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What was the woman thinking about when she went to bed for a year? The woman who went to bed for a year Sue TownsendThe woman who went to bed for a year

THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR by Sue Townsend

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Be kind, because everyone in your path is fighting a difficult battle.

Attributed to Plato and many others.

After her husband and children left, Eva locked the door and turned off the phone. She liked to stay at home alone. She wandered around the rooms, putting things in order, collecting cups and plates thrown by her household anywhere. On the seat of Eva’s favorite chair—the same one she had upholstered at night school—there was a dirty spoon. Eva quickly walked into the kitchen and began to examine the contents of the cabinet with detergents.

How can you remove a stain from canned tomato soup from embroidered silk? Rummaging among the boxes and bottles, Eva muttered:

- You are the one to blame. I should have kept the chair in the bedroom. And out of vanity, you put it on display in the living room for everyone to see. Like, praise, dear guests, my beauty, which I have been lusting after for two whole years, inspired by Claude Monet’s masterpiece “The Weeping Willow and the Pond with Water Lilies.”

Yes, it took a year for the trees alone.

There was a puddle of tomato soup glistening on the kitchen floor, which Eve didn’t notice until she stepped on a spot and sent orange marks everywhere. On the stove, half a can of the same tomato soup was still bubbling in a Teflon saucepan.

They won’t even take the pan off the stove, Eva thought. And then I remembered that from now on twins were a problem at the University of Leeds.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her reflection in the smoky glass of the oven and quickly looked away. And if she had detained her, she would have seen a sweet woman of about fifty, with regular facial features, attentive blue eyes and lips like those of the silent film star Clara Bow, tightly clenched in a bow, as if she were holding back the words rushing out.

No one, not even her husband Brian, has ever seen Eva without lipstick. Eva thought red lipstick went perfectly with her black outfits. Sometimes she allowed herself to dilute her wardrobe with shades of gray.

One day, Brian, returning from work, found Eva in the garden - wearing black galoshes on her bare feet and holding a turnip pulled out of the garden bed in her hands.

- God, Eva! “You are the spitting image of post-war Poland,” he said.

Her face type is in fashion these days. “Vintage face,” as the girl says in the Chanel department where Eva buys lipstick (never forgetting to throw away the receipt - her husband will not approve of such frivolous spending).

Eve took the pan off the stove, took it into the living room and splashed tomato soup all over the upholstery of her precious chair. Then she went up to her bedroom and, as she was, in her shoes and clothes, went to bed, where she remained for the entire next year.

Then Eva did not yet know that she would spend a whole year in bed. She lay down for half an hour, but the bed was so cozy, and the fresh white sheets smelled of freshly fallen snow. Eve turned to the open window and looked at how the maple tree in the garden was shedding its flaming leaves.

She always liked September.

Eva woke up when it began to get dark, hearing her husband screaming in the street. The cell phone began to sing. The daughter's name, Brianna, flashed on the screen. Eva didn’t answer, dove headfirst under the covers and started singing Johnny Cash’s “Trying to Be Perfect.”

The next time she poked her head out from under the blanket, her neighbor Julie's voice was loud outside the window:

“That’s no good, Brian!” We talked in the front garden.

“By the way, I went to Leeds and back,” Brian answered, “I need a shower.”

- Yes, yes, of course.

Eve thought about what she had heard. Why would you be so eager to take a shower after a trip to Leeds? Is the air in the north particularly dirty? Or was Brian sweating on the highway, cursing the trucks? Yelling at drivers who don't keep their distance? Angrily bashing the weather?

Eva turned on the night light.

A new volley of screams and demands to “stop fooling around and unlock the door” came from the street.

Eva would have been glad to go down and open the door for her husband, but she simply could not get out of bed. It was as if she had fallen into a barrel of warm concrete and was now unable to move. Listening to the delicious weakness that spread throughout her body, Eve thought: “Well, it’s stupid to leave such a cozy place.”

Following the sound of breaking glass, stomping came from the stairs.

Brian shouted her name. Eva didn't answer.

The husband opened the bedroom door:

- Oh, there you are.

- Yes, I am here.

-Are you sick?

