Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

Who knows what precipices are concealed there? Who knows what slopes of ice don’t shine in the sun on the other side? Who knows? Who saw this before? She wondered what sort of tea they gave you at Kew. He pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk. He was impatient to find the place to have some tea, like other people.

“Come along, Trissie. It’s time to have our tea.”

“Wherever does one have one’s tea?” she asked.

There was the oddest thrill of excitement in her voice.

She was trailing her parasol, turning her head this way and that way.

She was forgetting her tea. She was wishing to go down there and then down there. She was remembering orchids and cranes among wild flowers. She was remembering a Chinese pagoda and a crimson bird.

Thus one couple after another passed the flower-bed. Then this couple disappeared in green blue vapour. How hot it was! So hot that even the thrush hopped like a mechanical bird. It hopped, in the shadow of the flowers, with long pauses between one movement and the next.

Yellow and black, pink and white, men, women, and children appeared for a second upon the horizon. Then they wavered and sought shade beneath the trees. They were dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere. They were like thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices. Yes, voices. Wordless voices. They were breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.

There was no silence. All the time the motor omnibuses were turning their wheels.

They were changing their gear. They were like a vast nest of Chinese boxes. The voices cried aloud. The petals of myriads of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

Monday or Tuesday

Lazy and indifferent, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, the sky covers and uncovers. The sky moves and remains. A lake? A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun! Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever.

We are desiring truth.

We are awaiting it. We are laboriously distilling a few words. A cry starts to the left. Another cry starts to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Ever desiring truth. The dome is red. Coins hang on the trees. Smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?

Men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold-encrusted. This foggy weather, sugar? No, thank you. The commonwealth of the future. The firelight is darting.