"Dunsany, Lord - Fifty-one Tales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

Charon




Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with
his weariness.
It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries,
but of wide floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain
in the arms that had become for him part of the scheme that
the gods had made and was of a piece with Eternity.
If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would
have divided all time in his memory into two equal slabs.
So grey were all things always where he was that if any
radiance lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of
such a queen perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have
perceived it.
It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such
numbers. They were coming in thousands where they used to
come in fifties. It was neither Charon's duty nor his wont
to ponder in his grey soul why these things might be.
Charon leaned forward and rowed.
Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the
gods to send no one down from Earth for such a space. But
the gods knew best.
Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat
shivering on a lonely bench and the great boat pushed off.
Only one passenger; the gods knew best.
And great and weary Charon rowed on and on beside the
little, silent, shivering ghost.
And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that
Grief in the beginning had sighed among her sisters, and
that could not die like the echoes of human sorrow failing
on earthly hills, but was as old as time and the pain in
Charon's arms.
Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the
coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering
stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily