The Christmas Kid полностью

That evening, he went to see Return of the Jedi, sitting alone in the orchestra, baffled by the abrupt shifts in the story, unable to make sense of the dialogue. He went to Lombardi’s on Spring Street after the movie, and casually ordered rigatoni. But when the plate came, and he saw the luxurious sauce, his mind filled with an image of the tomato, home in Brooklyn, alone on the windowsill. He poked at the pasta, but had trouble eating it; the waiter was upset, afraid that the food had displeased a customer.

“It’s not the food,” Bondanella explained. “It’s me. I, er, don’t feel too good.…”

He went home, wondering what his mother would say if she knew that he’d paid for food he hadn’t eaten. Poor Ma. She led a hard life. But as he reached the house in Park Slope and hurried up the stoop, he was feeling better. He whistled the same half-remembered tune about a fella with an umbrella. And then, safe in the furnished room, he approached the tomato. He couldn’t see the color clearly in the artificial light, but he thrilled to its firmness and youth. When he tried to sleep, he tossed about, filled with odd anxieties.…

On Sunday morning, the tomato seemed larger. And redder.

“You…you’re growing!” Bondanella said in an amazed voice. He swallowed hard, reached out, and lifted the tomato from its sunny perch. She’s growing up, he thought. She’s changing.…The room was very hot now, and Bondanella felt tiny beads of perspiration on the tomato’s skin. Do tomatoes sweat? Or is it me?

“You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” he said. He filled a bowl with cold water and placed her in it, the water intensifying her pale greens and deeper reds. The bowl was kind of her room. Then he heard the landlady’s heavy footsteps in the hall, and a sudden sharp knock on the door. He opened the door about a foot and stared at her powdery face, the mole on her chin, her rheumy, colorless eyes.

“Do you have someone in here, Mr. Bondanella?” she asked in her throaty voice. “If you do, I want the room.”

He opened the door wider. “Of course not, Mrs. Reilly. I was just, you know, humming a tune, I guess. Or maybe talking to myself.…”

She glanced past him, her colorless eyes prepared to prosecute at the first sign of sin. “Well, have a nice day, Mr. Bondanella,” she murmured in a disappointed voice, and went out through the hall doors to the stoop. Bondanella’s heart pounded. That night, he took the tomato to bed. He placed her in a small bowl so he wouldn’t roll over and crush her, and he slept solidly, a man content and complete.

Now there was a new element to his routine. In the evenings, he hurried home, picking up food at the deli or the Chinese take-out place. He would gaze at the tomato while he ate, enchanted by her plumpness, her size, her quiet beauty. By Wednesday, the streaks of green were gone; she had survived adolescence. He entered her gently in cool, clear water, drying her with a soft cloth. And she inhabited his dreams. Once, he came home in a dream and the tomato was sitting in a chair, with sewing beside her. In another dream, she wore a veil, mysterious and sensual, peering at him from a corner of the room. And there was a time when she grew to fill the entire room, from wall to wall, keeping Bondanella in and Mrs. Reilly out.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said one night that first week. “You’re so perfect. I wish you could speak.…”

And then he knew that somehow he was sure to lose her. She was, after all, mortal. And knowing that, Bondanella became angry. He cursed fate, the universe, nature, God. He had lived a long solitude, and suddenly, absurdly, the solitude had been broken, and he knew that the union would be only an interlude. And knowing that, Bondanella held the tomato to him and rubbed her smooth skin against his cheek and began to cry.

The next day, he called in sick for the first time in nine years. There was so little time left. He took her to Coney Island, showed her the beach, took her on the Cyclone and the merry-go-round. He whispered to her in the wax museum. He explained to her about the clam sandwiches at Nathan’s. They went home for a nap, and that night he took her to Yankee Stadium, trying to make clear to her the elegance of the game. The next day it was the Statue of Liberty, and Washington Square Park and the Empire State Building. She was very brave, and Bondanella had never been more charming, more full of life.

When she began to fade, he put her back in the bowl and laced the cool water with vitamins and herbs. He talked about winter trips to the country, about getting tickets in the spring for La Cage aux Folles. But nothing reversed; youth was gone; she shriveled into inevitable old age. Bondanella found himself talking to her without actually looking at her. He wanted to remember her the way she was.