"Gardner Dozois - Horse Of Air (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

carried it into the ball court. They had intercourse there for the better part of the afternoon,
stopping occasionally while the man: prowled about with the rifle. I remember thinking that it was
too bad the gift of motion had been wasted on such as these. They left at dusk. I had not tried to
signal them, leaving them undisturbed to their rut, although I was somewhat sickened by the coarse
brutality of the act. There is such a thing as noblesse oblige.
(I hate them. If I had a gun I would kill them. At first I watch, greedily as they make
love, excited, afraid of scaring them away if they should become aware of me watching. But as the
afternoon wears on, I grow drained, and then angry, and begin to shout at' them, telling them to
get out, get the hell out. They ignore me. Their tanned skin is vivid against asphalt as they
strain together. Sweat makes their locked limbs glisten in the thick sunlight. The rhythmic rise
and fall of their bodies describes parabolic lines through the crusted air. I scream at them and
tear at the mesh, voice thin and impotent. Later they make love again, rolling from the mattress
in their urgency, sprawling among the lush weeds, coupling like leopards. I try to throw plaster
at them, but the angle is wrong. As they leave the square, the man gives me the finger.)
Thinking of those two makes me think of the other animals that howl through the world,
masquerading as men. On the far left, hidden by the nearest brownstones but winding into sight
further on, is a highway. Once it was a major artery of the city, choked
with a chrome flood of traffic. Now it is empty. Once or twice at the beginning I would see an
ambulance or a fire engine, once a tank. A few weeks ago I saw a jeep go by, driving square in the
middle of the highway, ridden by armed men. Occasionally I have seen men and women trudge past,
dragging their possessions behind them on a sledge. Perhaps the wheel is on the way out.
Against one curb is the overturned, burned-out hulk of a bus: small animals use it for a
cave now, and weeds are beginning. to lace through it. I saw it burning, a week after the Building
Committee came. I sat on the balcony and watched its flames eat up at the sky, although it was too
dark to make out what was happening around it; the street lights had been the first things to go.
There were other blazes in the distance, glowing like campfires, like blurred stars. I remember
wondering that night what was happening, what the devil was going on. But I've figured it out now.
It was the niggers. I hate to say it. I've been a liberal man all my life. But you can't
deny the truth. They are responsible for the destruction, for the present degeneration of the
world. It makes me sad to have to say this. I had always been on their side in spirit, I was more
than willing to stretch out a helping hand to those less fortunate than myself. I always said so;
I always said that. I had high hopes for them all. But they got greedy, and brought us to this. We
should have known better, we should have listened to the so-called racists, we should have
realized that idealism is a wasting disease, a cancer. We should have remembered that blood will
tell. A hard truth: it was the niggers. I have no prejudice; I speak the cold facts. I had always
wished them well.
(I hate niggers. They are animals. Touching one would make me vomit.)
-He hates niggers. He has seen them on the street corners with their women, he has seen
them in their juke boxed caves with their feet in sawdust, he has heard them speaking in a private
language half devised of finger snaps and motions of liquid hips, he has felt the inquiry of their
eyes, he has seen them dance. He envies them for having a culture separate from the bland
familiarity of his own,

he envies their tang of the exotic. He envies their easy sexuality. He fears their potency. He
fears that in climbing up they will shake him down. He fears generations of stored-up hate. He
hates them because their very existence makes him uncomfortable. He hates them because sometimes
they have seemed to be happy on their tenement street corners, while he rides by in an air-


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