Читать книгу The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Selected Tales of the Jazz Age Сollection. Адаптированная книга для чтения на английском языке. Уровень B1 - Френсис Скотт Фицджеральд, Френсис Фицджеральд - Страница 12

In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. While the family celebrated the event, however, no one thought they needed to mention, that the little boy, about ten years old who played around the house with lead soldiers, was the new baby's own grandfather.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face seemed a little bit sad, but to Roscoe Button his presence was unpleasant and made him suffer. His generation did not consider such a state of things[54] «rational». It seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, did not behave like a true man of business or a «red-blooded he-man»[55] – these were Roscoe's usual words. Roscoe believed that a man of business should look young, but his father's desire to keep to it in such a curious and wrong manner was irrational. Roscoe was sure of it.

Five years later Roscoe's little boy grew old enough to play childish games with little Benjamin under the control of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, and Benjamin found that playing with colored paper and making colored beautiful maps was the most fascinating game in the world. Once when he behaved badly and had to stand in the corner, he burst into tears – but for the most part these were happy hours in the cheerful room, when the sunlight was coming in the windows and he enjoyed feeling his teacher's kind hand on his head.

Roscoe's son went to school after a year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when other children talked about what they would do when they grew up, a sad expression appeared on his little face as if he understood that those things would never happen to him.

The days passed on in a usual way. He went back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what the bright colored papers were for. He cried because the other boys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand he could not understand at all.

He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana became the centre of his small world. On bright days they walked in the park; Nana pointed at a large gray monster and said «elephant», and Benjamin repeated it after her, and when he was going to bed that night he repeated it over and over again to her: «Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant». Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed, and that was fun, because he enjoyed jumping.

He loved to take a big cane and go around the house, hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: «Fight, fight, fight». When there were people in the house the old ladies tried to speak childish language with him, which interested him, and the young ladies tried to kiss him, which he accepted with calm boredom. And when the long day was over at five o'clock Nana took him upstairs and gave him his evening foods with a spoon.

There were no old memories in his childish sleep; he didn't remember his brave days at college or the bright years when he broke the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed at and called «sun». When the sun went his eyes were sleepy – there were no dreams, no dreams to worry him.

The past – the wild fight when he led his soldiers up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked hard for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking with his grandfather in the dark old Button house – all these memories faded like dreams from his mind as if they had never been. He did not remember.

He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or how the days passed – there was only his crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he was hungry he cried – that was all. Through the days and nights he breathed and there were soft sounds over him that he hardly heard. He felt only faint smells, and light and darkness.

Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet smell of the milk faded away from his mind.