Эрик Сигал – Love Story / История любви (страница 1)
Erich Seagal / Эрик Сигал
Love Story / История любви
© Загородняя И. Б., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2019
© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2019
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What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
That she was beautiful. And bright. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
Once, when she added me to those musical types, I asked her what the order was, and she replied, smiling, “Alphabetical.” At the time I smiled too. But now I sit and wonder whether she was listing me by my first name – in which case I would follow Mozart – or by my last name, in which case I would get in there between Bach and the Beatles. Either way I don’t come first, which I hate, because I have grown up with the idea that I always had to be number one.
In the fall of my senior year[1], I often studied at the Radcliffe library[2]. The place was quiet, nobody knew me, and the reserve books were less in demand[3]. The day before my history exam, I still hadn’t read the first book on the list, a widespread Harvard disease. I walked over to the reserve desk to get one of the tomes that would help me out the next day. There were two girls working there. One a tall highbrow, the other a bespectacled mouse type. I chose the latter.
“Do you have The Waning of the Middle Ages[4]?”
She looked up.
“Do you have your own library?” she asked.
“Listen, Harvard is allowed to use the Radcliffe library.”
“I’m not talking about legality, Preppie[5], I’m talking about ethics. You have five million books. We have just a few thousand.”
“Listen, I need that goddamn book.”
“Would you please watch your language, Preppie?”
“What makes you so sure I went to prep school?”
“You look stupid and rich,” she said, removing her glasses.
“You’re wrong,” I protested. “I’m actually smart and poor.”
“Oh, no, Preppie. I’m smart and poor.”
She was staring straight at me. Her eyes were brown. Okay, maybe I look rich, but I wouldn’t let some “Clifeif ”[6] – even one with pretty eyes – call me stupid.
“Why do you think you are so smart?” I asked.
“Because I wouldn’t go for coffee with you,” she answered.
“Listen – I wouldn’t ask you.”
“That is why you are stupid,” she replied.
Let me explain why I took her for coffee. By pretending that I suddenly wanted to invite her – I got my book. And since she couldn’t leave until the library closed, I had plenty of time to study. I got an A minus[7] on the exam. It was the same grade that I gave Jenny’s legs when she first walked from behind that desk.
We went to a nearby cafe. I ordered two coffees and a brownie with ice cream (for her).
“I’m Jennifer Cavilleri, an American of Italian descent,” she said. “My major is music.”
“My name is Oliver,” I said.
“First or last?” she asked.
“First,” I answered, and then confessed that my entire name was Oliver Barrett. (I mean, that’s most of it.)
“Oh,” she said. “Barrett, like the poet[8]?”
“Yes,” I said. “We are not relatives.”
In the pause that followed, I gave inward thanks that she hadn’t asked the usual distressing question: “Barrett, like the hall?” For it is my special burden to be a descendant of the guy that built Barrett Hall, the largest and ugliest structure in Harvard Yard, a colossal monument to my family’s money and vanity.
After that, she was pretty quiet. She simply sat there, semi-smiling at me. For something to do, I checked out her notebooks. She was taking some incredible courses:
“Music 201? Isn’t that a graduate course?”
She nodded yes, and looked proud.
“Renaissance polyphony.”
“What’s polyphony?”
“Nothing sexual, Preppie.”
Why was I putting up with this? Doesn’t she read
“Hey, don’t you know who I am?”
“Yeah,” she answered with kind of contempt. “You’re the guy that owns Barrett Hall.”
She didn’t know who I was.
“I don’t own Barrett Hall,” I replied. “My great-grandfather gave it to Harvard.”
“So his not-so-great grandson would get in!”
That was the limit.
“Jenny, if you’re so convinced I’m a loser, why did you make me buy you coffee?”
She looked me straight in the eye and smiled.
“I like your body,” she said.
As I walked Jenny back to her dorm, I still hoped to win a victory over this Radcliffe bitch.
“Listen, you Radcliffe bitch, Friday night is the
Dartmouth hockey game.”
“So?”
“So I’d like you to come.”
She replied with the usual Radcliffe respect for sport:
“Why should I come to a lousy hockey game?”
I answered casually:
“Because I’m playing.”
There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.
“For which side?” she asked.
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