"Disch, Thomas M. - Camp Concentration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

"They told you that I shouldn't know anything about it--is that it?"
Mordecai faced away from me and walked across the room to the bookshelf. "We're geese, and into our gullets Haast and Busk are stuffing Western Culture. Science, art, philosophy, whatever can be crammed in. And still . . .

I am not full, I am not full.
My stomach has been flushed and flushed,
and yet I cannot hold
my food, I cannot touch Oh!
I am not full"

It was my own poem that Mordecai had quoted. My reaction wavered between the flattery I felt at his having singled out just that passage to memorize (for it is one I am most proud of) and a pity for the poignance of what he had said, not less poignant for my having said it first. I made no reply, asked no more questions.
Mordecai dropped leadenly onto the couch. "This room is a fucking mess, Sacchetti. All our rooms were like this at the start, but you don't have to put up with it. Tell Haast you want something classier. Say the curtains interfere with your brain waves. We've got carte blanche here for things like interior decoration--as you'll see. So take advantage of it."
"Compared to Springfield this seems quite elegant. For that matter, compared to anywhere I've ever lived, barring a single day at the Ritz."
"Yeah, poets don't make so damn much money, do they? I'll bet I was a lot better off than you--before I got drafted. The motherfuckers! That was a big mistake, getting drafted."
"You arrived at Camp Archimedes the same way George did, via the brig?"
"Yeah. Assaulting an officer. The son of a bitch kept asking for it. They all keep asking for it, but they never get it. Well, that son of a bitch did. I knocked the mother's teeth out, two of them. Bad scene. The brig was a worse scene--they're really down on you after a thing like that. So I volunteered. That was six, seven months back. Sometimes I think maybe it wasn't such a big mistake. I'll say this for the stuff they gave us--it beats acid. With acid you _think_ you know everything. With this, you goddamn well do. But it isn't so often I can get as high as all that. Most of the time it's a pain. Like H.H. says: 'Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.'"
I laughed, as much from sheer dizziness at the speed and shifts of his rhetoric as in appreciation of the _mot_.
"But it _was_ a mistake. I was better off dumb."
"Dumb? It doesn't sound like that was ever exactly your condition."
"I sure as hell never had no hundred and sixty I.Q. Not this mother."
"Oh, but those tests are gimmicked for middle-class WASPs like me. Or I suppose I should say WASCs. Measuring intelligence isn't as simple as taking a blood sample."
"Thanks for saying so, but the truth is I _was_ a dumb son of a bitch. And even more ignorant than dumb. Everything that I know now, the way I'm talking with you--it's all on account of the Pa--on account of the stuff they gave me."
"All of it? No."
"Fucking _all_ of it!" He laughed, a calmer laugh than at first. "It's gratifying to talk with you, Sacchetti. You flinch at my every obscenity."
"Do I! It's that middle-class upbringing, I suppose. I'm well used to the Anglo-Saxon words in print, but somehow the spoken word . . . it's a reflex."
"That picture book you're looking at--have you read the text that goes with it?"
I had been browsing through the second volume of Wilenski's _Flemish Painters_, which contains the plates. Volume One is all text. "I started to, but I got bogged down. I haven't settled down enough to be able to concentrate on anything."
Mordecai's reaction to this seemed unduly grave. He said nothing in response, however, but after a pause continued his first train of thought. "There's a passage in there that's terrific. Can I read it to you?" He'd already taken Volume One down from the shelf. "It's about Hugo van der Goes. You know about him?"
"Only that he was one of the earliest Flemish painters. I don't think I've seen anything of his though."
"You couldn't have. None of it survived. Nothing that he signed, at any rate. The story goes that around 1470 he went mad, raved about being damned and the devil was going to get him and all that. He was already living in this monastery near Brussels at the time, and the brothers would play music to try and calm him, like David with Saul. One of the boys there wrote an account of his madness--it's all worth reading--but the part of it I really liked . . . here, let me read it to you.

