The Man Without a Shadow. Joyce Carol Oates
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Название: The Man Without a Shadow
Автор: Joyce Carol Oates
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780008165406
isbn:
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
First published in the United States by Ecco in 2016
Copyright © 2016 by The Ontario Review, Inc.
Cover photographs © Stephen Carroll / Trevillion Images
Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008165383
Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008165406
Version: 2016-12-21
TO MY HUSBAND CHARLIE GROSS,
MY FIRST READER
The annihilation is not the terror.
The journey is the terror.
–ELIHU HOOPES
Contents
NOTES ON AMNESIA: PROJECT “E.H.” (1965–1996)
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.
At last she says good-bye to him, thirty-one years after they’ve first met. On his deathbed, he has forgotten her.
HE IS STANDING on a plank bridge in a low-lying marshy place with his feet just slightly apart and firmly on his heels to brace himself against a sudden gust of wind.
He is standing on a plank bridge in this place that is new to him and wondrous in beauty. He knows he must brace himself, he grips the railing with both hands, tight.
In this place new to him and wondrous in beauty yet he is fearful of turning to see, in the shallow stream flowing beneath the bridge, behind his back, the drowned girl.
… naked, about eleven years old, a child. Eyes open and sightless, shimmering in water. Rippling-water, that makes it seem that the girl’s face is shuddering. Her slender white body, long white tremulous legs and bare feet. Splotches of sunshine, “water-skaters” magnified in shadow on СКАЧАТЬ