The Atlas полностью

The musicians (who were really astoundingly good) got everybody clapping, so she clapped; in those marble mirrored morgues of blue-lit soundproofed sex bars at first she smiled with naughty delight to see naked boys and girls but soon enough she sat picking her teeth morosely between beers (each of which lasted seconds), and her lower lip gaped slightly wider at the flash of genitals or the applause of the other drinkers but then her black eyes would gaze into some particularly monotonous version of zero. And then a beautiful dancer might move in beautiful ways and she would stare steadily, leaning forward, maybe trying to be beautiful in the way the dancer was (the dancers usually thought that Reepah was a boy), trying to learn what made this other soul the center of attention in a way she could never be. When she was happy, when he bought her another beer, she cried: Aw-riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh'!

If you don't like me, it's OK, he said. I'll give you some money for the hotel and then go away. Yes or no?

I don't know, she wrote on a piece of paper.

Reepah, I love you.

Same here, she wrote.

Reepah, I want you happy. I want everything for you.

I like Montréal. I am sad I don't have money.

Don't be sad. I don't have much money but I'll give you a little bit.

I want some beer, please.

In our room at the hotel, he said, not wanting to have to get her at the police station.

Way not read now? I am sick. I am tired.

They went walking late after midnight down to Chinatown and then back up the hill to Sherbrooke Street and she cried: Wow! Look at those lights! Just like good orange Inukjuak berries!

That was about the only time she sounded happy over anything but beer. He had wanted to give her something good and she had wanted to come there, but nothing that came from him could reach her, not even Montréal's streets, which were a guitar of light.

Thirty or forty feet high, and therefore up in the clouds, a small lake had been set in rock by God. The rapids from this made a foamy white fall as soft and pure as caribou hair. Crowberries, grasses and lichens grew on and between the rock shapes around the pool, so that the grayness of the place was softened by green, red and yellow. A cool wind blew away some of the clouds like smoke, leaving zones of blue as sweet as anything in Italy. It seemed here above the bog of caribou skulls (the place so lovely with grass-antlers nodding even on foam-sprayed rock) that the foreverness of the Barren Lands was something lovely like the eternal echo of a bell — something secret, too, like whatever sensibility she had — her consciousness or integrity, both of which were either eroding or else withdrawing from his like those shrinking clouds.

In the lake itself, just where the falls commenced, rose a low rock-island, faceless like an irregular crystal (in other words, shaped just like any other rock-mass hereabouts), and it was close enough to the bank that a strong man might be able to leap onto it. He was not a strong man but he wasn't weak, either. On that day when he had walked away from Reepah's house because they loved each other in a sad and terrible way that made her steal his blue pills until she passed out snoring while the baby cried and shat on the floor, he proposed a contest with himself to see if he could reach that rock with a running lunge — the loser being by definition he who missed, and was therefore whirled down the rapids. He landed on the rock, had no sensation of winning, paced awhile, turned, jumped back, and missed, of course. For an instant, just before the cold water got him, he saw Reepah's face shining as if in darkness, watching him with hurt black eyes, her lips slightly parted as if she were about to scream in pain and terror. Then the falls had him, and every stone he grabbed slipped out of his hands, and he was thumped and choked and chilled and bruised all the way down. It was a warm and windy day, so when he got out he didn't shiver much. He walked back to Reepah's house, squish-squish-squish. .

Reepah?

Reepah, why did you come to Montréal with me?

I don't know.

Reepah, today you don't talk to me. So I get afraid you don't like me.

I want drunk.

You don't like me. You only like drunk.

She was clapping all by herself on the balcony, smiling and nodding and in the street below her people were beginning to jump up and down in the happiness that the music gave them and the musicians were stamping their feet and dry ice smoked in all colors from the stage and the musicians whirled their arms and everyone went: Aaaaaah!

Aah, whispered Reepah on the balcony, not looking at him.