The Talented Mr Ripley / Талантливый мистер Рипли. Патриция ХайсмитЧитать онлайн книгу.
with the gin and tonic in front of him. No, back in the Green Cage.
'Thinking about Europe?' Mr Greenleaf's voice said.
Tom took another glass from Mr Greenleaf. 'Yes, I was,' Tom said.
'Well, I hope you enjoy your trip, Tom, and have some influence on Richard. By the way, Emily likes you a lot. She told me so.' Mr Greenleaf rolled his brandy glass between his hands. 'My wife has leukaemia, Tom.'
'Oh. That's very serious, isn't it?'
'Yes. She may not live a year.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' Tom said.
'I've got a list of boats. I think you can take the quickest, and also the most interesting way. Then the boat train to Paris, and another to Rome and Naples.'
'That would be fine.' It seemed exciting to him.
'You'll have to catch a bus from Naples to Richard's village. I'll write him about you – not telling him that you're my agent,' he added, smiling, 'but I'll tell him we've met. Richard must invite you to his place, but if he can't for some reason, there're hotels in the town. Now as to money – ' Mr Greenleaf smiled. 'I offer to give you six hundred dollars in traveller's cheques and your round-trip ticket. Does that suit you? And if you need more, you have to write me, my boy. You don't look like a young man who throw money away.'
'That will be enough, sir. I think I should be going.'
They shook hands, and it was over. But Tom still felt pain and fear as he was running home.
The next day he took care of Mrs Greenleaf's instruction to buy the dozen pairs of black woollen socks and the bathrobe for Dickie. Mrs Greenleaf did not tell a colour for the bathrobe. Tom chose a dark navy-blue one. It was not the best-looking robe in the store, in Tom's opinion, but he felt it was exactly what Richard would choose. He put the socks and the robe on the Greenleafs' account. Then he saw a heavy linen sport shirt with wooden buttons that he liked very much. He could easily put on the Greenleafs' account, too, but he didn't. He bought it with his own money.
The atmosphere of the city became stranger as the days went on. As if New York lost its reality or importance and became a show just for him, an exciting show with its buses, taxis, and hurrying people, its television shows in all the Third Avenue bars, and its sound effects of thousands of horns and human voices. As if when his boat left on Saturday, the whole city of New York would disappear.
Or maybe he was afraid. He hated water. He had never travelled anywhere before on water. His parents had drowned in Boston Harbour, and Tom, as long as he could remember, was always afraid of water, and he had never learned how to swim. It gave Tom a sick, empty feeling at his stomach to think that in less than a week he would have water below him, miles deep, and that he would have to look at it most of the time, because people on ocean liners spent most of their time on deck. And he was afraid to be seasick.
2
The morning of his sailing, the morning he was waiting for with such excitement was a sunless day, and the city was already like some grey, distant land.
A steward came out, 'Visitors ashore, please! All visitors ashore!' The ship was moving before Tom went down to his cabin. He saw a big basket of fruit on the floor by his bed. He took the little white envelope quickly. The card inside said:
Bon voyage[15] and bless you, Tom.
All our good wishes go with you.
Emily and Herbert Greenleaf
The basket had apples and pears and grapes and a couple of candy bars and several little bottles of liqueurs. Tom had never received a bon voyage basket. To him, they were something for fantastic prices. Now he found himself with tears in his eyes, and he put his face down in his hands suddenly and began to cry.
His mood was calm but he did not want to meet any of the people on the ship, though when he saw the people with whom he sat at his table, he greeted them pleasantly and smiled. He wanted his time for thinking. He began to play a role of a serious young man with a serious job ahead of him. He was polite and well-mannered.
He had a sudden wish to buy a conservative bluish-grey cap of soft English wool. He could wear it in different ways. He could pull it down over his face when he wanted to sleep in his deck-chair. He could look like a country gentleman, a criminal, an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a plain American eccentric, depending on how he wore it. Tom tried it in his room in front of the mirror. He always thought he had the dullest face, that could be easily forgotten. A real conformist's face.The cap changed all that. Now he was a young man with a private income, not long out of Princeton, perhaps. He also bought a pipe to go with the cap.
He was starting a new life. Good-bye to all the second-rate people he had known in the past three years in New York. He felt as immigrants when they left everything behind them in some foreign country, left their friends and relatives and their past mistakes, and sailed for America. A new start!
When Mr Greenleaf's money was spent, he might not come back to America. He might get an interesting job in a hotel, for instance, where they needed somebody who spoke English. Or he might become a representative for some European firm and travel everywhere in the world. Or somebody might need a young man, who could drive a car, who was quick at figures. The world was wide!
In the mornings he walked on the deck very slowly, so that the people could see him two or three times, then sat down in his deck-chair for more thought on his own life. After lunch, he stayed in his cabin, enjoying its privacy and comfort, doing absolutely nothing. Sometimes he sat in the writing-room, writing letters. The letter to the Greenleaf's began as a polite greeting and a thank-you for the bon voyage basket and the comfortable cabin. Then he added an imaginary paragraph about finding Dickie and living with him in his Mongibello house, about the slow but steady progress in persuading Dickie to come home, about the swimming, the fishing, the cafe life, and he got so excited that it went on for eight or ten pages but he knew he would never send any of it.
On another afternoon, he wrote a polite note to Aunt Dottie:
Dear Auntie [which he seldom called her in a letter and never to her face],
As you see by the writing paper, I am on the open sea. A sudden business offer which I cannot explain now. I had to leave suddenly, so I was not able to go to Boston and I'm sorry, because it may be months or even years before I come back.
I just wanted you not to worry and not to send me any more cheques, thank you. Thank you very much for the last one. I am well and extremely happy.
Love Tom
That made him feel better, because it without doubt ended any contact with her. After his letter to Aunt Dottie, he got up and went to the deck. Writing her always made him feel angry. He didn't want to show politeness to her. Yet until now he had always wanted her to know where he was, because he had always needed her cheques. But he didn't need her money now. He would not depend on her any longer.
Lying in his deck-chair, excited by the luxurious surroundings and delicious food, he tried to take an objective look at his past life. The last four years had been a waste. A number of jobs, long intervals with no job at all and as a result depression because of having no money, and then making friends with stupid, silly people in order not to be lonely. He couldn't be proud of this, because he had come to New York with high ambitions. He wanted to be an actor, but at twenty he did not have the idea of the difficulties, the necessary training, or even the necessary talent. He thought he had the necessary talent and the only thing he had to do was show a producer a few of his original one-man parodies – but his first three failures killed all his courage and his hope. He had no money, so he had to take the job on the banana boat, which at least removed him from New York. He was afraid that Aunt Dottie had called the police to look for him in New York. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong in Boston, just run away from her to start his own life as millions of young men had done before him.
His main mistake was that he never remained at one job, he thought, like the accounting job in the department store
Bon voyage –