Дом с привидениями. Уровень 2 / A Haunted House

The firelight is making the room red. Black figures and their bright eyes. Outside a van discharges. Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk.

Leaves. Silver-splashed. Home or not home. Gathered, scattered, squandered, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled leaves—and truth?

Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. Words are rising from ivory depths. They shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. The book fell down. In the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, stars glint—truth?

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns.

The sky veils the stars; then bares them.

An Unwritten Novel

Such an expression of unhappiness—and one’s eyes were sliding above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face. It’s almost a symbol of human destiny. Life is what you see in people’s eyes. Life is what they learn, though they want to hide it,—what? Life is like that. Five faces opposite—five mature faces—and the knowledge in each face.

Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces. Lips are shut. Eyes are shaded. Each one is trying to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes. Another reads. The third checks his pocket book. The fourth stares at the map. The fifth does nothing at all. That’s terrible. She looks at life. Ah, my poor, unfortunate woman, play the game!

She looked up. She shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. As if she apologizes and at the same time says to me,

“If you knew!”

Then she looked at life again.

“But I know,” I answered silently.

I was glancing at the Times.

“I know everything”.

�Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at Paris—Signor Nitti, the Italian Prime Minister.

A passenger train at Doncaster was in collision with a goods train.’

We all know—the Times knows—but we pretend that we don’t.”

My eyes crept over the paper’s rim.

She shuddered. She twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back. She shook her head. Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life.

“Take what you like,” I continued, “births, deaths, marriages. The habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of living. Oh, take what you like,” I repeated, “it’s all in the Times!”

Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to side.