Мартин Иден / Martin Eden (+ аудиоприложение LECTA)
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He was all confusion and embarrassment, the blood flushing red on his neck and brow.
“I want to learn to talk,” he answered. “There is so much in me I want to say. I can’t find ways to say what is really in me. But how can I? My tongue is tied. I try, but I do not succeed. My speech is very awkward. Oh! – ” he threw up his hands with a despairing gesture – “it is impossible! It is incommunicable!”
“But you do talk well,” Ruth noticed. “Just think how you have improved in the short time I have known you. You can go far – if you want to. You have power. You can lead men, I am sure. You can become a good lawyer. You can shine in politics.”
He read to her a story, one that was among his very best. He called it “The Wine of Life”. There was a certain magic in the original conception, and he had adorned it with more magic of phrase and touch. He was blind and deaf to the faults of it. But it was not so with Ruth. Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and exaggerations. She was disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness. That was her final judgment on the story as a whole – amateurish, though she did not tell him so. Instead, when he had done, she pointed out the minor flaws and said that she liked the story.
“You have strength,” she said, “but it is untutored strength.”
“Like a bull in a china shop,” he suggested, and won a smile.
“It is beautiful. It is beautiful,” she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.
Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere beauty in it. He had failed. He was inarticulate. He had seen one of the greatest things in the world, and he had not expressed it.
“It is too wordy. But it was beautiful, in places. You want to be famous?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes, a little bit,” he confessed. “That is part of the adventure. And after all, to be famous would be, for me, only a means to something else. I want to be famous very much, for that matter, and for that reason.”
“For your sake,” he wanted to add.
“I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden,” she said.
He flushed with pleasure. She was interested, that was sure. And at least she had not given him a rejection slip.
“I will,” he said passionately. “And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I will become a writer.” He held up a bunch of manuscript. “Here are the ‘Sea Lyrics.’ Please tell me just what you think of them. What I need, you know, above all things, is criticism. And do, please, be frank with me.”
“I will be perfectly frank,” she promised.
Chapter 14
“The first battle, fought and finished,” Martin said to the looking-glass ten days later. “But there will be a second battle, and a third battle, and battles to the end of time, unless – ”
He had not finished the sentence, but looked about his little room, and his eyes saw a heap of returned manuscripts, still in their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor.
He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully. There were ink stains upon it, and he suddenly discovered that he loved it very much.
“Dear old table,” he said, “I’ve spent some happy hours with you, and you are a good friend of mine.”
He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them. His throat was aching, and he wanted to cry.
His knees were trembling under him, he felt faint, and he went to the bed. He looked about the room, perplexed, alarmed, wondering where he was, until he caught sight of the pile of manuscripts in the corner. He arose to his feet and confronted himself in the looking-glass.
“And so you arise from the mud, Martin Eden,” he said solemnly. “A bit of hysteria and melodrama, eh? Well, never mind. You can’t stop here. Go on. It’s to a finish, you know.”
Chapter 15
The alarm-clock drew Martin out of sleep. Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a cat, and he awoke eagerly. He hated to sleep. There was too much to do, too much of life to live.
But he did not follow his regular programme. There was no unfinished story waiting his hand, no new story demanding articulation. He had studied late, and it was nearly time for breakfast. He tried to read a chapter, but his brain was restless and he closed the book. He looked at the manuscripts in the corner. “The Pot”, “Adventure”, “Joy”.
“I can’t understand,” he murmured. “Or maybe it’s the editors who can’t understand. There’s nothing wrong with that. They publish worse every month. Everything they publish is worse – nearly everything, anyway.”
He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an employment office. “Any kind of work, no trade,” he told the agent; and was interrupted by a new-comer. The agent shook his head despondently.
“Nobody, eh?” said the other. “Well, I must get somebody today.”
He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the puffed and discolored face, handsome and weak.
“Looking for a job?” the other queried. “What can you do?”
“Hard labor, sailorizing, can sit on a horse, willing to do anything,” was the answer.
The other nodded.
“Sounds good to me. My name’s Dawson, Joe Dawson, and I’m trying to find a laundryman. Willing to listen?”
Martin nodded.
“This is a small laundry, belongs to Shelly Hot Springs, – hotel, you know. Two men do the work, boss and assistant. I’m the boss. You don’t work for me, but you work under me.”
Martin paused to think. The prospect was alluring. A few months of it, and he would have time to himself for study. He could work hard and study hard.
“Good food and a room to yourself,” Joe said.
That settled it. A room to himself where he could burn the midnight oil.
“But work like hell,” the other added.
Martin caressed his muscles significantly. “That came from hard work.”
“Then let’s get to it.” Joe held his hand to his head for a moment. “Look. The wages for two are a hundred dollars and board. I take usually sixty, the second man forty. But you’re green. I’ll do plenty of your work at first. Suppose you begin at thirty.”