Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

70 страница из 175

At fifteen, he had found, while smoking cigarettes with Gus Moody, in a neighbour's barn, a bottle wrapped in an oats sack by the worthy citizen, against the too sharp examination of his wife. When the man had come for secret potation some time later, and found his bottle half-empty, he had grimly dosed the remainder with Croton oil: the two boys were nauseously sick for several days.

One day, Steve forged a cheque on his father. It was some days before Gant discovered it: the amount was only three dollars, but his anger was bitter. In a pronouncement at home, delivered loudly enough to publish the boy's offence to the neighbourhood, he spoke of the penitentiary, of letting him go to jail, of being disgraced in his old age—a period of his life at which he had not yet arrived, but which he used to his advantage in times of strife.

He paid the cheque, of course, but another name—that of "forger"—was added to the vocabulary of his abuse. Steve sneaked in and out of the house, eating his meals alone for several days. When he met his father little was said by either: behind the hard angry glaze of their eyes, they both looked depthlessly into each other; they knew that they could withhold nothing from each other, that the same sores festered in each, the same hungers and desires, the same crawling appetites polluted their blood. And knowing this, something in each of them turned away in grievous shame.