Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

Adams had come here with his wife and, having left her in their automobile, had run up to see us for just a second in order to ask us to his house for lunch. He had run in for just a second!

We raced down the corridor, frightening the old ladies who always populate American hotels. In the elevator Mr. Adams jumped with impatience, so eager was he to reach the protective wing of his wife.

Around the corner from Lexington Avenue, on Forty-eighth Street, in a neat but no longer new Chrysler sat a young lady who wore the same kind of protruding spectacles as did Mr.

“Becky!” groaned our new friend, stretching forth his fat little arms toward the Chrysler.

In the confusion his hat flew off and his round head glistened in the reflected light of New York’s autumn sun.

“And where is the umbrella?” asked the lady, smiling wanly.

The sun went out on the head of Mr. Adams. He forgot the umbrella in our room, he forgot his wife in the street, the umbrella was upstairs.

With bitterness we noticed that it was not Mr. Adams, but his wife, who took the wheel. We again exchanged glances.

“No, evidently this is not the hybrid we need. Our hybrid must know how to drive an automobile.”

Mr. Adams regained his calm and normal state and talked about things as if nothing untoward had happened. On the entire trip to Central Park West, where his apartment was located, old man Adams assured us that the most important thing for us is our future travelling companion.

“No, no, no, you don’t understand! This is very, very important!”

We became sad. We ourselves knew how important that was.

The door of the Adams’s apartment was opened to us by a Negress to whose skirts clung a two-year-old girl. The little girl had a firmly moulded little body. She was a little Adams without spectacles.

She looked at her parents, and said in her thin little voice:

“Papa and Mamma.

Papa and Mamma groaned from sheer satisfaction and happiness.

We exchanged glances for the third time.

“Besides, he has a child! No, this is most decidedly not the hybrid!”

7.В The Electric Chair

THE AMERICAN, Ernest Hemingway, author of the recently published Fiesta, which evoked much discussion in Soviet literary circles, happened to be in New York while we were there.