Читать книгу The Choice Era. Part 1 - Nata Kay - Страница 5

During the next two weeks Harry secretly left the book he had read at the office and immediately took home the next one. The pile was the same size, and during working hours Harry pretended not to be interested in books. He looked at them with the neglect and begged Bob to take them away. Bob blowed him off and wasn’t going to take anything. Other colleagues were kidding about the fact that books became a cute and original part of the interior.

From time to time the head of the department came into the office. At first he was skeptical about such an interior thing, but then he understood the humor of his workers.

For obvious reasons, Harry couldn’t read in public. He had to hide almost from everyone. After work he went to the park, found a secluded corner, sat on the grass or among the roots of large trees and started reading. At home he read only after Mona went to bed or somewhere on her business.

Harry was finishing his last book, sitting on the edge of the bathroom with the sound of water pouring from the tap. The water served as a cover, of course. The next day Mona said she didn’t expect such accurate hygiene from her husband. After such a statement Harry was afraid his new hobby was revealed, but after Mona’s following laughter he understood his wife was joking.

«The check-up is soon,» Mona reminded one day at breakfast, pouring Harry tea and setting up cookies on a plate in a beautiful way. Her skill of table setting and creating patterns from any kind of things amazed not only Harry, but all who had ever been drinking tea with Mona. «As well as desexualisation.»

Harry carefully took one of the cookies, trying not to damage the pattern. He didn’t look at Mona. He perfectly remembered that the elective procedure was coming up.

No pain, no complications, hundred percent safe. The desexualisation procedure was perfect, and just two weeks ago Harry had no mixed feelings about it. But things were more complicated now. Harry was still completely confident that he could give his child the free choice. Only now he desperately wanted to know who this child would be regardless of the procedure. His imagination was intrigued and excited by guesses and that was making life brighter and more interesting.

Nevertheless, gender recognition was prohibited. Society believed that parents who knew the sex could accidentally tell it to a child, and this would influence on personal identity and future choice, which a child certainly had to make on his own. It was too risky to lose the freedom.

Harry kept his thoughts to himself, although that was really hard for him. A couple of times he came up with the idea of suggesting Mona to think it over, just to consider refusal to desexualise, but Nelson immediately abandoned this crazy idea and then reproached himself for such an incredible stupidity for a long time.

In fact, he had a right not to sign a standard agreement between future parents and the clinic at the legislative level, but such actions were made only by the most reckless people, who were far from conventional life in society and had a vigorous outlook on life.

Of course, there was no punishment for such actions. None of the employers had a right to fire a person for extraordinary views. And relatives and friends had no right to refuse to communicate with those who went their own unusual way.

Moreover, parents who decided to abandon the procedure had exactly the same rights as the others, but the attitude towards them was still quite particular. Not in a good way.

«I know,» said Harry after a pause and started eating cookies to keep himself busy and to avoid saying something carelessly.

Harry knew there were no options for Mona, there was only an obvious need for desexualisation. And he couldn’t blame her for that. Mona was an expectant mother. She already loved her child, wished him or her happiness and wanted to give all the opportunities she could. This amazing and unique maternal love often outweighed all other feelings and arguments. And, perhaps, this was normal.

After breakfast Harry felt wreck. He was walking up and down around the apartment to find something to do, but in vain. The morning was so long. Harry had a day off and no plans for it. Mona didn’t offer anything either.

The Nelsons used to improvise during non-working hours, but now it didn’t work out. Worse still, it was annoying. Annoying for Harry.

But Mona seemed to feel comfortable. She was doing some chores, mumbling songs. When she felt Harry’s eyes on her, the songs began to sound louder, more expressive and emotional.

However, Harry couldn’t even sing along as he loved. The Nelsons had made a pretty good and funny duo in the past, but this morning Mona was singing solo.

Harry tried to watch TV, but the programs he came across were uninformative, and the films seemed boring from the start. Disappointed with the TV, Harry tried to spend time looking something up in his laptop, but he quickly realized he didn’t want to text with anyone, didn’t want to play and didn’t want to search for anything on the Internet. Harry was staring blankly at the shortcuts on the desktop for a few moments, then sighed and hopelessly closed the laptop.

Another way to get away from his own inner world could be the outer world, namely a real, most ordinary window. Harry got up, walked over to it, opened the drapes and stood next to the frame.

Nothing was happening on the street that could seriously attract his attention, but Harry was staying motionless by the window for several minutes. He looked at occasional pedestrians until he caught himself thinking that he was looking at them, but he wasn’t noticing anything about them, as if pedestrians were just some clear plastic like windows.