“Then why are you lying in bed in clothes and shoes?” What other games?

- Don't know.

- I know. This is empty nest syndrome. I heard about this thing on the radio on Woman's Hour.

Eve remained silent, and Brian asked:

“So, are you going to get up?”

- No, I am not going.

- What about dinner?

- No, thanks, I'm not hungry.

- I'm talking about my dinner. What's for dinner?

- I don’t know, look in the refrigerator.

He stomped down. Eve listened to Brian walk on the laminate floor that he had clumsily laid last year. She realized from the creaking of the floorboards that her husband had entered the living room. Soon he was thundering on the stairs again.

“What the hell happened to your chair?”

“Someone left a tablespoon on the seat.”

- It's all smeared with soup!

- I know, I did it myself.

- Did you spill soup on the chair? Eve nodded.

“You’re having a nervous breakdown, Eva.” I'm calling your mother.

Brian flinched at her furious tone.

From his shocked look, Eve guessed that after twenty-five years of marriage, the end of the world had come in her husband’s domestic universe. Brian retreated downstairs. Eva heard his curses about the disconnected phone, and seconds later the clicking of buttons was heard. Picking up the phone from the parallel machine, Eva recognized her mother’s voice rattling off her phone number:

– 0116 2 444 333, this is Mrs Ruby Sorokins. Then Brian's voice:

- Ruby, this is Brian. I need you to come immediately.

“I can’t do it, Brian.” I'm just getting a perm. What's wrong?

“Then call an ambulance,” Ruby ordered irritably.

“She’s physically fine.”

- Well, then everything is fine.

“I’ll come for you now, you should see her for yourself.”

- Brian, I can't. I'm getting a perm, and after half an hour I'm supposed to have the solution washed off. If I don't wash it off in time, I'll look like Harpo Marx, like a lamb. Here, talk to Michelle.

- Hello... Brian, right? And I'm Michelle. Shall I explain to you in a popular way what will happen if Mrs. Sorokins interrupts the perm at this stage? I have insurance, but I don’t like to wander around the courts. My time is scheduled hourly until Christmas.

Ruby had the phone again:

- Brian, can you hear me?

- Ruby, your daughter is lying in bed. In clothes and shoes.

– I warned you, Brian. Do you remember how we stood on the church porch on our wedding day, and I turned to you and said: “Our Eve is a dark horse. She doesn't talk much and you'll never know what's on her mind." There was a long pause, and then Ruby said, “Call your mom.”

How you want to crawl into a warm bed and not worry about anything, just think about everything in the world. How I want to stop, to stop being an engine, a tug, a workhorse that drags the whole world along with it. Let it spin by itself, let the leaves fall from the maple tree on their own, this doesn’t concern Eve anymore, she feels good. Or is she deceiving herself? Can it be good for a person who has forgotten how to live? We learn this from Sue Townsend's latest novel, The Woman Who Bed for a Year.

Thinking about everything in the world is a pleasure that the fragile, pretty woman, the heroine of the novel with an unusual title, was deprived of for many years. After all, the main concern of her accomplished, respectable adult life was never herself, there were always more important people: husband, children, mother, relatives, acquaintances... Is this a familiar situation? What is unusual is the solution to a problem that a representative of the weaker half of humanity had the courage to admit. Eva, that’s the name of our heroine, gave herself the long-desired pleasure, finally pushing everything else into the background. But this is no longer about us. We cannot allow ourselves to be whims until we have satisfied the needs of everyone around us, and our desires will stand aside until someone comes and makes them happen with a wave of a magic wand. Perhaps, for many years, Eve was stopped by a sense of duty, and self-denial gave strength, but until a certain moment, until she suddenly realized that she could no longer live. Not “I can’t live like this anymore,” but “I can’t live.” Why? The heroine of the book obviously does not try to find the answer to this question, but she takes the first step towards understanding herself: she allows herself to live as best she can while lying in bed. The mother of two children, an exemplary wife and daughter suddenly resigned from her responsibilities and remained simply Eva Bober.

