Отрывок из книги
Carson McCullers
Published by Good Press, 2021
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As to his relations with the other two fundamentals, his position was simple enough. In his balance between the two great instincts, towards life and towards death, the scale was heavily weighted to one side—to death. Because of this the Captain was a coward.
Captain Penderton was also something of a savant. During the years when he was a young Lieutenant and a bachelor he had had much opportunity to read, as his fellow officers tended to avoid his room in the bachelors’ quarters or else to visit him in pairs or groups. His head was filled with statistics and information of scholarly exactitude. For instance, he could describe in detail the curious digestive apparatus of a lobster or the life history of a trilobite. He spoke and wrote three languages gracefully. He knew something of astronomy and had read much poetry. But in spite of his knowledge of many separate facts, the Captain never in his life had had an idea in his head. For the formation of an idea involves the fusion of two or more known facts. And this the Captain had not the courage to do.
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