Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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“Reine. Reinette.”

Again that vapid smile, the little nod, as if in her dreams she were a queen and I her subject. She had forgotten her name, the nurse told me quietly, but she was happy enough; she had her “good days” and she loved the television, especially the cartoons, and to have her hair brushed while the radio played…

“Of course we still have our bad spells,” said the nurse, and I froze at the words, feeling something shrivel in my stomach to a bright hard knot of terror. “We wake in the night”-strange, that pronoun, as if by taking on part of the woman’s identity she might be able to somehow share in the experience of being old and mad-“and sometimes we have our little tantrums, don’t we?” She smiled brightly at me, a young blonde of twenty or so, and I hated her so much in that moment for her youth and cheery ignorance that I almost smiled back.

I felt the same smile on my face as I looked at my daughter, and hated myself for it. I tried again for a lighter note.

“You know what it’s like,” I said apologetically. “Can’t bear old people… hospitals. I sent some money…”