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

needed the constraints of society, of law and honor. I could
only prove my worth and value within their severe limits. Our
love would grow, I believed, fed by the bitter springs of
righteousness. Ah, Eugenie! You taught me so much. I loved
you for it then, even as my notion of purity changed, bit by
bit, hour by hour. Then, when I fell at long last to my ardent
ruin, I hated you. For so many years I hated you for your joy
in my dismay, for the ease of your robbery and betrayal, for
the entertainment I provided in my youthful terror. Now,
Eugenie, I am at peace with your memory. I would not have
understood in those days, but I am at last revenged upon
you: I have achieved indifference.
“How sad, I think, for poor Marie, who came after. I loved
her from a distance, not wishing ever again to be wounded on
the treacherous point of my own affection. I was still foolish.”
Ernst leaned back in his chair, turning his head to stare
across the small expanse of vacant tables. He glanced
around; no one else had entered the café. “What could I have
7
 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger


learned from Eugenie? Pain? No. Discomfort, then? Yes, but
so? These evaluations, I hasten to add, I make from the
safety of my greater experience and sophistication.
Nevertheless, even in my yearling days I recognized that la
belle E. had prepared me well to deal not only with her
successors but with all people in general. I had learned to
pray for another's ill fortune. This was the first great stain on
the bright emblem of virtue that, at the time, still resided in
my imagination.
“Marie, I loved you from whatever distance seemed
appropriate. I was still not skillful in these matters, and it
appears now that I judged those distances poorly. Finally, you
gave your heart to another, one whose management of
proximity was far cleverer than mine. I could not rejoice in
your good fortune. I prayed fervently for the destruction of
your happiness. I wished you and him the most total of all
disasters, but I was denied. You left my life as you entered
it—a cold, distant dream. Yet before you left, you rehearsed
me in the exercise of spite.”
He took a sip of the liqueur and swirled it against his
palate. “I've grown since then, of course,” he said. “I've
grown and changed, but you're still there, an ugly spatter
against the cleanness of what I wanted to be.” With a sad
expression he set the tumbler on the small table. Rain fell
into the anisette, but Ernst was not concerned.
This morning he was playing the bored expatriate. He
smoked only imported cigarettes, his boxed filters