"Bradbury, Ray - Death Is A Lonely Business" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

"All right, stand back, stand back!"
More cars were arriving, more police, more lights going on, more people wandering out in their
bathrobes, stunned with sleep, to stand with me, stunned with more than sleep. We looked like a mob of
miserable clowns abandoned on the bridge, looking down at our drowned circus.
I stood shivering, staring at the cage, thinking, why didn't I look back? Why didn't I see that man who
knew all about the man down there in the circus wagon?
My God, I thought, what if the man on the train had actually shoved this dead man into the cage?
Proof? None. All I had was five words repeated on a night train an hour after midnight. All I had was
rain dripping on the high wire repeating those words. All I had was the way the cold water came like
death along the canal to wash the cages and go back out colder than when it had arrived.
More strange clowns came out of the old bungalows.
"All right, folks, it's three in the morning. Clear away!"
It had begun to rain again, and the police when they had arrived had looked at me as if to say, why
didn't you mind your own business? or wait until morning and phone it in, anonymous?
One of the policemen stood on the edge of the canal in a pair of black swim trunks, looking at the
water with distaste. His body was white from not having been in the sun for a long while. He stood
watching the tide move into the cage and lift the sleeper there, beckoning. A face showed behind the bars.
The face was so gone-far-off-away it was sad. There was a terrible wrenching in my chest. I had to back
off, because I heard the first trembling cough of grief start up in my throat.
And then the white flesh of the policeman cut the water. He sank.
I thought he had drowned, too. The rain fell on the oily surface of the canal.
And then the officer appeared, inside the cage, his face to the bars, gagging.
It shocked me, for I thought it was the dead man come there for a last in-sucked gasp of life.
A moment later, I saw the swimmer thrashing out of the far side of the cage, pulling a long ghost
shape like a funeral streamer of pale seaweed.
Someone was mourning. Dear Jesus, it can't be me!
They had the body out on the canal bank now, and the swimmer was toweling himself. The lights
were blinking off in the patrol cars. Three policemen bent over the body with flashlights, talking in low
voices.
"…I'd say about twenty-four hours."
"…Where's the coroner?"
"…Phone's off the hook. Tom went to get him."
"Any wallet, I.D.?"
"He's clean. Probably a transient."
They started turning the pockets inside out.
"No, not a transient," I said, and stopped.
One of the policemen had turned to flash his light in my face. With great curiosity he examined my
eyes, and heard the sounds buried in my throat.
"You know him?"
"No."
"Then why…?"
"Why am I feeling lousy? Because. He's dead, forever. Christ. And I found him."
My mind jumped.
On a brighter summer day years back I had rounded a corner to find a man sprawled under a braked
car. The driver was leaping from the car to stand over the body. I stepped forward, then stopped.
Something pink lay on the sidewalk near my shoe.
I remembered it from some high school laboratory vat. A lonely bit of brain tissue.
A woman, passing, a stranger, stood for a long time staring at the body under the car. Then she did an
impulsive thing she could not have anticipated. She bent slowly to kneel by the body. She patted his
shoulder, touched him gently as if to say, oh there, there, there, oh, oh, there.