«Would you like to take a walk?» Harry broke his own silence. He heard Mona coming into the living room.

«I thought it was raining outside,» said Mona with a note of surprise. She started to put her nail polishes on the table. Small jars were lining up in color order with other fingernail accessories next to them. Most of them Harry could describe as «obscure stuff».

«Not yet, but it may start soon,» water drops could soon rain down from the clouds. Harry peered up in the sky. He wasn’t very good at cloud types, so he relied on intuition which suggested the dry weather should not be expected from these gray giants.

«Then why would we go outside?» Mona took out three polishes and painted her three nails, then blew on her fingertips, leaned back to see the results and choose one of the colors.

Usually the process of turning nails into a work of art took a long time, so Harry didn’t think Mona would agree to go out, even in clear sunny weather.

«I don’t know,» said Harry. Many people didn’t understand why they should go for walks, but Nelson wasn’t at all one of them. He loved going out with Mona, with Ivy, with friends or even alone. «I’m in no mood to stay at home. If you want to stay, I may go alone. If you don’t mind, of course, do you?»

Mona distracted from her nails, smiled and looked playfully at Harry.

He loved her smile. It made him smile too. And now this trick worked perfectly. Harry immediately smiled back, although he had been gloomy for the last few hours. The world could shift not only because of great changes, but also because of one simple smile.

It was so amazing how Mona’s smile magically fascinated Harry and many other people. Mona was able to easily blend into any society, whether it was elderly relatives, neighbor’s kids, her husband’s colleagues or a typical company of women that used to have «ladies nights». Mona could become the life of any company at once if she wanted to.

«Men need to be alone sometimes,» Mona answered in a philosophical tone. Despite they were talking, she managed to choose a color that matched her outfit, mood, position of stars and other vital conditions. Now Mona was washing away inappropriate options. «If men are forbidden to be alone, they would get upset.»

Harry approached her, hugged and kissed her temple. Over the years of marriage he didn’t lose warm tender feelings and didn’t understand why others were about to lose it. Perhaps the other spouses simply didn’t help each other to keep love, so they were losing it more and more every year, not even noticing such a monstrous loss.

And few wives, perhaps, were able to show as much patience and understanding as Mona showed. She knew how to support, cheer up, fill the void with her sweet chatter and sometimes step aside in time to allow her husband to cool down and recover.

Harry left the apartment in a state that could be considered at least normal, though he still would like Mona go for a walk with him. Now, outside the house and without his wife, Harry was again coming back to his thoughts, which were still tangling and spreading in different directions, like cats frightened by a loud car signal.

Earlier Harry perfectly fit his views on life into a single solid concept, and this concept had not yet ruined. Only Harry’s new life experience, oddly enough obtained from books, couldn’t find a place for itself in this concept.

The rain wasn’t about to start. The clouds were waiting for a good moment. They were looming over the city to rid the streets of fearful people.

Rain was a phenomenon not for those who couldn’t sacrifice dry feet for a hike. Of course, shoes were protected by all kind of modern covers, but there still was a problem with tricky water drops inside the shoes and boots. A mere thought of them left hundreds of people at their homes.

Harry carried an umbrella with him only if he went somewhere with Mona. He didn’t take it just for his own sake, because he didn’t want to carry it in his hands and accidentally leave it somewhere in public places. If Harry got wet, he wasn’t upset. At work he had an extra suit, and as for all other places people would understand and forgive his inappropriate appearance… Or at least pretend there was nothing wrong.

This time Harry followed his traditions and left home with no umbrella. He walked left from the house almost without thinking.

Harry had no final destination. He was just looking ahead and kept walking. About twenty years ago Harry acquired a habit of walking very fast when he was lost in thought and focused on himself. Sometimes he received blows in his shoulder and went a red light, but then he got used to control the situation and return to reality when it was necessary.

Even now, when the number of thoughts in one morning was breaking all records, Harry managed to maneuver between people walking with their usual measured pace, colored with a faint touch of city bustle. Some people were looking at Harry suspiciously. Why was he in such a hurry? What for? What’s wrong with him?

Harry noticed their distrustful looks, but ignored them. The opinion of strangers worried him, but in such a state he wasn’t ready to figure it out.

A few blocks away Harry would have walked out to the quay, the favorite place to stroll for a lot of people, including the Nelsons. But now he wanted to change his usual route and turned around the corner of the house closest to the quay. Harry didn’t remember ever walking that road.

