"Dennis Danvers - Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Danvers Dennis)

The WATCH
Dennis Danvers
Being the unauthorized sequel to Peter A. Kropotkin’s MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST — as
imparted to by Anchee Mahur,
traveler from a distant future,
or
A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL


In Memoriam: Peter A. Kropotkin 1842–1921
Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact
that the memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation,
and is transmitted again to the children. Is not that an immortality worth striving for? — PETER
KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist When we got home, we laid the foundation of two large
cities: one at Shacco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the point of Appomattox River,
to be named Petersburg…Thus we did not build castles only, but also cities in the air. —
WILLIAM BYRD II, founder of Richmond, 1733


I Am Reborn

I was suddenly struck by an extraordinary spectacle; on the dark vault of the sky I saw an immense
meteor with a long tail and dazzling green light which lit up the sky and the earth. It fell slowly and
disappeared on the horizon. I had never seen anything like it in my life. We stood as if fixed to the spot. It
seemed to us that there was a mysterious relationship between the falling star and the dying
revolutionary. BORIS LEBEDEV, Kropotkin’s son-in-law, in his account of Kropotkin’s death
February 8, 1921
[In prison] I asked, of course, to have paper, pen, and ink, but was absolutely refused…. I suffered very
much from this forced inactivity, and began to compose in my imagination a series of novels for popular
reading…. I made up the plot, the descriptions, the dialogues, and tried to commit the whole to memory
from the beginning to the end. PETER KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist
Since my death, I’ve thought a good deal of my childhood in Russia, when I was “Prince” Peter
Kropotkin, a title I renounced at twelve. These recollections serve to remind me that I have always been
— from my earliest memories to this moment (some hours into my new life) — very much the same. It’s
remarkable when I think on it: seventy-eight years, and the same earnest fellow all along. It makes me
wonder if I’ll change this time round, or whether I’ll keep working for my heart’s desire — that the world
should change instead.

My mother died when I was not yet four. I must confess, being so young, I did not really know her. I
have of her a mere handful of memories — each one too grand and charged with emotions to be entirely
trusted even if I could manage to disentangle reality from legend. But there was nothing illusory about the
effect of my mother’s memory on those servants entrusted with raising my brother and me. Even if they
had not repeated it on every occasion, I would have known from the care and concern lavished on her
sons that they thought my mother a fine woman indeed. Their kindness to me can never be exaggerated,
nor their wisdom rivaled by later, more sophisticated teachers. As for inherited traits, I attribute to my
mother whatever characteristics I possess of a worthwhile nature.
My father incarnated the man I did not wish to be. With such a father’s shadow over me, I could never
subscribe to any form of genetic determinism. As for his living presence — the parent’s guiding and
shaping hand — he little influenced my elder brother Sasha and me, for he largely ignored us.