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Conrad Aiken: Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

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Conrad Aiken Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress

Conversation; or, Pilgrims' Progress: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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A painter torn between his domestic arrangements and his artistic pursuits makes a fateful choice in this brilliant and provocative novel from a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Timothy Kane brought his wife and young daughter to Cape Cod in order to find the peace and quiet necessary to paint. But the mood inside their small cottage is far from tranquil — a past affair weighs on Timothy’s conscience, and the strain of running a household by herself is causing Enid to resent her husband. To make matters worse, Timothy’s friend Jim Connor has decided to move to the Cape and bring a gaggle of their Greenwich Village acquaintances with him. A committed anarchist, Jim does more than just preach the redistribution of wealth: He accomplishes it himself by shoplifting from department stores and giving the loot to struggling poets and painters. Jim and his rabble-rousing, art-obsessed crew stir up trouble wherever they go, and Timothy’s association with the group soon becomes a major point of contention between him and Enid. She expects him to sacrifice his friendship for the sake of his family’s security — a demand that runs counter to Timothy’s nature and his sense of what it means to be an artist. With the pressure mounting, he must find a way to balance his marriage and his work, or risk devastating consequences to both. An exquisitely crafted story about the hard truths of the creative life, has been lauded by the as a testament to “the brilliance of [Conrad Aiken’s] mind and the understanding of his heart.”

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“I don’t know whether I can bear it, if you choose to put it like that, but I will.”

The challenge again — her eyes flashed handsomely at him, with something that was almost like admiration, and returned to the steaming dishpan, the Himalaya of soft suds in which she was waggling the dish mop. She was humming a little, under her breath, as she always did when she was preoccupied, or tired, or annoyed — tonelessly, tunelessly — a charming and pathetic sing-song which always tickled him, and endeared her to him. No ear for music at all — or was it that she was practicing the Chinese whole-tone scale? Very modern and polychromatic, he had often told her, and written, as it were, without signature. The indicator danced in its dial over the sink, from the pipes came the regular half-musical joog — joog — joog of the pumped water pressing its way everywhere, to every corner of that elaborate arterial artifice of pipes, to every tap, and into the cold heart of the great tank buried underground. But no, of course not, it was the engine that was the heart.

“And is that all?”

“That’s all. I’ll be in in a minute. And thank you.”

“Don’t mention.”

Her pink sleeves rolled back to the elbows, she reached bare-armed to toss a checkered cloth over the clothesline which stretched across the kitchen, and almost simultaneously, as he entered the dining room, he heard something thump heavily on the floor overhead, in Buzzer’s room. He stood still and listened.

“Something must have fallen, upstairs,” he said.

“Probably the doll.”

“She didn’t have a doll.”

“Well, why don’t you go and see! For heaven’s sake, Tip, why do you have to be so helpless!”

“Helpless!”

Helpless.… He lifted a candle from the dinner table, shielded it with one hand, and went quietly up the narrow stairs to the second floor. The upper hall was ablaze with moonlight. A great splash of it lay on the rugless floor and halfway up the wall, it poured through the low window — and to stand there, with his embarrassed candle, was exactly like being inside a camera during a time exposure. Must be what a film feels like, he thought, when you open the shutter: a sensation of flooding. Every cranny indecently exposed: or is it the world that’s exposed—? Helpless! He said it aloud as he opened Buzzer’s door; and there was Buzzer, standing bolt upright in the middle of the floor beside her bed, her eyes closed, her hands still crumpled against her cheek in the attitude of sleep. Yes, how extraordinary, she was fast asleep. She swayed a little, gropingly, as if trying to find something to relax against — how lovely, like something growing at the bottom of a stream, rooted among pebbles, wavering but tethered! He put the candle on the chair.

“Well, of all the nerve,” he said. “What do you think you’re doing, floating round in the moonlight like this! Aren’t you ashamed?”

“Mmm,” she said.

“I should think so. I suppose you fell out, eh?”

“Mmm,” she said.

“And had the sense not to wake up.”

