"Charles de Lint - Mulengro" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

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 MULENGRO


The Ottawa River neatly separates the Nation’s Capital from Hull, its Quebec neighbor, with an average
width of about a third of a mile. By 1820, when Ottawa was still dense bushland, Hull was already a
thriving village. At the time Hull was first settled by the Boston fanner Philemon Wright in 1800, there
was not even a landing on the Ontario side of the river. Parliament Hill was merely an impressive
limestone cliff, and the remainder of the future Capital was composed of marshland and beaver ponds.
The first structure on the Ottawa side wasn’t raised until 1809 when a Vermont Loyalist named Jehiel
Collins built a shanty tavern and store at the canoe landing below Chaudi8re Falls and the shoreline
initially called Nepean Point came to be known as Collins’ Landing.

Today Ottawa is an urban sprawl of highrises and neatly laid-out residential areas, while Hull is
relegated to the position of a poor cousin where the bars are open two hours later per night and general
housing is anywhere from 30 to 50% cheaper. It wasn’t given a facelift until the mid-1970’s when the
Federal Government began moving some of its offices to the Quebec side of the river. Every few years
talk arises of turning the area into a Federal Region encompassing both sides of the river—legislation
that is as vehemently fought by the Quebec government as it is supported by many of the residents who
are tired of that same provincial government’s heavy taxing and bizarre Language Bills.

Five bridges, four auto and one railway, connect downtown Ottawa with Hull. In the early morning
following the loss of his home, Janfri Yayal was crossing one of these bridges. He had removed his tie,
replacing it with a burgundy and yellow diklo, a traditional Rom scarf that he carried in his violin case.
Small gold earrings, stored in the same case, were now in each lobe. His shoes were tied together by
their laces and slung over his shoulder, the socks thrust into their toes. His bare feet slapped the cool
pavement as he passed the E.B. Eddy Mill and headed northwest on Tach9 Boulevard. When he
reached Front Street, he turned off the road and followed the CPR Railway tracks into the narrow stretch
of woodland that followed the contours of the river.

The few simple changes in his appearance were symbolic of a far more profound reawakening inside
himself. The diklo he always carried because it was the one he’d worn on his wedding night. The
earrings had been given to him by his late wife. He had never asked where she had acquired them. And
while the Rom were normally indifferent to the acquisition and holding of physical goods, he was
greedy in his possession of these for they were all he had to remember her by.

As he moved through the trees he walked with a quick silent grace that Tom Shaw and his other Gaje
friends would never have recognized. It was far harder for Janfri to move unnoticed in the Gaje world
than for him to forget the ways of the Rom, and that was what made the notice of marhime so unfair. He
was scrupulous in his adherence to the laws of marhime for all that he’d chosen to live in a house that he
owned, away from the tsera of his kumpania. There were the separate soaps in his bathroom—the one
for the upper body, the other for the lower—the food he ate, the hospitality in his home for any Rom
who cared to drop by. He was quick with the wedding gift or to share the grief at a pomana when the kin
of one of the kumpania died. Was it his fault that the Gaje gave him money to record the music of his
violin? It wasn’t as though he gave them Rom music for their money.