"01 - The White Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher John)

"Jack," I said, "I've been thinking." He waited, without much interest. "Of what you said-about the wonderful things that men made, before the Tripods."

"That was nonsense." he said, and turned and walked on to the village. I watched him for a time and then, feeling very much alone, made my way to the den.

2

"My Name is Ozymandias"

It was not until after his Capping that I understood how much I had depended on Jack for companionship in the past Our alliance had isolated me from other boys of roughly my age in and around the village. I suppose it would have been possible to overcome this-Joe Beith, the carpenter's son, made overtures of friendship, for one-but in the mood I was in I preferred to be alone. I used to go down to the den and sit there for hours, thinking about it all. Henry came once and made some jeering remarks, and we fought My anger was so great that I beat him decisively, and he kept out of my way after that

From time to time I met Jack, and we exchanged words that meant nothing. His manner to me was amiable and distant: it carried the hint of a friendship suspended, a suggestion that he was waiting on the tar side of a gulf which in due course I would cross, and that then everything would be as it had been before. This did not comfort me, though, for the person I missed was the old Jack, and he was gone forever. As I would be? The thought frightened me, and I tried to dismiss it, but it continually returned.

Somehow, in this doubt and fear and brooding, I found myself becoming interested in the Vagrants. I remembered Jack's remark and wondered what he would have been like if the Capping had not worked. By now he would probably have left the village. I looked at the Vagrants who were staying with us and thought of them as once being like Jack and myself, in their own villages, sane and happy and with plans for their future. I was my father's only son and would be expected to take over the mill from him one day. But if the Capping were not a success...

There were now three of them, two recently arrived and a third who had been with us several weeks. He was a man of my father's age, but his beard was unkempt, his hair gray and sparse, with the lines of the Cap showing through it He spent his time collecting stones from the fields near the village, and with them he-was building a cairn outside the Vagrant House. Ho collected perhaps twenty stones a day, each about the size of a half brick. It was impossible to understand why he chose one stone rather than another, or what the purpose of the cairn was. He spoke very little, using words as a child learning to talk does.

The other two were much younger, one of them probably no more than a year from his Capping. He talked a lot, and what he said seemed almost to make sense, but never quite did. The third, a few years older, could talk in a way that one understood, but did not often do so. He seemed sunk in a great sadness and would lie in the road beside the House all day, staring up at the sly.

He remained when the others moved on, tin young one in the morning and the cairn builder in the afternoon of the same day. The pile of stones stayed there, unfinished and without meaning. I looked at them that evening and wondered what I would be doing twenty-five years from now. Grinding corn at the mill? Perhaps, Or perhaps wandering the countryside. living on charity and doing useless things. Somehow the alternatives were not so black and white as I would have expected. I did not know why, but I thought I had a glimmer of understanding of what Jack had meant that morning in the den.

The new Vagrant arrived the next day, and being on my way to the den, I saw him come, along the road from the west. He was in his thirties, I judged, a powerfully built man, with red hair and a beard. He carried an ash stick and the usual small pack on his back, and he was singing a song, quite tunefully, as he strode along. He saw me, and stopped singing.

"Boy." he said. "what is the name of this place?"

"It's called Wherton," I told him.

"Wherton," he repeated. "Ah, loveliest village of the plain; here is no anguish, here no pain. Do you know me, boy?"

I shook my head. "No."

"I am the king of this land. My wife was the queen of a rainy country, but I left her weeping. My name is Ozymandias. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

He talked nonsense, but at least he talked, and file words themselves could be understood. They sounded a bit like poetry, and I remembered the name Ozymandias from a poem which I had found in a book, one of the dozen or so on the shelf in the parlor.

As he went on toward the village, I followed him. Glancing back. he said, "Dost follow me, boy? Wouldst be my page? Alas, alas. The fox has his hole, and the bird shelters in the great leafy oak, but the son of man has not where to lay his head. Have you no business of your own, then?"

"Nothing important"

"Nothing is important, true. but how does a man find Nothing? Where shall he seek for it? I tell you, could I find Nothing. I would be not king but emperor. Who dwells in the House, this day and hour?"

I assumed he was talking about the Vagrant House.

"Only one," I said. "I don't know his name."

"His name shall be Star. And yours?"

"Will Parker."

"Will is a good name. What trade does your father follow. Will, for you wear too fine a doth to be a laborer's son?"