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В связи с ограничением по знакам, я оказалась перед делеммой... Комментарии печатать отдельным постом или английский текст.
Then: once I had been persuaded to lecture upon the native poet of the city at the Atelier des Beaux Arts - a sort of club where gifted amateurs of the arts could meet, rent studios and so on. I had accepted because it meant a little money for Melissa's new coat, and autumn was on the way. But it was painful to me feeling the old man all round me, so to speak, impregnating the gloomy streets around the lecture-room with the odour of those verses distilled from the shabby but rewarding loves he had experienced - loves perhaps bought with money, and lasting a few moments, yet living on now in his verse - so deliberately and tenderly had he captured the adventive minute and made all its colours fast. What an impertinence to lecture upon an ironist who so naturally, and with such fineness of instinct took his subject- matter from the streets and brothels of Alexandria! And to be talking, moreover, not to an audience of haberdashers' assistants and small clerks - his immortals - but to a dignified semi-circle of society ladies for whom the culture he represented was a sort of blood-bank: they had come along for a transfusion. Many had actually foregone a bridge-party to do so, though they knew that instead of being uplifted they would be stupefied.
I remember saying only that I was haunted by his face - the horrifyingly sad gentle face of the laSt photograph; and when the solid burghers' wives had dribbled down the Stone Staircase into the wet Streets where their lighted cars awaited them, leaving the gaunt room echoing with their perfumes, I noticed that they had left behind them one solitary Student of the passions and the arts. She sat in a thoughtful way at the back of the hall, her legs crossed in a mannish attitude, puffing a cigarette. She did not look at me but crudely at the ground under her feet. I was flattered to think that perhaps one person had appreciated my difficulties. I gathered up my damp brief case and ancient mackintosh and made my way down to where a thin penetrating drizzle swept the Streets from the direction of the sea. I made for my lodgings where by now Melissa would be awake, and would have set out our evening meal on the newspaper-covered table, having first sent Hamid out to the baker's to fetch the roast - we had no oven of our own.
It was cold in the Street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on ft, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought ft: had ft opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled Spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money.
I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street weth its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: “What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?” - or some such sally which I have forgotten.
Then: once I had been persuaded to lecture upon the native poet of the city at the Atelier des Beaux Arts - a sort of club where gifted amateurs of the arts could meet, rent studios and so on. I had accepted because it meant a little money for Melissa's new coat, and autumn was on the way. But it was painful to me feeling the old man all round me, so to speak, impregnating the gloomy streets around the lecture-room with the odour of those verses distilled from the shabby but rewarding loves he had experienced - loves perhaps bought with money, and lasting a few moments, yet living on now in his verse - so deliberately and tenderly had he captured the adventive minute and made all its colours fast. What an impertinence to lecture upon an ironist who so naturally, and with such fineness of instinct took his subject- matter from the streets and brothels of Alexandria! And to be talking, moreover, not to an audience of haberdashers' assistants and small clerks - his immortals - but to a dignified semi-circle of society ladies for whom the culture he represented was a sort of blood-bank: they had come along for a transfusion. Many had actually foregone a bridge-party to do so, though they knew that instead of being uplifted they would be stupefied.
I remember saying only that I was haunted by his face - the horrifyingly sad gentle face of the laSt photograph; and when the solid burghers' wives had dribbled down the Stone Staircase into the wet Streets where their lighted cars awaited them, leaving the gaunt room echoing with their perfumes, I noticed that they had left behind them one solitary Student of the passions and the arts. She sat in a thoughtful way at the back of the hall, her legs crossed in a mannish attitude, puffing a cigarette. She did not look at me but crudely at the ground under her feet. I was flattered to think that perhaps one person had appreciated my difficulties. I gathered up my damp brief case and ancient mackintosh and made my way down to where a thin penetrating drizzle swept the Streets from the direction of the sea. I made for my lodgings where by now Melissa would be awake, and would have set out our evening meal on the newspaper-covered table, having first sent Hamid out to the baker's to fetch the roast - we had no oven of our own.
It was cold in the Street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on ft, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought ft: had ft opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled Spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money.
I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street weth its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: “What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?” - or some such sally which I have forgotten.