“Mmm.”

“Well, I congratulate you. Now just stay asleep, and I’ll put you back, and you’ll never know the difference, see?”

She murmured against his neck, his cheek, as he lifted her back into bed, but she was already receding, she was already gone, and the firm little face, on the pillow, instantly averted itself into its chosen dream. What shape did she make of it? What shape was her world? What shape did she make of himself, his hands that touched her, the night sounds, the moon-maddened crickets? Ah, they were all there, in her dream, as a wonderful and forever-sustaining music, an unfailing love — it was the world as it should be, but as it so seldom, or so briefly, remains. Or were there terrors as well—? Yes, even here there were terrors. But fleeting, already dissipated, gone. Peace — peace — peace—sang the crickets, and here, at any rate, they were quite right. But downstairs—!

He heard Enid crossing the dining room — perhaps she was going to play the piano again? That melancholy and tender little waltz, with its series of murmured unanswerable questions. But no, she had gone on, had crossed the hall, he heard the two-toned squeak of the studio door, she was in the studio. Lighting the fire, perhaps, drawing the brown curtains, settling herself with her knitting; but, whatever she did, studiously ignoring the latest picture on the easel. Adolescent, of course! It was the old cry, the old war cry. Why don’t you grow up, Tip? Why not, indeed! Damn.

The doors to his own and Enid’s rooms were open, and he went into Enid’s to look for a moment from the north window toward the lagoons at the head of the river — he knew in advance how they would be sheeted with moonlight, as in winter they would be sheeted with ice. A single green light twinkled at the Point — somebody must be in Paul’s boathouse, probably Paul himself going out in his canoe. A tiny ticking sound reached his ear — it was Enid’s wrist watch, lying forgotten on her pillow, the small radium dial glowing faintly and hopefully in the dark. Why should there be something so moving, so touching in that — why, suddenly, did it make him think of death? Ridiculous. He straightened up, glanced through the open door beyond, which led into his own adjoining room, then returned into the hall, blew out the candle, and went slowly down the stairs.

In the studio, Enid was already sitting before the fire, her knees crossed, her back to the easel. The firelight flickered rosily on her face, her throat, her hands, flashed along the moving steel needles, twinkled in the buckles of her sandals. The bare white walls danced with light, the whole room seemed to be breathing flame. He went around her, turned the easel away, towards the bookcase, then approached the hearth and pushed back a log with the toe of his shoe.

“Besides, what I don’t see is,” she spoke without looking up, frowning prettily, the green flame-washed eyes lowered to the narrow strip of jersey which dangled from her needles, “what you can possibly get out of it.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Enid—!”

“What I don’t see is what possible good it can do you. I could understand your sacrificing yourself, and even me and Buzzer—”

“Sacrifice!”

“—if there were any real use in it. If they were useful connections, I mean. You won’t live in New Bedford or Boston, where you might pick up portrait commissions, or steady teaching—”

“I don’t want to do portraits.”

“—you throw away chances like that, and the connections I could have given you, for which I should have supposed some sacrifices might have been justified, and then live in this dreary little village where there’s no life at all for me—”

“It’s the first time I’d heard of that!”

“Well, it’s high time you did hear of it, for it’s true, and if you’d had any consideration you’d have thought of it yourself. And then, as if all that wasn’t enough, Tip, you make life more difficult still by associating with these really shabby and dreadful people. What earthly use can Roth be to you — or those dirty little females—”

“Really, Ee—!”

“Yes, dirty!”

“Roth’s a little cheap, and I know it, but he’s a good painter. Or interesting, anyway — by gosh, he’s at least alive, which is more than you can say for those Boston mummies! What’s more, it seems to me this is a question for me to decide. Not you. I must take what’s good where I can find it, that’s all. I’m afraid I don’t find it in the pure waters of County Street — give me the adulterous Greenwich Village sewers any day! And as for picking out my friends merely because they might be useful, good god, Ee, I never heard anything so revoltingly cynical and selfish and utilitarian in my life! You ought to be ashamed.”

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