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

dusty brown habit, Zeffer slimly elegant in his pale linen suit.
"She is a movie-star, yes?"
"You saw one of her films?"
Sandru grimaced, displaying a poorly-kept array of teeth. "No, no," he said.
"I do not see these things. At least not often. But there is a little cinema in
Ravbac, and some of the younger brothers go down there quite regularly. They are
great fans of Chaplin, of course. And there's a...vamp...is that the word?"
"Yes," Zeffer replied, somewhat amused by this conversation. "Vamp's the
word."
"Called Theda Bara."
"Oh, yes. We know Theda."
In that yearуwhich was 1920уeverybody knew Theda Bara. She had one of the
most famous faces in the world. As, of course, did Katya. Both were famous; their
fame tinged with a delicious hint of decadence.
"I must go with one of the brothers when they next go to see her," Father
Sandru said.
"I wonder if you entirely understand what kind of woman Theda Bara
portrays?" Zeffer replied.
Sandru raised a thicketed eyebrow. "I am not born yesterday, Mister Zeffer.
The Bible has its share of these women, these vamps. They're whores, yes; women of
Babylon? Men are drawn to them only to be destroyed by them?"
Zeffer laughed at the directness of Sandru's description. "I suppose that's
about right," he said.
"And in real life?" Sandru said.
"In real life Theda Bara's name is Theodesia Goodman. She was born in Ohio."
"But is she a destroyer of men?"
"In real life? No, I doubt it. I'm sure she harms a few egos now and again,
but that's about the worst of it."
Father Sandru looked mildly disappointed. "I shall tell the brothers what
you told me," he said. "They'll be very interested. Well then...shall I take you
inside?"
Matthias Zeffer was a cultured man. He had lived in Paris, Rome, London and
briefly in Cairo in his forty-three years; and had promised himself that he would
leave Los Angelesуwhere there was neither art nor the ambition to make artуas soon
as the public tired of lionizing Katya, and she tired of rejecting his offer of
marriage. They would wed, and come back to Europe; find a house with some real
history on its bones, instead of the fake Spanish mansion her fortune had allowed
her to have built in one of the Hollywood canyons.
Until then, he would have to find aesthetic comfort in the objets d'art he
purchased on their trips abroad: the furniture, the tapestries, the statuary. They
would suffice, until they could find a chateau in the Loire, or perhaps a Georgian
house in London; somewhere the cheap theatrics of Hollywood wouldn't curdle his
blood.
"You like Romania?" the Father asked as he unlocked the great oak door that
lay at the bottom of the stairs.
"Yes, of course," Zeffer replied.
"Please do not feel you have to sin on my account," Sandru said, with a
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Barker, Clive - Coldheart Canyon
sideways glance.