Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Лоуренс Блок - Ariel» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 1980, ISBN: 1980, Издательство: Arbor House, Жанр: Современная проза, thriller_psychology, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Ariel: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Ariel»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Consider Ariel Jardell, an adopted twelve-year-old girl driven by jealousy — her mother thinks — and by forces far more bizarre — as you will discern — to a precocious excursion into evil from mere mischief, to malevolence beyond compare...
Haunting as The Turn of the Screw, chilling as The Bad Seed, Ariel spins a complex web of demonic circumstance with a fascinating, terrifying child at its center, giving new definition to the age-old conflict of good and evil, sane and insane.

Ariel — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Ariel», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

“Is that what it is?”

“Of course, and it’s understandable. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to see Gintzler again.”

“I’m not going crazy and I don’t need to see a psychiatrist.”

“He helped you before.”

“I’m not sure he helped me and I’m not sure I needed any help in the first place. I don’t want to see him now.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.” She turned, drew away from him, and he withdrew his hand. There was a challenge in her eyes. He thought fleetingly of the bottle of brandy in his study — just a reflex thought, just a matter of habit — and then he rose to the challenge.

“This weekend,” he said, “I think you ought to take Ariel for a drive.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A nice drive in the country. God knows it’s the perfect season for it. Ramble around inland or take a nice leisurely drive up the coast, just the two of you.”

“What are you getting at, David?”

“While you’re gone, I’ll clean out Caleb’s room.”

“While the child and I take a nice leisurely drive in the country.”

“That’s right.”

“While we’re doing this, you’ll clean out his room.”

He nodded.

“I don’t think I understand,” she said evenly. “Are you implying that Caleb’s room is dirty?”

“No.”

“Or disorganized? Are things out of place?”

“You know what I mean, Roberta.”

“You mean you want to get rid of his things. Throw them out.”

“Or give them away.”

“No.”

He flared. “For Christ’s sake, Roberta, why are you punishing yourself? What do you want to do, make the kid’s room into a national shrine? Or do you figure if you leave everything just the way it is maybe he’ll come back to it, like a soldier missing in action? Is that what it is?”

“Stop!”

“I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“You’re doing a good job of it. What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to help you get over something.”

“What? His death? Or his life?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You want to erase Caleb. You want to deny he ever existed.”

“And you want to deny he’s dead.”

“That’s not true.”

“Are you sure of that?”

She turned away from him. Other thoughts came to mind and he fought to keep himself from giving voice to them. There were just too many things they couldn’t say to each other, too many subjects that didn’t get mentioned.

She said, “The night he died—”

“What about it?”

“When I woke you—”

“Yes?”

“You went to his room to check him.”

“So?”

“What did you do?”

“I checked him.”

“How?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, did you pick him up? Did you touch him? What did you do to check him?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“Jesus,” he said. “It was the middle of the night and I just woke up out of a sound sleep. I didn’t pick him up. I suppose I touched him.”

“Maybe you just looked at him.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you put the light on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, please. You must know.”

He thought for a moment. “I didn’t turn the light on. There was enough light from the window.”

“And you looked at him.”

“Yes.”

“Was he alive?”

“Of course he was alive.”

“How do you know?”

“Roberta—”

“You don’t know for a fact, do you? You just looked at him to put my mind at rest. You didn’t take me seriously, did you?”

“I checked him and he looked fine. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, ”Why did my son die, David?”

“It just happened.”

“You mean you can’t explain it? I thought you had an answer for every question.”

“Sometimes I don’t even have the questions.”

“But I’m sure you have a theory.”

“Well—”

“I just knew you had a theory, David.”

He ignored the bitchiness in her voice. “There was something that came to me at the funeral,” he said. “When the minister was talking about the will of God.”

“Oh?”

“I was thinking how a century ago, even more recently than that, it was commonplace for a woman to bear half a dozen children in order to raise one to maturity. That was a part of natural selection. Infancy was a very hazardous period and only a small percentage of infants survived it—”

“So?”

“So... it occurred to me that crib death may be nature’s method of weeding out structurally weak children. Maybe a certain percentage of babies are born with constitutional defects that modern medicine isn’t yet aware of. But there’s some factor that makes them weak, and one night they go to sleep and don’t wake up—”

“And it’s just nature’s way.”

“That’s right.”

“The same as death is just nature’s way of telling us to slow down.”

“Roberta—”

“You filthy son of a bitch.”

He took a step backward, driven off by her words, by her tone of voice.

“You bastard,” she went on. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The idea of my son being defective. So the great God of nature just took a wet rag and wiped him off the slate. You’d love to think of it that way, wouldn’t you?”

Your son.”

She looked at him.

“Caleb was our son. Remember?”

And he thought, “You’re seeing him again, aren’t you? You and Channing. Don’t ask me how I know. I can read it, I can sense it. You’re the way you were on Coteswood Lane, before Caleb was born, before he was even conceived. The same sort of detachment, the same preoccupied air.

It was this realization that had made him resolve to discontinue the after-dinner drinking, to clean out Caleb’s room, to take charge of their lives again.

But she wasn’t making it easy.

She stood still for a moment, then turned and ran water in the sink. She let it run for awhile, clear and cold, before filling a glass. She held it to the light, studied it, sniffed it, then took a sip.

“Just cold water,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

Without turning to look at him she said, “I’m sorry I said what I did. I’ve been under a strain. You know that.”

“Sure.”

“And that doesn’t help.”

“What?”

She winced. “That godawful noise. That... music, I suppose you’d have to call it. Don’t tell me you can’t hear it?”

He listened. He hadn’t even been aware of it before, the reedy piping from the second floor.

“Oh,” he said. “You mean the flute?”

“For lack of a better term, the flute.”

“I can barely hear it. Is it bothering you?”

“It always bothers me,” she said. “God, it drives me crazy. And as for just barely hearing it, I couldn’t hear it more clearly if it was happening inside my skull. It goes through me like a diamond drill.”

“I could tell her to stop, I suppose. It’s getting late—”

“Oh, I suppose I can stand it. But you can’t tell me it doesn’t bother you. It must bother you.”

“It really doesn’t.”

“Maybe you should have your hearing checked. I swear it’s like chalk on a blackboard.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I have to say I like Ariel’s music. I don’t always pay attention to it, but I like it.”

“You;ve just absolutely got to be kidding.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Oh, I’m not saying I think it’s good, but it might be good. I don’t really know enough about music to say. I know it’s not ordinary.”

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Ariel»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Ariel» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Ariel»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Ariel» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x