The theme of serving the interests of those close and distant is well known to us; the vast majority of adult women have had those same seventeen years of mindless running around with the slogans “should” and “should”. Some people endure such a race under the guise of the highest humane aspirations, without thinking about who or why they were imposed, while others, tired of fighting with themselves for many decades, are the ones who have enough patience and strength, give up, and the locomotive of life gives failure, stops, for some time still rattling by inertia with its cast-iron wheels.

A stop is when you lie around from eight in the morning until eight in the evening in front of the TV, without getting up to eat or drink, only making it to the toilet once with dizziness. When you suffer from insomnia from half-thought-out and such obsessive sad thoughts. When you cry in response to a simple question from an innocent husband who has returned from work, being unable to understand, much less explain, what is happening. When you destroy yourself with endless reproaches for laziness, unwillingness to get down to business, mentally forcing yourself to immediately get up and do this or that, it’s impossible, but at the same time staying on the couch and continuing to scold yourself even more. When, with a relatively healthy body, you feel absolute helplessness and your own worthlessness. When you run to doctors in the hope of finding at least some more or less serious illness that just doesn’t want to be found. This is to justify his exhausted state. But no doctor can help when a person is exhausted in the fight against himself. Eva turned out to be more honest and wiser than many of us. She stopped being her own enemy in pursuit of the appearance of well-being and the approval of others. Her history did not include the above-mentioned side effects of depression only because she accepted her condition as it was, without trying to seem like the old Eve that everyone wanted to see. Instead of a caring mother, wife and housewife, a strange woman suddenly appeared who “goes crazy” and torments her relatives, forcing them to take care of themselves.

It is strange to call an action something that is not a conscious action at the time of its commission. When Eve climbed into bed, she did not think that she would spend a whole year there; it was not her conscious decision. Impulse, instinct, a sense of self-preservation suggested where it was cozy and warm - in the bed, with white sheets smelling of freshly fallen snow, with a large soft pillow, with the enveloping peace and serenity of a lush blanket. Eve heard the voice of herself, which she zealously did not want to notice for many years of selfless service to her loved ones, and could no longer resist it. How long can you convince yourself that everything is fine when there is no joy in your soul? How long can you do what you don’t need? How long can you lie to yourself? Enough is enough, now Eva is just enjoying life. She feels good, she trusted her feelings and for the first time did the truly right thing, according to her feelings, and not in spite of them, and no one else will prove to her that she should get up and cook breakfast for everyone, clean the whole house, do laundry, iron shirts, buy food she doesn't eat, cook a three-course meal, go to the dry cleaners and weed the lawn, prepare the house for Christmas, worry about her husband and children, because she's already doing well, let them take care of her now .

Yes, an interesting situation, really comical. It is worth finding out how a “loving husband” will get out of her, how the children will react, whether there will be at least one person to support Eva, and not burn her with another reproachful and contemptuous look. And does she need support? Maybe she decided to play sick in order to attract attention to herself in such an extravagant way? Unclear. Eve should be happy, especially since she has everything she needs for this: a worthy husband, who is generally considered loving, and he himself is of the same opinion. There are children, almost adults - the dream of any woman, the meaning of her life, hope for the future. There is a mother, caring, attentive, who wishes only the best for her daughter and her entire family. Is it possible to admit the reality of strange and such frightening feelings - an incomprehensible disgust for a husband who is looking for his socks every day, irritation and resentment for children who do not pay any attention to their mother, anger at the omnipresent mother trying to live her daughter’s life instead of her, at her mother-in-law, forever dissatisfied with her daughter-in-law, but she told her son, she said... No, that doesn’t happen. You must love your husband, care for your children, cherish and forgive everything, and respect and obey your mother-in-law, even when she tramples you into the dirt with her feet, saying that this is for your own good. From somewhere, memories of school time suddenly emerge, of the same kind teachers... and tears well up.

The most disgusting thing is that in all the annotations for the book, without exception, they talk about the comical nature of the plot, the sparkling humor, the eccentricity of the characters, the intelligence of the author, but there is not a word about the tragedy of the situation itself in which a mature, intelligent, talented woman found herself. If not wanting to live your life is funny, then let's just as well laugh at those who won't get out of bed in the oncology ward of the local hospital, and consider the behavior of their relatives strange. Both of them are clearly different from the crowd!

