Читать книгу Streets of Night онлайн

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She put down the teapot and flung herself on the pianostool. She would play madly. She would compose. A momentary thrill of huge chords, rising cadences to carry her with immense wingbeats out of the pit of sick yearning. She struck the keys with all ten fingers. The sound jangled loud through the room. She winced. Idiot, she said aloud, and went to the window. She raised the shade part way and let it fall behind her. The green star trembled in the west just above the dark mass of a building the other side of the Fenway. She watched it breathless while it sank out of sight.

* * * *

Nan climbed painfully out of slumber as one climbs a ladder. Sparrows were twittering outside. Her white bedroom was full of sunlight that poured through the wide window opposite her bed, smouldered hotly on the red and blue of the carpet, glinted on the tall mahogany bedpost and finally struck a warm tingling coverlet over her feet and legs. She snuggled into the bedclothes and lay staring at the ceiling wrapped in a delicious blank haze of sleepiness. A motortruck rasping by outside grated on her drowsy quiet and then rattled off into silence. Through the window she could see a lacework of treetops and the expressionless cubes of the further apartment houses and, beyond, a blue vaguely clouded sky. Two little sparrows, fat, fuzzy, with bright eyes, fluttered down past the window. She closed her eyes. In her ears something formed the words: So wonderfully secure.