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

concentrate on the mind,” he said. He gazed at the table top, which
already was refilling with rainwater. “When I review my own psychological
history, I must admit to a distressing lack of moral sense. I have standards
gleaned from romantic novels and magistral decrees, standards which
stick out awkwardly among my intellectual baggage like the frantic wings
of a tethered pigeon. I can examine those flashes of morality whenever I
choose, though I rarely bother. They are all so familiar. But all around
them in my mind are the heavy, dense shadows of events and petty
crimes.”
With a quick motion, Ernst emptied the table top once more. He
sighed. “There was Eugenie. I loved her for a time, I believe. A perfect
name, a lesser woman. When the romance began, I was well aware of my
moral sense. Indeed, I cherished it, worshiped it with an adolescent lover's
fervor. I 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
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 conspicuous among the packs of