The only thing worse than depression, a voluntary unwillingness to live, in which Eva found herself, is cancer, when a person involuntarily finds himself in the face of death. Note, it's scarier, not funnier. The irony with which Sue Townsend describes the heroine's experiences is necessary for the story of a tragedy that you cannot face directly, otherwise it will kill you. To do this, the author had to be like Perseus and use humor in the same way as a mirror shield, which allowed him to see and cut off the head of the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa, who destroyed so many heroes with just one glance who carelessly looked into her eyes.

Ask the employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, will they happily tell you about their heroic service, about the lives they saved, about what they see every day, saving five hundred living souls per day? Can combatants talk seriously about the war, or do they prefer to remember minor anecdotes that distracted them from the terrible reality? However, everyone understands that the presence of army humor is not a reason to laugh at war. Why should we laugh when reading a book about the deepest tragedy of the human personality? Perhaps because most of us are not aware of the reality of the existing problem and have not come face to face with it? Then, indeed, all that remains is to laugh, marveling at the ingenuity of the author, who put his heroes in such comical and such unrealistic situations. However, the tragedy of the plot lies precisely in the fact that it is true, just like documentary filming. It’s just that not everyone wants to know this truth and, even when faced with it, they prefer not to believe their eyes. And the worst thing is that no one knows what to do about it.

Sue Townsend

The woman who went to bed for a year

Be kind, because everyone in your path is fighting a difficult battle.

Attributed to Plato and many others.

After her husband and children left, Eva locked the door and turned off the phone. She liked to stay at home alone. She wandered around the rooms, putting things in order, collecting cups and plates thrown by her household anywhere. On the seat of Eva's favorite chair - the same one she had upholstered at night school - lay a dirty spoon. Eva quickly walked into the kitchen and began to examine the contents of the cabinet with detergents.

How can you remove a stain from canned tomato soup from embroidered silk? Rummaging among the boxes and bottles, Eva muttered:

You are the one to blame. I should have kept the chair in the bedroom. And out of vanity, you put it on display in the living room for everyone to see. Like, praise, dear guests, my beauty, which I have been lusting after for two whole years, inspired by Claude Monet’s masterpiece “The Weeping Willow and the Pond with Water Lilies.”

Yes, it took a year for the trees alone.

They won’t even take the pan off the stove, Eva thought. And then I remembered that from now on twins are a problem at the University of Leeds.

One day, Brian, returning from work, found Eva in the garden - wearing black galoshes on her bare feet and holding a turnip pulled out of the garden bed in her hands.

God, Eva! “You are the spitting image of post-war Poland,” he said.

She always liked September.

Eva woke up when it began to get dark, hearing her husband screaming in the street. The cell phone began to sing. The daughter's name, Brianna, appeared on the screen. Eva didn’t answer, dove headfirst under the covers and started singing Johnny Cash’s “Trying to Be Perfect.”

The next time she poked her head out from under the blanket, her neighbor Julie's voice was loud outside the window:

This won't do, Brian!

We talked in the front garden.

By the way, I went to Leeds and back,” Brian replied, “I need a shower.”

Yes, yes, of course.

Sue Townsend

The woman who went to bed for a year

Be kind, because everyone in your path is fighting a difficult battle.

Attributed to Plato and many others.

After her husband and children left, Eva locked the door and turned off the phone. She liked to stay at home alone. She wandered around the rooms, putting things in order, collecting cups and plates thrown by her household anywhere. On the seat of Eva's favorite chair - the same one she had upholstered at night school - lay a dirty spoon. Eva quickly walked into the kitchen and began to examine the contents of the cabinet with detergents.

How can you remove a stain from canned tomato soup from embroidered silk? Rummaging among the boxes and bottles, Eva muttered:

Yes, it took a year for the trees alone.

They won’t even take the pan off the stove, Eva thought. And then I remembered that from now on twins are a problem at the University of Leeds.

One day, Brian, returning from work, found Eva in the garden - wearing black galoshes on her bare feet and holding a turnip pulled out of the garden bed in her hands.

God, Eva! “You are the spitting image of post-war Poland,” he said.

