"George Alec Effinger - What Entropy Means to Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

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What Entropy Means to Me

by George Alec Effinger
Copyright ©1972 by George Alec Effinger

For my parents, for enabling me to write unfettered by the
bonds of nonexistence.For Robin, Harlan, Kate and Damon, for the
same.And always, especially, for Dia.


PART ONE

'Neath His Bronzed Skin His Iron Muscles
Played

***

Chapter one

Prelude to ... Danger!
She was Our Mother, so she cried. She used to sit out there, under that
micha tree, all day as we worked cursing in her fields. She sat there during
the freezing nights, and we pretended that we could see her through the
windows in the house, by the light of the moons and the hard, fast stars.
She sat there before most of us were born; she sat there until she died.
And all that time she shed her tears. She was Our Mother, so she cried.
 She cried often for our yard, and the chairs that had been put there. We
had many chairs on the scrubby lawn between the house and the chata
fields. Some of the other estates have iron and stone statues placed
around, but none of them have chairs. We have quite a few. Our Mother
taught us that she got the idea from reading one of the plays that Our
Father brought with him from Earth. We still have many of those books.
Sometimes we throw them into the River when it looks like it might flood.
But we still have most of them.
I've always liked the plays. I know the one Our Mother meant; I read it
years ago. It is by Ionesco. We have the plays of Ionesco, of De Ghelderode,
and of Büchner. I enjoy also the plays of Dürrenmatt and Jarry. Of the
classics I read Aeschylus and Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Jonson with
relish. Our Mother always said that I was presumptuous to display my
wide knowledge of the drama, but I do not think so. The Theater is life.
The chairs. Some are wooden, straight-backed chairs. These are gray or
olive-green, and their paint is peeling and falling on the grass. There are
black enameled iron chairs, and these are subject to rust where the paint
covering is damaged. There are a few cold, sweaty stone thrones. Our
Mother sat on one of these, with two fluted stone columns rising to her left
and right. Behind her a once-beautiful embroidered hanging flapped in
the winds, rain-spotted and covered with patches of fungus growth.