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

arms, inviting me into his embrace. I turned to Father Stefan in the darkness, and
he said the very thing that was going through my mind. 'He wants to take you into
his arms.'о
"I started to deny it. But Stefan interrupted me and said: 'Look at him.
Look at his face. It's flawless. Look at his body. It's perfect. And thereуbetween
his legsу'о
"I covered my face in shame, but Stefan pulled my hands from my face and
told me not to be ashamed, just to look, and enjoy looking. 'God made all of this
for our pleasure,' he said. 'Why would he give us such a hunger to look at nakedness
unless he wanted us to take pleasure in it?'о
"I asked Stefan how he knew it was God's work. Perhaps the Devil had made
nakedness, I said, to tempt us and ensnare us. He laughed, and put his arm around
me, and kissed me on the cheek as though I was just a little child.о
"'This isn't the Devil's work,' he said. 'This is your invitation to
paradise.'о
Then he kissed me again, and I felt a warm wind blowing, as though it was
spring in whatever country they had created on the screen. And the wind made me want
to die with pleasure, because it smelled of a time I remembered from long ago.о
"So now I have come back to my room. I have a knife. When I have finished
writing this I will leave what I have written on the table, and I will go out into
the field, and cut my wrists. I know we are taught that self-slaughter is a sin, and
that the Lord does not wish us to harm ourselves, but if He does not wish me to end
my life, why is this knife within reach of my hand, and why is my heart so much at
peace?"
His body was found about a hundred yards from the place where Sandru's
frost-covered body had been discovered. Coming so soon upon the death of the old
priest, the death of Jan Valek undid the Brotherhood completely. Orders came from
Bucharest, and the Brotherhood was disbanded. There was no need to guard the
Fortress any longer, the Archbishop said. The brothers would be more useful to the
Church if they worked with the sick and the dying, to offer the Lord's comfort where
it was most needed.
Within a week, the Order of St. Teodor had left the Fortress Goga.
There were those among the villagers who felt that the Fortress had invited
its abandonment, and began its own process of self-slaughter. Superstition, no
doubt; but it was certainly strange that after five centuries of life, during which
span it had remained strong, a quick process of disintegration should begin as soon
as the community of caretakers departed.
True, the winter immediately following was particularly severe. But there
had been heavier snows on the roofs and they had not bowed beneath the weight; there
had been stronger winds through the casements and they'd not broken open and
smashed, there had been more persistent floodings of the lower floors, and the doors
had not been carried off on their rotted hinges.
By the time the spring came roundуwhich was late April that yearуthe
Fortress had effectively become uninhabitable. It was as though its soul had gone
out of it, and now all it wanted was to allow the seasons to take their steady toll.
They were guileless collaborators. The summer was as violently hot as the winter had
been bitter, and it bred all manner of destroyers in the fabric of the building.
Worm and fly and wasp contributed to the baking heat of the sun with their
burrowings and layings and nestings. Beams that had taken ten men to lift them
became dusty, hollow things, as delicate as the bones of immense birds. Unable to