She always liked September.

The next time she poked her head out from under the blanket, her neighbor Julie's voice was loud outside the window:

This won't do, Brian!

We talked in the front garden.

By the way, I went to Leeds and back,” Brian replied, “I need a shower.”

Yes, yes, of course.

Eva turned on the night light.

A new volley of screams and demands to “stop fooling around and unlock the door” came from the street.

Following the sound of breaking glass, stomping came from the stairs.

Brian shouted her name.

Eva didn't answer.

The husband opened the bedroom door:

Oh, there you are.

Yes, I am here.

Are you sick?

Then why are you lying in bed in clothes and shoes? What other games?

Don't know.

And I know. This is empty nest syndrome. I heard about this thing on the radio on Woman's Hour.

Eve remained silent, and Brian asked:

So, are you going to get up?

No, I am not going.

What about dinner?

No thanks, I'm not hungry.

I'm talking about my dinner. What's for dinner?

I don't know, look in the refrigerator.

What the hell happened to your chair?

Someone left a tablespoon on the seat.

It's all smeared with soup!

I know, I did it myself.

Did you spill soup on the chair?

Eve nodded.

You're having a nervous breakdown, Eva. I'm calling your mother.

Brian flinched at her furious tone.

0116 2 444 333, this is Mrs Ruby Sorokins speaking.

Ruby, this is Brian. I need you to come immediately.

I can't do it, Brian. I'm just getting a perm. What's wrong?

So call an ambulance,” Ruby ordered irritably.

Physically, she's fine.

Well, that means everything is fine.

I'll come for you now, you should see her for yourself.

Brian, I can't. I'm getting a perm, and after half an hour I'm supposed to have the solution washed off. If I don't wash it off in time, I'll look like Harpo Marx, like a lamb. Here, talk to Michelle.

Hi... Brian, right? And I'm Michelle. Shall I explain to you in a popular way what will happen if Mrs. Sorokins interrupts the perm at this stage? I have insurance, but I don’t like to wander around the courts. My time is scheduled hourly until Christmas.

Ruby had the phone again:

Brian, can you hear me?

Ruby, your daughter is lying in bed. In clothes and shoes.

I warned you, Brian. Do you remember how we stood on the church porch on our wedding day, and I turned to you and said: “Our Eve is a dark horse. She doesn't talk much and you'll never know what's on her mind." There was a long pause, and then Ruby said, “Call your mom.”

And she hung up.

Eve is shocked by the discovery that her mother, as it turns out, tried to ruin her daughter's wedding at the last minute. She pulled the bag that was lying on the floor towards her and rummaged through it, hoping to find something edible. Eva always kept provisions in her bag - a habit left over from the twins’ infancy; they were always hungry, constantly opening their mouths, like chicks with their beaks. Eve found a bag of crushed crackers, a flattened Bounty bar, and an open packet of mints.

And Brian was downstairs clicking buttons again.

When calling his mother, Brian was always a little cowardly, out of fear he even began to distort his words. His mother always made him feel guilty, no matter what they talked about.

Eva took the parallel phone again, carefully covering the microphone with her palm.

The mother-in-law picked up the phone instantly and barked:

Is that you, mom? - Brian asked.

Who else? Nobody comes here anymore. I sit alone seven days a week.

But... uh... you... um... don't like guests.

I don’t like guests, but I like to send them away. Don't wait, what happened? I'm watching Emmerdale Farm.

Sorry, mom, for interrupting,” Brian bleated, “maybe you can call me back during commercial?”

No,” she snapped. - Let's figure it out now, whatever it is.

This is Eve.

Ha! For some reason I'm not surprised. Did she leave you? As soon as I saw this fidgety girl, I immediately realized that she would break your heart.

Brian wondered if his heart had been broken. He could never really say what he felt. When he brought home his BSc honors degree to present his achievement to his mother, her then-partner remarked, “You must be very happy, Brian.” Brian nodded and smiled forcefully, although he felt no happier than the day before. And the mother took the embossed diploma, studied it closely and frowned: “You will have to work hard to get a job as an astronomer. People with more experience than you cannot get a job.”