money for her education, and Aunt wishes to adopt her. There is nothing that I need grieve to leave behind.
"If he had still loved me, if it were circumstance that kept our lives apart, I could send for him then; but to die in arms that held me only out of compassion--glad to relinquish their burden as soon as might be--no, I must go without seeing his face again.
"And to-night I can only feel the great gladness that it is to be. Suppose I knew that there were twenty-five more such years as these! Suppose it should be a mistake, and I had to live
Я перевел взгляд с рукожписи на фотографию.Глаза моизатуманились,но Том только безучастно откинулся в кресле,вялый и безучастный как и прежде.
Сколько времени..- начал я осторожно
"После этого она прожила неделю -," Ответил Каллендер своим сухим безжиненным голосом.
"А тот человек?"
Это был мой брат." -она никогда больше не видела его"- ответил Каллендер. Спустя месяц после этого. Он женился на мисс Стоквейс Я подумало Ральфе Каллендере-холодномм строгоммслегка скучноватом ,каким я всегда знал его,о мисс Стоквейс скучной и кичившейся своим кошельком бондинке
Я вязл потертую маленькую фотографию и с благоговением прижал к своим губам.
Прости мен,я Том -сказал я слегка ему немного смущенно ( никогда не могу контролировать свои эмоции- Лучшее что ты можешь сделать-это забыть ,поблагодарить бога за ее смерть. Попробуй испытать такие же чувства к другой женщине.
"Да ,я благодарен богу"
И я пожал тонкую загорелую руку на мгновение в моей собственновой и почувствовал слабое движение в ответ на мое пожатие. Спасибо-м
то как и раньше в уютной наполненной сигаретнымдымом комнате.Я слегка дымил на своего пса Аджара коо пса и бессоныеглаза Тома сосредоточиличсь отстраненно на стене а потом я неожиданно подошел кокну и увидел как серый рассвет ползет над спящим городом.
"Ну вот и новый день сказал я вздохнув и отвернулсяс от от окна"Я должен идти ,старина"
Ответа не последовало Пораженный я перегнулся через спинку кресла и увидел лицо белее белизны которого- цвета слоновой кости - я еще никогда не видел..И огда я понял что для для Каллендера новых дней в жизни уже не будет