". . . Brother Hugo from inflaming of his imaginative powers was disposed to daydreaming fantasies and hallucination and suffered in con-
sequence an illness of the brain. For there is, I am told, a small delicate organ, near the brain, which is controlled by the creative and imaginative powers. If our imagination is too vivid or our fantasy too abundant, this little organ is affected, and if it is strained to the breaking point madness or frenzy results. If we are to avoid falling into this irremediable' "-- Mordecai faltered pronouncing this word--" 'danger, we must limit our fantasy, our imaginations, and our suspicions and exclude all other vain and useless thoughts which may excite our brains. We are all but men, and the disaster that fell upon our Brother as a result of his fantasies and hallucinations, could it not also fall on us'?"

"Isn't that great? I can just imagine the old bastard, the satisfaction he got writing it down--'I told you so, Hugo! Didn't I always say that all that painting was _dangerous?_' Why do you suppose he did go mad, though?"
"Anyone can go mad. It's not the prerogative of painters. Or poets."
"Yeah, I suppose when you come right down to it, everybody's crazy. My folks were sure enough crazy. Mammy-- that's what we called her, so help me!--Mammy was crazy with the holy ghost, and the old man was crazy without it. Both my brothers were junkies, so that makes them crazy. Crazy and crazy and crazy and crazy."
"Is something wrong?" I asked, rising from bed and going toward Mordecai, who had become increasingly agitated during this speech, until at last, trembling, eyes pressed tightly closed, one hand upon his heart, his speech degenerated into a mere static of choked breath. The heavy book dropped from his left hand to the floor, and at its impact he opened his eyes. "I'll be. . . all right if I. . . sit down a minute. A little dizzy."
I helped him back to the sofa and, lacking a better remedy, brought him a glass of water, which he drank gratefully. His hands, holding the glass, still trembled.
"And yet, you know. . ." he resumed quietly, running his spatulate fingers up and down the flutings of the glass, "there was something about van der Goes. At least I like to think there was. Something special about any artist, of course. A sort of magic--in the literal sense. Unriddling the signatures of nature, and breathing the same secrets back. It's like that, isn't it?"
"I don't know. I don't think it's that for me, but there are many artists who would _like_ it to be like that. But the problem with magic is that it doesn't work."
"Like hell," Mordecai said quietly.
"Can you scoff at God and believe in demons?"
"What are demons? I believe in elemental powers--sylphs, salamanders, undines, gnomes--parables of primal matter. You smile and sneer and cuddle up in the comfortable Jesuitical universe of College Physics. Matter has no mysteries left for you, oh no! No more than the spirit does. All tidy and known, like a mother's cooking. Well, ostriches feel at home in the universe too, though they can't see it."
"Believe me, Mordecai, I'd be happy in a world of sylphs and salamanders. Any poet would. What do you think we've all been bellyaching about these past two hundred years? We've been evicted."
"But you still sneer at the words. For you they're nothing but a Russian ballet, a tinkle of bells. But I have _seen_ the salamanders, dwelling in the midst of flames."
"Mordecai! The very notion that flame is an element is nonsense. Half a semester of chemistry would disabuse you of that idea. High school chemistry, at that."
"Flame is the element of change," he said, in an exalted, orgulous tone, "of the transubstantial. It's the bridge between matter and spirit. What else is it lives in the heart of your giant cyclotrons? Or at the heart of the sun? You believe in angels, don't you--the mediaries between this and the farthest sphere. Well, I have _spoken_ with them."
"The farthest sphere--that which God inhabits?"
"Gaud, Gaud! I prefer familiar spirits--my sylphs and salamanders--who will answer when spoken to. Two in the hand are worth one in the bush. But there's no use our arguing. Not yet. Walt till you've seen my laboratory. Unless we adjust our vocabularies for mutual comprehension, we'll go on oscillating between Sic and Non till fucking doomsday."
"I'm sorry--I'm not usually so inflexible. I imagine it's a matter less of reasoned dissent than of mental self-preservation. It would be easy to let myself be swept up in your rhetoric. That's meant to be a compliment, you know."