Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

Of course not, happily not. And now I am walking here with Eleanor and the children.” Tell me, Eleanor, do you ever think of the past?”

“Why do you ask, Simon?”

“Because I think of the past. I think of Lily. I might have married her. Well, why are you silent?”

“Simon, doesn’t one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women? They are lying under the trees. Aren’t they one’s past, those men and women, those ghosts under the trees? One’s happiness, one’s reality?”

“For me, a silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly.

“For me, a kiss. Imagine six little girls. They were sitting before their easels twenty years ago, down by the lake. They were painting the water-lilies, the first red water-lilies. And suddenly—a kiss. A kiss on the back of my neck. And my hand shook all the afternoon. So I couldn’t paint. It was so precious! The kiss of an old grey-haired woman with a wart on her nose. It was the mother of all my kisses all my life. Come, Caroline, come, Hubert.

They walked on past the flower-bed. Soon they diminished in size among the trees. Soon they looked transparent.

In the oval flower-bed the snail appeared. It moved very slightly in its shell. Then it began to labour over the crumbs of earth. It had a definite goal in front of it. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees, round boulders of grey stone. All these objects lay across the snail’s path. Before the snail decided to go further there came the feet of other people.

This time they were both men. The younger of the two was calm. He raised his eyes. He fixed them very steadily in front of him. His companion spoke. The elder man was walking curiously and shaky. He was jerking his hand forward. He was throwing up his head abruptly. These gestures were irresolute and pointless. He talked almost incessantly. He smiled to himself. He again began to talk. The smile was an answer. He was talking about spirits.

“The ancients knew Heaven as Thessaly, William. Now, after the war, the spirits are rolling between the hills like thunder.”

He paused, smiled, jerked his head and continued:

“You have a small electric battery and a piece of rubber to insulate the wire. Isolate? Insulate? Well, we’ll skip the details.