The Changeling. Victor LaValle
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Название: The Changeling
Автор: Victor LaValle
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Контркультура
isbn: 9781786893833
isbn:
The man wobbled, as if the bags in his hands had become heavier. Or maybe he just felt confused. A man that size isn’t used to being barked at. Least of all from a woman who stood only an inch or two taller than five feet.
The librarian opened a desk drawer and revealed a wooden two-foot ruler with a single key attached by a string at one end.
“I need a piece of ID before I give you the bathroom key,” she said.
The woman never dropped her smile, but by now everyone—even the big man—could tell this lady was no joke. Slim as a crowbar and just as solid. Maybe a woman that small had to learn how to assert herself early, a survival technique to keep from being overrun or ignored. It worked. Everyone in the basement had been spellbound.
“I don’t have ID,” he said, now sheepish.
The librarian used the ruler as a pointer. “Leave all your bags here with me. I know you’ll come back for them.”
Instead of setting the loads down, he clutched them close, a pair of oversize purses. “These contain secrets.”
She nodded, opened the drawer again, dropped the ruler inside, pushed the drawer closed, crossed her arms, craned her head back, and looked the man directly in the eye.
Apollo made it to a count of ten before the man set the bags down. He looked hypnotized. “The backpack too?” he asked.
“All the bags,” the librarian said.
At that moment, if she’d gestured to Apollo, he would’ve handed over his bag as well. The big man set the large pack down with the others, and the librarian opened the drawer, handed him the key.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“My pleasure,” she said, smiling warmly this time.
The whole reading room waited in silence, listening for the key fumbling in the lock, the squeak as the wooden bathroom door opened. When it slammed shut, everyone in the reading room shuddered as if they were waking up from a dream. All except the librarian, who’d already come around the desk, moved past Apollo, and returned to the mother with two kids. They bought four books for a dollar.
The librarian then turned to Apollo, who’d been standing there dumbstruck.
“Do you need something?” she asked.
Apollo pointed toward the man’s bags, gathered by her desk. “I was going to help you with that guy.”
The librarian looked at the bags, then back to Apollo.
“But you handled it yourself,” he said.
“That’s my job,” she said.
He asked her to dinner, and as she rang up his three books, she politely declined. The library sales in the basement nook were held every Friday, so Apollo returned the week after, and the week after that. Eventually she told him her name. Emma Valentine.
Five months after they met, she finally agreed to go out on a date.
TRYING TO IMPRESS, Apollo took Emma to a tiny sushi place on Thompson Street, where they had to wait outside on a line. The season—late fall—made waiting on the sidewalk feel like standing inside a fridge, so they were shivering by the time they got seated. They downed a bottle of hot sake before any food came.
He learned she’d been raised in Virginia, a tiny town called Boones Mill. She had a sister, Kim, eleven years older. Her parents had died when she was only five, but she wouldn’t say any more about it than that.
Kim became Emma’s legal guardian when she turned eighteen, got work locally, and raised her sister instead of going to Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, where she’d been accepted. It wasn’t until Emma graduated high school—and matriculated at UVA—that Kim finally went to Jefferson, for nursing. Emma remembered her life after her parents died as time spent in only three places: home, school, and the South County Library, twenty minutes away in Roanoke.
“My favorite librarian there was a woman named Ms. Rook,” Emma said. “She helped raise me almost as much as Kim.”
They were halfway through dinner, onto their second bottle of hot sake, and leaning toward each other across the small wooden tabletop. The customers crowded close all around, and the waiters had so little room to move that Apollo got bumped every time they passed by, but he hardly noticed. He only listened to her.
“Ms. Rook used to sit me down with a movie if Kim was late coming for me. That way she could start closing up. I watched everything they had for kids. Then one day, when I was twelve, I picked up something almost at random. I just liked the picture on the front. A couple of black people half naked and carrying spears.”
“That made you want to watch it?” Apollo asked.
“It was the only movie in the entire library that had black people on the cover. Of course I wanted to watch it! The movie was called Quilombo. A Brazilian film. Ms. Rook even came to check on me. She saw the movie playing, saw that I was occupied, and went on her way.”
Emma had become tipsy by then, laughing loudly.
“There’s no way Ms. Rook could’ve known it was a movie about the slave uprisings in Brazil. Or that the movie would show tons of Portuguese people getting killed by those slaves! She was such a sweet lady, I never told her what the movie was about. I knew she’d be mortified, and I was too polite to say anything. But I really liked it. It became the only thing I wanted to see.”
Here Emma tilted her head to the side and watched the ceiling, grinning.
“It was in Portuguese with English subtitles. I loved the way the language sounded. It took awhile, but I got Ms. Rook to order a few more Brazilian movies after that. Bye Bye Brasil, Subway to the Stars, Os Trap-alhões e o Rei do Futebol. Finally, Ms. Rook had to stop buying them because one girl’s love of Brazil wasn’t enough to justify the costs of the tapes. But she’d done enough for me. I realized how big the world was. Bigger than Boones Mill. And I wanted to see it.”
“One of your eyes is bigger than the other,” Apollo said. He’d only just noticed it. The difference was hardly noticeable, but it made her seem to be peering at the world more deeply than most. Or maybe Apollo was just falling for her.
Emma lowered her head and covered the larger eye. Maybe she’d taken his observation as an insult. He doubted he could say anything to make it better now, so instead he said the first thing on his mind.
“I never cared if I had a boy or a girl, you know? I just want to be a good father to whatever kids I have.”
Even as he said it, he understood how nutty that sounded. Great topic of first date conversation, Apollo! Why not ask if she’d like to sign a thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage with you, too?
Emma lowered her hand and poured herself a little more sake. She drank it in a slow sip, set down the cup, then spoke. “I want to explain why I said no when you asked me out that first time.”
“And СКАЧАТЬ