"Coldheart Canyon (preview edition)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive - Coldheart Canyon)

out; and with the last of his strength he pushed himself up out of the filth and let
gravity roll him over. He could not move, but it didn't matter. The darkening sky
overhead was spectacle enough. He lay there for six or seven shortening gasps, while
a star, lonely in its solitude, brightened at his zenith. Then he let life go.
The Brothers did not find him until the middle of the night, by which time a
frost had settled on the old vineyard, the first frost of that autumn. It glittered
on the bulk of the dead Father; on his bulbous nose and in the knots of his beard.
It had even inscribed its filigrees on his unblinking eyes.
FOUR
There was no hospital established at the Fortress; then or ever. Nor was
there any attempt to replant the vineyard, or make the grounds around the Fortress
in any way flourish. With Father Sandru's passing (at the relatively tender age of
sixty-two), what little enthusiasm there had been for change withered. The younger
men decided to leave the Fortress; three of them left the Order entirely and became
members of the secular community. Of the three, oneуa young man by the name of Jan
Valek took his own life less than a year later, leaving a long suicide note, a kind
of epistle to his sometime brothers, in which he wrote of how he'd had a dream after
the death of Father Sandru, in which "I met the Father in the vineyards, which were
all burning. It was a terrible place to be. Black smoke was filling the sky,
blotting out the sun. He said to me that this was Hell, this world, and there was
only one way to escape it, and that was to die. His face was bright, even in the
darkness. He said he wished he'd died earlier, instead of going on suffering in the
world.о
"I asked him if they allowed him to drink brandy wherever he was now. He
said he had no need of brandy; his existence was happy; there was no need to conceal
the pain with drinking.
"Then I told him I still had a life to live in the world, whereas he had
been an old man, with a weak heart. I was strong, I said, and there was a good
chance I'd be alive for another thirty, maybe forty years, which was an agony to me,
but what could I do?
"'So take your own life,' he said to me. He made it sound so simple. 'Cut
your throat. God understands.'о
"'He does?' I said to him.о
"нCertainly,' he told. 'This world is Hell. Just look around. What do you
see?'о
"I told him what I saw. Fire, smoke, block earth. "
м'See?'he said, 'Hell.'о
"I told him, though of course I was still dreaming, I was going to take his
advice. I was going to go back to my room, find a sharp knife, and kill myself. But
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Barker, Clive - Coldheart Canyon
for some reason, as often happens in dreams, I didn't go home. I went into
Bucharest. To the cinema where Brother Stefan used to bring me sometimes, to see
films. We went inside. It was very dark. We found seats and Stefan had me sit down.
Then the film began. And it was a film about some earthly paradise. It made me weep,
it was so perfect, this place. The music, the way the people looked. Beautiful men
and women, all so lovely it took my breath away to look at them. There was one young
man in particularуand it makes me ashamed to write this, but if I don't do it here,
in my last confession, where will I do it?уa young man with dark hair and
light-filled eyes, who opened his arms to me. He was naked, on the screen, with open