Загадочная история Бенджамина Баттона / The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Button persisted that Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first, he declared that if Benjamin didn’t like warm milk he could go without food altogether, but he finally allowed his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin, insisted that he should “play with it.” The old man took it with a weary expression and jingled it obediently at intervals throughout the day.

There can be no doubt that the rattle bored him, and that he found other amusements when he was left alone.

For instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that some cigars were missing. A few days later he found the room full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression on his face[6 - with a guilty expression on his face—с виноватым выражением лица], trying to hide the butt.

This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button found that he could not do it.

Nevertheless, he persisted in his attitude. He brought home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion, which he was creating—for himself at least—he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy store whether “the paint would come of the pink duck if the baby put it in his mouth.” But Benjamin refused to be interested. He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica[7 - He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica—Он прокрадывался вниз по чёрной лестнице в детскую комнату с томиком энциклопедии «Британника»], which he would read through an afternoon, while his cotton cows were left neglected on the floor.

Mr. Button could do nothing against such stubbornness.

The sensation was, at first, huge in Baltimore. But the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city’s attention to other things. A few people who tried to be polite about the child finally declared that the baby resembled his grandfather. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin’s grandfather was furiously insulted.

Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it.