"Eric Brown - The Disciples Of Apollo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Eric)

For days now the wind and the freezing rain had promised worse to come,
and then one quiet night, with only two weeks to go before Maitland died,
snow fell.
In the morning he awoke to find a pearly radiance filling the room. He
dressed and drew aside the curtains and was dazzled by the brilliance of
the white mantle.
He pulled on extra clothes with the enthusiasm of a child and met Caroline
in the hall. They embraced, restricted by the bulkiness of their padding,
and hurried outside hand in hand.
For as far as the eye could see, snow had covered the land with a perfect
record of passage. They were the first residents abroad this morning, and
they set off together away from the mansion. At one point, Maitland looked
back at the building - its hard angles softened and upholstered in a
thick, dazzling fleece - and he saw their footprints following them to
their present position. He looked ahead at the virgin expanse of snow, and
he shivered with what he told himself was nothing more than a sudden
chill.
They walked through the woods and came out on the far side of the
headland. They stood side by side and stared out across the shipping
lanes, at the scimitar-shape of a tanker on the distant grey horizon. Then
they moved towards the small pavilion where they often spent the
afternoons, talking and staring out to sea.
As they made their way towards the open entrance of the small, stone
building, Caroline pulled away from him, then bent double and screamed
into her mittens. Maitland looked from her to the pavilion, and saw with
revulsion that during the night a resident had chosen this place in which
to die.
They returned to the mansion and for the rest of the day and all through
the night they remained in bed and made love. This set the pattern for the
following week. They would take a brisk morning walk and then seek the
refuge of bed and the bliss of each other's body, as if making up for the
weeks of wasted opportunity. Caroline said nothing about the obvious fear
the sight of the corpse had instilled in her - instead it was as if she
were trying to exorcise from her mind the fact of her death with the
positive catharsis of sex.
Maitland, at last, found what he knew to be love, and he passed through
the fear of the inevitable with the knowledge that he might never have
found happiness were it not for the fact of his terminal illness. His only
regret was that he had not found such happiness earlier.

One week later he felt himself going.
On the morning of the first day he felt too drowsy to accompany Caroline
on their ritual stroll through the snow. He made the effort, though, but
something about his lethargy as they walked side by side communicated
itself to Caroline, and she was silent.
In the afternoon they went to bed, but Maitland fell asleep beside her
within seconds. In the morning he felt vaguely ill, nauseous. He tried to
hide this from Caroline, but it was impossible. She dressed him and
assisted him downstairs to the library, where they played chess. Often
Maitland slipped into sleep, and he would awake with a start to see