Harry always considered the quay house’s facade as if not an architectural masterpiece, then at least a successful construction and a real pride of the street. However, to Harry’s surprise, the other side of the house was… shabby. It seemed it hadn’t been repaired for a long time. The paint faded, the drainpipes were deformed and some balconies started crumbling.

Harry grinned. He wasn’t really happy about his discovery. He could be in the dark about how some familiar things turned out to be different at both sides for much more time. It seemed like many people managed to ignore this difference. Nevertheless, residents and frequent visitors of the street probably knew about its features and «dark» side.

Finishing with his mental irony, Harry kept walking along the house. Nelson didn’t know this district. No one of his acquaintances lived here, there were no nice restaurants, shops, cinemas and other places for pleasant leisure. They say, the beer was good in local pubs, but their appearance scared away people who wanted to taste a good drink. In the modern world the interior influenced on the taste buds and the areas of the brain responsible for receiving pleasure as much as food and drink itself.

Harry walked looking around. Now he was in no hurry. Sometimes he was starting to feel in another city or even in another time. He ignored taverns with dirty windows and declining signboards. He didn’t like their appearance. If the owners didn’t care about the cleanliness and tidiness of the entrance, then there could be no guarantee of compliance with sanitary and hygienic standards.

Pub, pub, pub… Harry walked along the street and didn’t sincerely understand how all these restaurants survived in a place where there were almost no pedestrians and cars. As if to refute his thoughts an old and beaten up car passed by, and it was as shabby as everything on this street.

Pub, another one with a more intricate signboard. How many were there? And again a pub, a pub, a library.

A library?

Seriously? A library?

Harry stopped suddenly. The library looked the same as the surrounding pubs. Only the windows shades were tightly shut.

Library, big deal… That could be a name of one of the pubs. Quite an original one, by the way, and such originality could easily attract visitors. However, so far there were no crowds eager to spend time here. Harry kept walking, but after ten meters he stopped and turned back.

He was just standing here for a few seconds, staring thoughtfully at the signboard, and then looked around the street on all sides. The street still seemed deserted and forgotten. Harry heard hum and voices from a pub, but the sounds were like a low-quality television recording in the background of the whole silence. Perhaps the voices were even a figment of Harry’s imagination, or they were heard from the netherworld that still was a question to scientists.

Harry quickly went back not to change his mind, walked to the threshold of the library, hesitated a little, and put his hand on a large doorknob. Before he opened the door, he took one last look at the surrounding reality. It was the same.

Harry himself would really like also to stay the same or at least feel confident in his own decisions. So far, all he felt was some goose bumps on his arms.

The door looked massive and crooked.

«I wish it didn’t open», Harry thought, and tried the handle. The door opened with a squeak, but easily. Harry even wondered how simple it was to pass through this obstacle.

There was nothing behind the door besides a shabby wooden floor, bare gray walls, and a dim bulb hanging alone in a light dusty lampshade. The room was shaped like an elongated rectangle.

A hallway. Harry had no other option.

He carefully closed the door behind him and passed forward along this strange dark corridor. Surely, it had nothing to do with a pub. Weird, almost tangible silence was literally vanishing in the air.

Harry saw another source of light around the left bend. Probably another lampshade. And Nelson went to the light like a moth. Harry wondered if there was at least one living person in the library, or if this relic of the past was just abandoned and uninhabited.

After the first step Harry realized that the floor not only looked old, but it was really very old. Its boards were squeaking, and Harry had to be careful and walk slowly. Any odd sounds were confusing.

The most ordinary writing desk appeared around the corner on which there was a high uneven pile of countless papers. An old-fashioned desk lamp decorated a table corner. According to the price list of a furniture store, it could be counted as a night lamp.

Near the wall Harry could see an antique wooden chest of drawers. Its surface was also marked by a pile of folders and papers.

A man was sitting at the table. He was not young, although he was probably far from the status of an old man. The man was wearing a worn knitted sweater with a pattern erased by time and washing. His stubble clearly showed that the stranger hadn’t shaved for days, although this fact hardly bothered him. As well as the fact that he was in such an unpopular place as a library.

The man was reading. A book. A real one. Harry could see that the man’s eyes were moving from line to line.

When Harry saw the glasses, he was amazed. People had long ceased to wear glasses to improve their eyesight. Eye surgeries had dealt with most diseases. And if the operations didn’t work, there were contact lenses.

Glasses in modern world served only as sunlight protection or an accessory, but the man in the library didn’t appear to care about his style. This meant his glasses helped him see better, and he had probably chosen glasses deliberately.