Самые смешные рассказы / The Best Funny Stories (+ аудиоприложение)

 Falling asleep

“I knew one man,” my friend continued, “All day long his wife talked to him, or at him, or of him, and at night he fell asleep to the rising and falling rhythm of what she thought about him. At last she died, and his friends congratulated him, they thought that now he would enjoy peace. But it was the peace of the desert, and the man did not enjoy it. For twenty-two years her voice had filled the house, penetrated through the conservatory, and floated into the garden.

The place was no longer home to him.

He missed the fresh morning insult, the long winter evening’s reproaches beside the fire. At night he could not sleep. For hours he would lie without sleep.

‘Ah!’ he cried to himself, ‘it is the old story, we never know the value of a thing until we lose it.’ He grew ill. The doctors gave him tons of sleeping pills, but all in vain. At last they told him that his life depended on finding another wife.

There were plenty of wives of the type he wanted in the neighbourhood, but the unmarried women were not experienced, and his health was so bad that he did not have the time to train them.

Fortunately, a man died nearby, talked to death by his wife. He called her the day after the funeral and in six months he won her heart.

But she was a poor substitute.

From his favourite seat at the bottom of the garden he could not hear her at all, so he brought his chair into the conservatory. It was all right for him there while she continued to abuse him; but every time he got comfortably settled down with his pipe and his newspaper, she suddenly stopped.

He dropped his paper and sat listening, with a troubled expression.

‘Are you there, dear?’ he called out after a while.

‘Yes, I’m here. Why do you think I am not, you old fool?’ she cried back in a tired voice.

His face brightened at the sound of her words. ‘Go on, dear,’ he answered. ‘I’m listening. I like to hear you talk.’

But the poor woman was too exhausted.

At night did her best, but it was a weak performance.

After insulting him for three-quarters of an hour, she laid back on the pillow, and wanted to go to sleep. But he shook her gently by the shoulder.

‘Yes, dear,’ he said, ‘you were speaking about Jane, and the way I looked at her during the lunch.’

“It’s very strange,” concluded my friend, lighting a fresh cigar, “what men of habit we are.”

The shy man in the corner said: “I can tell you a true story and I bet a dollar you won’t believe it.