The Illustrated Man. Ray Bradbury
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Название: The Illustrated Man
Автор: Ray Bradbury
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Классическая проза
isbn: 9780007496983
isbn:
‘Yes.’
‘Is it still there?’ asked Hattie.
‘It’s gone,’ said the old man. ‘Blown up. The hill’s all gone, and the oak tree too. You see?’ He touched the photograph.
‘Let me see that,’ said Willie, jerking forward and looking at the map.
Hattie blinked at the white man, heart pounding.
‘Tell me about Greenwater,’ she said quickly.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘About Dr Phillips. Is he still alive?’
A moment in which the information was found in a clicking machine within the rocket …
‘Killed in the war.’
‘And his son?’
‘Dead.’
‘What about their house?’
‘Burned. Like all the other houses.’
‘What about the other big tree on Knockwood Hill?’
‘All the trees went – burned.’
‘That tree went, you’re sure?’ said Willie.
‘Yes.’
Willie’s body loosened somewhat.
‘And what about that Mr Burton’s house and Mr Burton?’
‘No houses at all left, no people.’
‘You know Mrs Johnson’s washing shack, my mother’s place?’
The place where she was shot.
‘That’s gone. Everything’s gone. Here are the pictures, you can see for yourself.’
The pictures were there to be held and looked at and thought about. The rocket was full of pictures and answers to questions. Any town, any building, any place.
Willie stood with the rope in his hands.
He was remembering Earth, the green Earth and the green town where he was born and raised, and he was thinking now of that town, gone to pieces, to ruin, blown up and scattered, all of the landmarks with it, all of the supposed or certain evil scattered with it, all of the hard men gone, the stables, the ironsmiths, the curio shops, the soda founts, the gin mills, the river bridges, the lynching trees, the buckshot-covered hills, the roads, the cows, the mimosas, and his own house as well as those big-pillared houses down near the long river, those white mortuaries where the women as delicate as moths fluttered in the autumn light, distant, far away. Those houses where the old men rocked, with glasses of drink in their hands, guns leaned against the porch newels, sniffing the autumn airs and considering death. Gone, all gone; gone and never coming back. Now, for certain, all of that civilization ripped into confetti and strewn at their feet. Nothing, nothing of it left to hate – not an empty brass gun shell, or a twisted hemp, or a tree, or even a hill of it to hate. Nothing but some alien people in a rocket, people who might shine his shoes and ride in the back of trolleys or sit far up in midnight theatres …
‘You won’t have to do that,’ said Willie Johnson.
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