Читать книгу The Brothers - A Story - H.G. Wells - Страница 5

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Their resemblance had certainly not been exaggerated. Ratzel came in with a look of resolute resistance on his face, which changed to blank astonishment as he looked at Bolaris. He was wearing an open red shirt, which differed only from his captor's in its colour. His hair was longer; he was disarmed and his hands were tied. He was the first to speak.

"I'll be damned!" he exclaimed.

"Shot first, you'll be," said Bolaris. "What do you mean by looking so infernally like me?"

"I might ask the same question."

"It's my place to ask questions."

"Coincidence. Can we by any chance be related?"

"I say I ask the questions. What is your name:"

"Robert Ratzel."

"Age?"

"Thirty-four."

"Place of birth?"

"Hulkingtown, Missouri."

Bolaris became silent.

"We are related," said Ratzel suddenly.

"No! Speak when you are spoken to."

"But we are. I begin to realize—"

"Tell him not to talk," said Bolaris to the man beside the prisoner. The guard made a prompt movement.

"I won't talk," Ratzel volunteered. An awkward silence descended upon the room. Every one was looking very intently at Bolaris.

"I am a native-born citizen of this country," he said as if addressing a considerable audience. "I have never been in the United States of America. Never. I cannot even speak English, while the prisoner, as you will note, speaks our language with a marked English accent. Yes. Yes. An American accent. It's very similar. Well, I have stopped him on the verge of claiming kinship with me on the strength of our certainly very remarkable resemblance. Our superficial resemblance. I can quite understand his motives.. It will do him no good if he does."

Ratzel seemed about to speak but Bolaris held up a hand to silence him, a gesture reinforced by the guard, who gripped the prisoner's wrists.

"Let go," said Bolaris. "I trust his discretion."

He reflected on his course of action.

"It looks to me," he said, "as though you could do with a little food and drink. I myself want to go on eating. I will put you on your parole, eh? And you will join us? I mean you will join our meal."

Ratzel nodded.

"Release his hands. Sit down, sir."

Catherine filled a plate with chicken, white nut, and pimento, and handed it to one of the guards to put before her guest. There was a prolonged pause in the conversation. The men ate. The lady was smilingly but silently hospitable. Bolaris seemed to be considering his next move. When it came, it had an amazing quality of irrelevance.

"I wonder," he said, "if this country is ever likely to produce a literature comparable to any of the great European literatures. What do you think, Ratzel? Or don't you take an interest in that sort of thing?"

Ratzel stopped short with an attractive mouthful on his fork. He replaced it on his plate. After staring for a moment at his captor, he glanced at Catherine, who was watching him with a faint smile in her eyes. His expression of surprise gave place to one of bright response.

"If that's your game," he seemed to decide, "I can play it. "A lot of European literature," he began, in a voice and with a manner that sounded almost like a parody of Bolaris, "is very much overrated. In fact almost all literature is overrated—in comparison with what is possible. Hitherto literature has been essentially aristocratic or bourgeois. It has been written mainly for people who wanted to feel secure, to please and reassure them. It has been leisure reading. Bric-a-brac. Tapestry. Stylistic or gentlemanly sham—careless. The English Jane Austen is quite typical. Quintessential I should call her. A certain ineluctable faded charm. Like some of the loveliest butterflies—with no guts at all. But here and now, we are tearing up life by the roots and anything we write —when we get to writing again—will be fundamental-vital, black, red, vibrating... " The speaker resumed his interrupted meal.

The two listeners at the table heard this cultured speech with ill- concealed astonishment. They looked at the speaker, they looked at Bolaris, and remarked the similarity of the smile upon the two confronted faces. Then Catherine glanced at the guards for any gleam of comprehension. But the guards, who manifestly did not understand a word of it all, had assumed expressions of disciplined dignity.

"When we have settled up with your atrocious attempt to assist in carrying the world back to the dark ages," Ratzel resumed—he took a large mouthful—"our boys will write. I think they will write well."

"If we let them," said Bolaris.

"This is the seventh grand attack you have made. Tell me about it."

"I shall be in the city in a fortnight."

"I knew it would fail."

"You didn't, I gather, see very much of it."

"No. But I knew your foreign friends with the tanks wouldn't like the idea of coming through those open fields in the centre when they realized we had irrigated them carefully every night. There'd be, I felt—well—indecision ... Did we capture most of those tanks or did the funk begin before they had come on far enough? Did we get most or only just some?"

"The attack was none of my planning," said Bolaris.

"Many?"

The question went unanswered. "Why you had your Black Legion up in the air out of the game on our right I can't imagine! It might as well have been bathing at the seaside for all the good it was."

"Anyhow it got you."

"You got me. How could a sane man have expected them out there? But it does not matter. I shall hardly be missed. No man is indispensable in a popular mass defence. The enthusiasm in the city is invincible. You can hardly imagine it."

"I don't imagine it. I know all about it. Their discipline is atrocious."

"They don't loot," said Ratzel. "They kill priests."

"Each side kills priests nowadays. When they get in the way, and they do get in the way." Bolaris went off at a tangent again. "What has happened to the Royal Galleries? There were some very beautiful things in them."

"Your imported bombers were careless and ignorant. But most of the best things are well taken care of. Do you know the Galleries at all? There was a long narrow gallery of late Italian and French heroic stuff. The art director—and how I agree with him!—left that to the last, and one of those new incendiary bombs they have sent you now, got it. I have always disliked that sort of painting myself, Rapes of the Sabines, the Looting of Corinth, and all that stuff. Always reminded me of turning out linen for the laundry—sprawling naked women instead of nice ordinary soiled linen. We all have our likes and dislikes." He returned to his plate with the air of a man who does not wish to monopolize a conversation.

"I know very little about pictures," said Bolaris modestly, and proceeded to disprove the statement by a dissertation on painting that would have been a model for an English University extension lecture or any small all-about-art-in-half-an-hour handbook (q.v.). Occasionally the prisoner interjected an intelligent remark, but for the most part he nodded and ate. Then abruptly Bolaris came to an end. He consulted a wrist watch and signalled to the two guards, who came to attention. Ratzel finished his wine appreciatively and stood up.