Читать книгу The Lost Weekend онлайн

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"I must be in lousy condition to get so worked up over--over nothing," he said. "Or do I want to?" He addressed the waking dog. "Do I, Mac? You tell me." He stared at the dog. "Well?" The dog stared back. "Am I indulging myself, as your pr-r-r-roud master said"--trilling the "r" like an actor--"am I putting it on, is it all my imagination? Or if not mine, whose?" There's a thought for today, he said to himself. He stood up. "Mac, you're exaggerating, nobody would think there was a thing wrong with you! You look perfectly all right! And when I say you look all right, then, God damn it, you feel all right, do you hear?" He was having fun now, but even as he reached the pitch of his enjoyment he tired of it, and so did the dog. Who's loony now, he said to himself apathetically, as he sat down again.

His fingers touched the edge of a small book tucked in beside the cushion of the chair. He pulled it out and looked at the title. It was a copy of James Joyce's Dubliners his brother had been reading. He opened it and began to read at random, articulating the words very carefully in a whisper, paying elaborate attention to the form of each word but none to what he was reading. It was like the time, on similar occasions, when, keyed-up, desperate, he went out in search of a French movie, and sat in some airless movie-house all afternoon concentrating on the rapid French being spoken from the screen, because he believed a few hours of such concentration, even though he didn't listen to the sense, had a steadying effect. So he read now for some minutes, thinking that he might even read the book right through and then through again before his brother came back. Wouldn't that surprise him? he said to himself with a smile, while his lips formed other words: The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot. The smile faded, he stared and read again.