"George Alec Effinger - City On Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

by degrees of privation, like a slow sunset of amnesia, into
this life of utter exhaustion. Never again will my eyes, my
nose and mouth, the wet hairs of my body be free of grit and
sand. The wealthy and I have had to labor to attain such an
existence. But you, Eugenie, you had it with you all the time.
You would be queen here, Eugenie, but you would be as ugly
as the rest.”
Ernst sipped more of the liqueur. He dipped three
fingertips into it, and flicked the dark fluid at the backs of the
people crowding against the railing. Spots formed on the
clothing of a man and a girl. Ernst laughed; the too-loud
noise sobered him for a moment. “You'd be ugly, Eugenie,” he
said, “and I'd be drunk.” The heat of the African noon
enveloped him, and the stillness made it difficult to breathe.
Ernst struggled out of his old worn jacket, throwing it onto
the chair across the small metal table from him.
“Marie, you don't matter. Not now. Not here. Africa would
be perfect for Eugenie, but you, Marie, I picture your
destruction among the million mirror shards of Paris or
Vienna. So forget it, I'm talking to Eugenie. She would come
right across that square, scattering the pigeons, the
pedestrians, the damned army just the same, marching right
across the square, right up to this café, to my table, and stare
down at me as if she had walked the Mediterranean knowing
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 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger


where I was all the time. But it won't work again. She
wouldn't have thought that I could catch up to her laughing
crime, that I'd still be the same rhyming idiot I always was.
And she'd be old, older than I, lined and wrinkled, leaning,
tucked in, shaking just a bit in the limbs, aching just a bit in
the joints, showing patches and patterns of incorrect color,
purples on the legs, brown maculae on the arms, swirls and
masses on the face beneath the surgery and appliances. Then
what would I do? I would buy her a drink and introduce her to
everyone I know. That would destroy her surely enough,
speedily enough, satisfyingly enough, permanently enough.
Oh, the hell with indifference. I really can't maintain it.” Ernst
laughed again and hoped some patrician in the Jaish's
audience would turn around, bored by the mock military
show, and ask Ernst what amused him. No one did. Ernst sat
in glum silence and drank.
He had been in the Fée Blanche all morning and no one,
not even the most casual early strollers, had paused to wish
him a good day. Should he move on? Gather “material” in
another café? Have a sordid experience in a disorderly house,
get beaten up by a jealous gavroche?