Диссертация (Семиотические основания жанра авторской (литературной) англоязычной сказки (на материале текстов сказок XX – XXI вв.)), страница 36

It was a lovely ribbon, a rainbow-coloured silk ribbon,such as had never been seen in these parts.And he was very angry at this insult to his gift, and said she must pay what it had costher from whom he had it. And she said,‘What was that?’And he said, ‘Sleepless nights till I come again.’And she said, ‘The price is too high.’And he said, ‘The price is set, you must pay.’And she paid, you may believe, for he saw how it was with her, and a man hurt in hispride will take what he may, and he took, for she had seen him dance, and she was all twistedand turned in her mind and herself by his pride and his dancing.And he said, if he went away again, and found some future in any part of the world,would she wait till he came again and asked her father for her.183And she said, ‘Long must I wait, and you with a woman waiting in every port, and aribbon fluttering in every breeze on every quay, if I wait for you.’And he said, ‘You will wait.’And she would not say yes or no, she would wait or not wait.And he said, ‘You are a woman with a cursed temper, but I will come again and youwill see.’And after a time, the people saw that her beauty dimmed, and her step grew creeping,and she did not lift her head, and she grew heavy all over.

And she took to waiting in theharbour, to see the ships come in, and though she asked after none, everyone knew wellenough why she was there, and who it was she waited for. But she said nothing to anyone.Only she was seen up on the point, where the Lady Chapel is, praying, it must be thought,though none herd her prayers.And after more time, when many ships had come and gone, and others had beenwrecked, and their men swallowed, but his had not been seen or heard of, the miller thought heheard an owl cry, or a cat miawl in his barn, but when he came there was no one and nothing,only blood on the straw.

So he called his daughter and she came, deathly-white, rubbing hereyes as if in sleep, and he said, ‘Here is blood on the straw,’ and she said, ‘I would thank younot to wake me from my good sleep to tell me the dog has killed a rat, or the cat eaten a mousehere in the barn.’And they all saw she was white, but she stood upright, holding her candle, and they allwent in again.And then the ship came home, over the line of sea and into the harbour, and the youngman leaped to the shore to see if she was waiting, and she was not.

Now he had seen her in hismind’s eye, all round the globe, as clear as clear, waiting there, with her proud pretty face, andthe coloured ribbon in the breeze, and his heart hardened, you will understand, that she had notcome. But he did not ask after her, only kissed the girls and smiled and ran up the hill to hishouse.And by and by he saw a pale thin thing creeping along in the shadow of a wall, all slowand halting. And he did not know her at first. And she thought to creep past him like that,because she was so altered.He said, ‘You did not come.’And she said, ‘I could not.’And he said, ‘You are here in the street all the same.’And she said, ‘I am not what I was.’And he said, ‘What is that to me? But you did not come.’And she said, ‘If it is nothing to you, it is much to me.

Time has passed. What is passedis passed. I must go.’And she did go.And that night he danced with Jeanne, the smith’s daughter, who had fine white teethand little plump hands like fat rosebuds.And the next day he went to seek the miller’s daughter and found her in the chapel onthe hill.He said, ‘Come down with me.’And she said, ‘Do you hear little feet, little bare feet, dancing?’And he said, ‘No, I hear the sea on the shore, and the air running over the dry grass, andthe weathercock grinding round in the wind.’And she said, ‘All night they danced in my head, round this way and back that, so that Idid not sleep.’184And he, ‘Come down with me.’And she, ‘But can you not hear the dancer?’And so it went for a weak or a month, or two months, he dancing with Jeanne, andgoing up to the chapel and getting only the one answer from the miller’s daughter, and in theend he wearied, as rash and handsome men will, and said, ‘I have waited as you would not,come now, or I shall wait no more.’And she, ‘How can I come if you cannot hear the little thing dancing?’And he said, ‘Stay with your little thing then, if you love it better than me.’And she said not a word, but listened to the sea and the air and the weathercock, and heleft her.And he married Jeanne the smith’s daughter, and there was much dancing at thewedding, and the piper played, you may believe, and the drums hopped and rolled, and heskipped high with his long long legs and his clever feet and his laughing mouth and Jeannewas quite red with whirling and twirling, and outside the wind got up and the cloudsswallowed the stars.

But they went to bed in good spirits enough, full of good cider, and closedtheir bed-doors against the weather and were snug and tumbled in feathers.And the miller’s daughter came out in the street in her shift and bare feet, running thisway and that, holding out her hands like a woman running after a strayed hen, calling ‘Wait alittle, wait a little.’ And some claimed to have seen a tiny naked child dancing and prancing infront of her, round this way, back widdershins, signing with little pointy fingers and with hairlike a mop of yellow fire. And some said there was nothing but a bit of blown dust whirling inthe road, with a hair or two and a twig caught in it.

