Книга All Flesh is Grass — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

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— А для нас время кончается,  — сказал я, и меня захлестнула горькая жалость ко всем людям на свете и сильней всего  — к самому себе.  — И для меня наступает конец.

«Да, мы знаем,  — сказала Лиловость.  — Мы очень о вас сожалеем.»

And now, I knew, was the time to ask for help, to point out that we were in this situation through no choice and no action of our own, and that those who had placed us in it should help to get us out.

But when I tried to say the words, I couldn't make them come. I couldn't admit to this alien thing our complete helplessness.

It was, I suppose, stubbornness and pride. But I had not known until I tried to speak the words that I had the stubborness and pride.

Вот когда пора просить помощи! Пора объяснить, что мы попали в беду не по своей воле и не по своей вине  — пусть же нас выручают те, кто нас до этого довел!

Так я и хотел сказать, но слова не шли с языка. Не мог я признаться этому чужому, неведомому, в нашей совершенной беспомощности.

Наверно, это просто гордость и упрямство.

We feel much sorrow for you, the elm tree had said. But what kind of sorrow—a real and sincere sorrow, or the superficial and pedantic sorrow of the immortal for a frail and flickering creature that was about to die?

I would be bone and dust and eventually neither bone nor dust but forgetfulness and clay, and these things would live on and on, forever.

«Мы очень о вас сожалеем»,  — сказал вяз.

От меня останутся кости и тлен, а потом не станет ни костей, ни тлена, лишь забвение и прах,  — а Цветы будут жить и жить вовеки веков.

And it would be more important, I knew, for us who would be bone and dust to have a stubborn pride than it would be for a thing of strength and surety.

A purpleness, I thought, and what was the purpleness? It was not a colour; it was something more than that. It was, perhaps, the odour of immortality, the effluvium of that great uncaring which could not afford to care since anything it cared for could only last a day, while it went on into an eternal future toward other things and other lives for which it could not allow itself to care.