"Richard Brautigan - in_watermelon_sugar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brautigan Richard)

One of the tigers started eating my mother. He bit her arm
off and started chewing on it. "What kind of story would you
like to hear? I know a good story about a rabbit."

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"I don't want to hear a story," I said.
"OK," the tiger said, and he took a bite out of my father.
I sat there for a long time with the spoon in my hand, and then
I put it down.
"Those were my folks," I said, finally.
"We're sorry," one of the tigers said. "We really are."
"Yeah," the other tiger said. "We wouldn't do this if we didn't
have to, if we weren't absolutely forced to. But this is the only
way we can keep alive."
"We're just like you," the other tiger said. "We speak the
same language you do. We think the same thoughts, but we're
tigers."
"You could help me with my arithmetic," I said.
"What's that?" one of the tigers said.
"My arithmetic."
"Oh, your arithmetic."
"Yeah."
"What do you want to know?" one of the tigers said.
"What's nine times nine?"
"Eighty-one," a tiger said.
"What's eight times eight?"
"Fifty-six," a tiger said.
I asked them half a dozen other questions: six times six, seven
times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic.
Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to
go away.
"OK," I said. "I'll go outside."
"Don't go too far," one of the tigers said. "We don't want
anyone to come up here and kill us."
"OK."
They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside
and sat down by the river. "I'm an orphan," I said.
I could see a trout in the river. He swam directly at me and
then he stopped right where the river ends and the land begins.
He stared at me.

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"What do you know about anything?" I said to the trout.
That was before I went to live at ideath.
After about an hour or so the tigers came outside and stretched
and yawned.
"It's a nice day," one of the tigers said.
"Yeah," the other tiger said. "Beautiful."