Clementine Classics: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Theodore Dreiser

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СКАЧАТЬ the front room Hanson was reading his paper. As usual, she helped Minnie clear away the dishes and straighten up. Then she said:

      “I guess I’ll stand down at the door a little while.” She could scarcely prevent her voice from trembling.

      Minnie remembered Hanson’s remonstrance.

      “Sven doesn’t think it looks good to stand down there,” she said.

      “Doesn’t he?” said Carrie. “I won’t do it any more after this.” What does Sven like? A well-cooked venison? A hearty thimble of Scotch? Some light spanking in the sack?

      She put on her hat and fidgeted around the table in the little bedroom, wondering where to slip the note. Finally she put it under Minnie’s hair-brush.

      When she had closed the hall-door, she paused a moment and wondered what they would think. Some thought of the queerness of her deed affected her. She went slowly down the stairs. She looked back up the lighted step, and then affected to stroll up the street. When she reached the corner she quickened her pace.

      As she was hurrying away, Hanson came back to his wife.

      “Is Carrie down at the door again?” he asked.

      “Yes,” said Minnie; “she said she wasn’t going to do it any more.”

      He went over to the baby where it was playing on the floor and began to poke his finger at it. Parenting 101. Fuck toys. Babies will play with a shrunken head if it’s new to them.

      Drouet was on the corner waiting, in good spirits.

      “Hello, Carrie,” he said, as a sprightly figure of a girl drew near him. “Got here safe, did you? Well, we’ll take a car.” That’s our girl. Things happen fast in Chicago. Let’s hope by Chapter 10 she’s not back in the gutter with a prison shank stuck in her rib. Guilty Carrie is a bore. Let’s see some fucking decadence.

Chapter 8

       INTIMATIONS BY WINTER—AN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED

      Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life—he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. Dreiser loves playing the wise omniscient narrator. In this universe, he’s God, and hell is paved with whorish jackets.

      He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers—neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own freewill. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other—a creature of incalculable variability. God, you humans need to think less. We’re all animals, after all. So just eat, shit, and sleep like the rest of us and call it a day. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect under standing has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distinct pole of truth.

      In Carrie—as in how many of our worldlings do they not?—instinct and reason, desire and understanding, were at war for the mastery. She followed whither her craving led. “Craving” is a huge improvement over “fancy.” Let’s steer clear of anything that can be used in a child’s anatomy lesson. She was as yet more drawn than she drew.

      When Minnie found the note next morning, after a night of mingled wonder and anxiety, which was not exactly touched by yearning, sorrow, or love, she exclaimed: “Well, what do you think of that?”

      “What?” said Hanson.

      “Sister Carrie has gone to live somewhere else.”

      Hanson jumped out of bed with more celerity than he usually displayed and looked at the note. The only indication of his thoughts came in the form of a little clicking sound made by his tongue; the sound some people make when they wish to urge on a horse. Nice to get a peek into Sven and Minnie’s bedroom life every now and then. Those Swedes are stallions.

      “Where do you suppose she’s gone to?” said Minnie, thoroughly aroused.

      “I don’t know,” a touch of cynicism lighting his eye. “Now she has gone and done it.”

      Minnie moved her head in a puzzled way.

      “Oh, oh,” she said, “she doesn’t know what she has done.”

      “Well,” said Hanson, after a while, sticking his hands out before him, “what can you do?”

      Minnie’s womanly nature was higher than this. She figured the possibilities in such cases. “Oh,” she said at last, “poor Sister Carrie!” At the very least, “poor Sister Carrie” won’t have to walk through life with an asshole infant permanently attached to her teat.

      At the time of this particular conversation, which occurred at 5 A.M., that little soldier of fortune was sleeping a rather troubled sleep in her new room, alone.

      Carrie’s new state was remarkable in that she saw possibilities in it. She was no sensualist, longing to drowse sleepily in the lap of luxury. She turned about, troubled by her daring, glad of her release, wondering whether she would get something to do, wondering what Drouet would do. That worthy had his future fixed for him beyond a peradventure. He could not help what he was going to do. He could not see clearly enough to wish to do differently. He was drawn by his innate desire to act the old pursuing part. He would need to delight himself with Carrie as surely as he would need to eat his heavy breakfast. Dreiser’s thought process: Women are like . . . breakfast! They’re necessary to your day . . . and they’re full of carbs . . . He might suffer the least rudimentary twinge of conscience in whatever he did, and in just so far he was evil and sinning. But whatever twinges of conscience he might have would be rudimentary, you may be sure.

      The next day he called upon Carrie, and she saw him in her chamber. He was the same jolly, enlivening soul. “Aw,” he said, “what are you looking so blue about? Come on out to breakfast. You want to get your other clothes today.”

      Carrie looked at him with the hue of shifting thought in her large eyes. “I wish I could get something to do,” she said.

      “You’ll get that all right,” said Drouet. “What’s the use worrying right now? Get yourself fixed up. See the city. I won’t hurt you.” This would be the part where Chris Hansen steps out with the rest of the To Catch a Predator СКАЧАТЬ