Читать книгу Dandelion Wine - Рэй Брэдбери, Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury Philip K. Dick Isaac Asimov - Страница 13

In front of the United Cigar Store this evening the men were gathered to burn dirigibles, sink battleships, blow up dynamite works and, all in all, savor the very bacteria in their porcelain mouths that would someday stop them cold. Clouds of annihilation loomed and blew away in their cigar smoke about a nervous figure who could be seen dimly listening to the sound of shovels and spades and the intonations of ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ This figure was that of Leo Auffmann, the town jeweler, who, widening his large liquid-dark eyes, at last threw up his childlike hands and cried out in dismay.

‘Stop! In God’s name, get out of that graveyard!’

‘Leo, how right you are,’ said Grandfather Spaulding, passing on his nightly stroll with his grandsons Douglas and Tom. ‘But, Leo, only you can shut these doom-talkers up. Invent something that will make the future brighter, well rounded, infinitely joyous. You’ve invented bicycles, fixed the penny-arcade contraptions, been our town movie projectionist, haven’t you?’

‘Sure,’ said Douglas. ‘Invent us a happiness machine!’

The men laughed.

‘Don’t,’ said Leo Auffmann. ‘How have we used machines so far, to make people cry? Yes! Every time man and the machine look like they will get on all right – boom! Someone adds a cog, airplanes drop bombs on us, cars run us off cliffs. So is the boy wrong to ask? No! No …’

His voice faded as Leo Auffmann moved to the curb to touch his bicycle as if it were an animal.

‘What can I lose?’ he murmured. ‘A little skin off my fingers, a few pounds of metal, some sleep? I’ll do it, so help me!’

‘Leo,’ said Grandfather, ‘we didn’t mean —’

But Leo Auffmann was gone, pedaling off through the warm summer evening, his voice drifting back. ‘… I’ll do it …’

‘You know,’ said Tom, in awe, ‘I bet he will.’