The Man Without a Shadow. Joyce Carol Oates. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Joyce Carol Oates
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008165406
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       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thestate.co.uk

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

      First published in the United States by Ecco in 2016

      Copyright © 2016 by The Ontario Review, Inc.

      Cover photographs © Stephen Carroll / Trevillion Images

      Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008165383

      Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008165406

      Version: 2016-12-21

       Dedication

      TO MY HUSBAND CHARLIE GROSS,

      MY FIRST READER

       Epigraph

      The annihilation is not the terror.

      The journey is the terror.

       –ELIHU HOOPES

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Acknowledgments

       Keep Reading …

       About the Author

       Novels by Joyce Carol Oates

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

       NOTES ON AMNESIA: PROJECT “E.H.” (1965–1996)

      She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

      She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

      She meets him, she falls in love. He forgets her.

      At last she says good-bye to him, thirty-one years after they’ve first met. On his deathbed, he has forgotten her.

      HE IS STANDING on a plank bridge in a low-lying marshy place with his feet just slightly apart and firmly on his heels to brace himself against a sudden gust of wind.

      He is standing on a plank bridge in this place that is new to him and wondrous in beauty. He knows he must brace himself, he grips the railing with both hands, tight.

      In this place new to him and wondrous in beauty yet he is fearful of turning to see, in the shallow stream flowing beneath the bridge, behind his back, the drowned girl.

      … naked, about eleven years old, a child. Eyes open and sightless, shimmering in water. Rippling-water, that makes it seem that the girl’s face is shuddering. Her slender white body, long white tremulous legs and bare feet. Splotches of sunshine, “water-skaters” magnified in shadow on the girl’s face.

      SHE WILL CONFIDE in no one: “On his deathbed, he didn’t recognize me.”

      She will confide in no one: “On his deathbed, he didn’t recognize me but he spoke eagerly to me as he’d always done, as if I were the one bringing him hope—‘Hel-lo?’”

      BRAVELY AND VERY publicly she will acknowledge—He is my life. Without E.H., my life would have been to no purpose.

       All that I have achieved as a scientist, the reason you have summoned me here to honor me this evening, is a consequence of E.H. in my life.

       I am speaking the frankest truth as a scientist and as a woman.

      She speaks passionately, yet haltingly. She seems to be catching at her breath, no longer reading from her prepared speech but staring out into the audience with moist eyes—blinded by lights, puzzled and blinking, she can’t see individual faces and so might imagine his face among them.