Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“By and by, after they calmed down and I began to catch up with what was doing on the stage, I felt my seat sort of creak forward and then creak back again and I knew the lady had her feet on it and I was in for a good rock. Gosh!” he wiped his pale, narrow brow on which the sweat had gathered thinly, “it was awful. I hope to tell you I wished I’d never come at all. Once I got excited at a show and rocked a man’s chair without knowing it and I was glad when he asked me to stop. But I knew this lady wouldn’t be glad if I asked her. She’d of just rocked harder than ever.”

Some time before, the population of the courtroom had begun stealing glances at the middle-aged lady with yellowish-white hair. She was of a deep, life-like lobster color with rage.

“It got to be near the end of the act,” went on the little pale man, “and I was enjoying it as well as I could, seeing that sometimes she’d push me toward the stage and sometimes she’d let go, and the seat and me would fall back into place. Then all of a sudden she began to talk. She said she had an operation or something—I remember she said she told the doctor that she guessed she knew more about her own stomach than he did. The play was getting good just then—the people next to me had their handkerchiefs out and was weeping—and I was feeling sort of that way myself. And all of a sudden this lady began to tell her friends what she told the plumber about his indigestion. Gosh!” Again he shook his head from side to side; his pale eyes fell involuntarily on Mrs. Robinson—then looked quickly away. “You couldn’t help but hear some and I begun missing things and then missing more things and then everybody began laughing and I didn’t know what they were laughing at and, as soon as they’d leave off, her voice would begin again. Then there was a great big laugh that lasted for a long time and everybody bent over double and kept laughing and laughing, and I hadn’t heard a word. First thing I knew the curtain came down and then I don’t know what happened. I must of been a little crazy or something because I got up and closed my seat, and reached back and pushed the lady in the face.”