And the miller’s apprentice said he hadheard little naked feet patting and slip-slapping in the loft for weeks before. And the old wivesand the bright young men who know no better said he had heard mice. But he said he hadheard enough mice in his lifetime to know what was and was not mice, and he was generallycredited with good sense.So the miller’s daughter ran after the dancing thing, on through the streets and thesquare and up the hill to the chapel, tearing her shins on the brambles and always holding outher hands and calling out ‘Wait, oh wait.’ But the thing danced on and on, it was full of life,you may believe, it glittered and twisted and turned and stamped its tiny feet on the pebblesand the turf, and she struggled with the wind in her skirts and the dark in her face.

And overthe cliff went she, calling ‘Wait, wait,’ and so fell to her death on the needle-rocks below andthey got her back at low tide, all bruised and broken, no beautiful sight at all, as you mayunderstand.But when he came out into the street and saw it, he took her hand and said, ‘This isbecause I had no faith and would not believe in your little dancing thing. But now I hear it,plain as plain.’And poor Jeanne had no joy of him from that day.And when Toussaint came he woke in his bed with a start and heard little feet thatstamped, all around the four sides of his bed, and shrill little voices calling in tongues he knewnot, though he had travelled the globe.So he threw off the covers, and looked out, and there was the little thing, naked, andblue with cold yet rosy with heat so it seemed to him, like a sea fish and a summer flower, andit tossed its fiery head and danced away and he came after. And he came after and he cameafter, as far as the Baie des Trépassés, and the night was clear but there was a veil of mist overthe bay.And the long lines of the waves came in from the Ocean, one after another, one afteranother after another, and always another, and he could see the Dead, riding the crests of them,185coming in from another world, thin and grey and holding out their helpless arms, and tossingand calling in their high voices.

And the dancing thing stamped and tossed on and on, and hecame to a boat with its prow to the sea, and when he came into the boat he felt it was full ofmoving forms pressed closely together, brimming over but unseen.He said there were so many Dead, in the boat, on the crests of the waves, that he felt apanic of terror for being so crowded. For though they were all insubstantial so he could put hishand this way or that, yet they packed around him, and shrilled their wild cries on the waves,so many, so many, as though the wake of a ship would have not a flock of gulls calling after it,but the sky and the sea solid with feathers, and every feather a soul, so it was he said, after.And he said to the dancing child, ‘Shall we put to sea in this boat?’And the thing was still and would not answer.And he said, ‘So far I have come, and I am very greatly afraid, but if I may come to her,I will go on.’And the little thing said, ‘Wait.’And he thought of her among all the others out on the water, with her thin white faceand her flat breast and her starved mouth, and he called after her ‘Wait,’ and her voice howledback like an echo,‘Wait.’And he stirred the air, that was full of things, with his arms, and shuffled his clever feetamong the dust of the dead on the boards of that boat, but all was heavy, and would not move,and the waves went rolling past, one after another, after another, after another.

Then he tried tojump in, he says, but could not. So he stood till dawn and felt them come and go and well inand draw back and heard their cries and the little thing that said,‘Wait.’And in the dawn of the next day he came back to the village a broken man. And he satin the square with the old men, he in the best of his manhood, and his mouth slackened and hisface fell away and mostly he said nothing, except ‘I can hear well enough’ or otherwise ‘Iwait,’ these two things only.And two or three or ten years ago he put up his head and said, ‘Do you not hear the littlething, dancing?’ And they said no, but he went in, and made his bed businesslike, and calledhis neighbours and gave Jeanne the key to his sea-chest and stretched himself out, all thin as hewas and wasted, and said, ‘In the end I waited longest, but now I hear it stamping, the littlething is impatient, though I have been patient enough.’ And at midnight he said, ‘Why, thereyou are, then,’ and so he died.And the room smelled of apple blossom and ripe apples together, Jeanne said.

AndJeanne married the butcher and bore him four sons and two daughters, all of them lusty, but illdisposed for dancing.186ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ 2Robert Coover. The Fisherman and the Jinn [Coover, 2005]The old fisherman has had another shitty day, hauling up the dead detritus of the sea. He’salready cast his net three times, four’s his limit.

Why? He doesn’t remember but that’s it, oneto go. He tucks up his shirt tail, wades in waist-deep, casts again for the thousand-thousandthtime, give or take a throw or two. He waits for the net to sink. He can feel fish swimmingbetween his legs, tickling his cods. Praise God, the bountiful sea. But this time his net snags onthe bottom.