All Flesh is Grass читать онлайн

Окно раскрыто настежь, рама с москитной сеткой выломана, Таппера как не бывало.

В два прыжка я пересек комнату, высунулся из окна  — никого!

Blind panic hit me straight between the eyes. I don't know why it did. Certainly, at that moment, Tupper's escaping from the bedroom was not all that important. But it seemed to be important and I knew, without knowing why, that I must run him down and bring him back, that I must not let him out of my sight again.

В глазах у меня потемнело от страха. Почему  — непонятно. Ну что за важность, если Таппер и удрал, сейчас есть заботы поважнее.

Without thinking, I stepped back from the window and took a running jump, diving through the opening. I landed on one shoulder and rolled, then jumped up to my feet.

Tupper was not in sight, but now I saw where he had gone.

Безотчетно, не думая, я отошел вглубь комнаты, разбежался и нырнул головой в окно. Свалился наземь, ударился плечом, перевернулся и вскочил.

Таппера нигде не было видно, но теперь я понял, куда он пошел.

His dewy tracks led across the grass, back around the house and down to the old greenhouse. He had waded out into the patch of purple flowers that covered the old abandoned area where once my father and, later, I myself had tended rows of flowers and other plants. He had waded out some twenty feet or so into the mass of flowers. His trail was clearly shown, for the plants had been brushed over and had not had time to straighten yet, and they were a darker hue where the dew had been knocked off them.

На росистой траве ясно виднелись следы, они вели за угол дома, к старым теплицам. Он пошел прямиком к чаще лиловых цветов, они разрослись на заброшенном участке, где когда-то мой отец, а потом и я разводили на грядках цветы и овощи на продажу. Таппер прошел шагов двадцать вглубь этого лилового островка, за ним тянулась отчетливая борозда: примятые стебли еще не успехи расправиться, и листья, с которых он стряхнул росу, были темнее остальных.

"The trail went twenty feet and stopped. All about it and ahead of it the purple flowers stood straight, silvered by the tiny dewdrops.

There was no other trail. Tupper had not backed out along the trail and then gone another way. There was just the single trail that headed straight into the patch of purple flowers and ended. As if the man might have taken wing and flown away, or dropped straight into the ground.