All Flesh is Grass читать онлайн

She caught my meaning and nodded.Она поняла меня и кивнула.Tuck came up beside me and squatted down. “That looks to be good wood,” he said. “Where did you find it?”Подошел Тэкк и присел на корточки.“There's a heap of junk back there. All sorts of stuff.”— Хорошие дрова, — сказал он. — Откуда?— Мы набрели на мусорную кучу. Чего в ней только нет!I squatted down and took out my knife. Picking up one of the smaller sticks, I began to whittle off some shavings. I pushed them in a pile, then reached for the piece of wood that had the fiber tied to it.

I was about to rip some of the fiber loose when Tuck put out a hand to stop me.Я присел рядом и достал нож. Выбрав палку поменьше, я начал обстругивать ее. Потом я извлек из кучи деревяшку, обтянутую тряпкой. Я уже был готов сорвать ткань, как Тэкк знаком остановил меня.“Just a second, captain.”— Подождите, капитан!He took the piece of wood out of my hands and turned it so that it caught some of the feeble light still coming from the doorway. And now, for the first time, I saw what it was that I had picked up. Until that moment it had been nothing more than a stick of wood with some straw or grass tied to it. “A doll,” said Sara, in surprise.Он взял кусок дерева и повернул его к свету. И впервые я смог разглядеть, что подобрал. До тех пор я считал, что передо мной не больше, чем деревянная палка, обернутая тряпьем.— Кукла, — сказала Сара удивленно.“Not a doll,” said Tuck. His hands were shaking and he was clutching the doll hard, probably in an attempt to keep his hands from shaking. “Not a doll. Not an idol. Look at its face!”— Не кукла, — сказал Тэкк. Его руки дрожали, он крепко сжимал нашу находку, возможно, чтобы унять дрожь.— Не кукла, — повторил он. — Но идол. Посмотрите ей в лицо! In the twilight the face was surprisingly plain to see. It was barely human. Primate, perhaps, although I couldn't be sure it was even that. But as I looked at it, I felt a sense of shock; human or not, it was an expressive face, and never had I seen a face with so much sadness in it or so much resignation to the sadness. Лицо, как ни странно, отчетливо проступало в сумерках. Это было человеческое лицо. Возможно, лицо примата, хотя я не был уверен. Я испытал шок. Кукла выглядела на удивление выразительно. Никогда раньше мне не приходилось видеть в лице столько печали, столько смирения. It was no fancy carving. The face, in fact, was crude, it had been simply hacked out of a block of wood.Игрушку едва ли можно было назвать изящной.