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

conspicuous among the packs of Impers and Les Bourdes. He
studied the strollers closely, staring with affected weariness
8
 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger


into the eyes of the younger women, refusing to look away.
He scribbled on the backs of envelopes that he found in his
coat pockets or on scraps of paper from the ground. He
waited for someone to show some interest and ask him what
he did. “I am just jotting notes for the novel,” he would say,
or “Merely a sketch, a small poem. Nothing important. A
transient joy mingled with regret.” He watched the hotel
across the square with a carefully sensitive expression, as if
the view were really from the wind-swept cliffs of the English
coast or the history-burdened martial plains of France.
Anyone could see that he was an artist. Ernst promised
fascinating stories and secret romantic insights, but somehow
the passersby missed it all.
Only thoughts of the rewards for success kept him at M.
Gargotier's table. Several months previously, a poet named
Courane had been discovered while sitting at the wicker bar
of the Blue Parrot. Since then, Courane had become the
favorite of the city's idle elite. Already he had purchased his
own café and held court in its several dank rooms. Stories
circulated about Courane and his admirers. Exciting,
licentious rumors grew up around the young man, and Ernst
was envious. Ernst had lived in the city much longer than
Courane. He had even read some of Courane's alleged poetry,
and he thought it was terrible. But Courane's excesses were
notorious. It was this that no doubt had recommended him to
the city's weary nobility.
Something about the city attracted the failed poets of the
world. Like the excavation of Troy, which discovered layer
upon layer, settlement built upon ancient settlement, the
9
 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger


recent history of the civilized world might be read in the bitter
eyes of the lonely men waiting in the city's countless cafés.
Only rarely could Ernst spare the time to visit with his fellows,
and then the men just stared silently past each other. They
all understood; it was a horrible thing for Ernst to know that
they all knew everything about him. So he sat in the Fée
Blanche, hiding from them, hoping for luck.
Ernst's city sat like a blister on the fringe of a great
equatorial desert. The metropolitan centers of the more