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

Impers and Les Bourdes. He studied the strollers closely, staring with
affected weariness 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 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 sophisticated nations were much
too far away to allow Ernst to feel completely at ease. He built for himself a
life in exile, pretending that it made no difference. But the provinciality of
these people! The mountains and the narrow fertile plain that separated
the city from the northern sea effectively divided him from every familiar
landmark of his past. He could only think and remember. And who was
there to decide if his recollections might have blurred and altered with
repetition?
“Now, Eugenie. You had red hair. You had hair like the embers of a
dying fire. How easy it was to kindle the blaze afresh. In the morning, how
easy. The fuel was there, the embers burned hotly within; all that was
needed was a little wind, a little stirring. Eugenie, you had red hair. I've
always been weakened by red hair.
 “Marie, poor Marie, your hair was black, and I loved it, too, for a time.
And I'll never know what deftnesses and craft were necessary to fire your
blood. Eugenie, the creature of flame, and Marie, the gem of ice. I confuse
your faces. I can't recall your voices. Good luck to you, my lost loves, and
may God bless.”