"Harvey Jacobs - The Egg of the Glak" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacobs Harvey)

"I am police."
"Victim," he said, whispering now. "Sad slob."
How many remember what happened a thousand years ago? If it were
not for Hikhoff, I would know nothing of the vowel shift, though it altered
my life and fiber. For it was this rotten shift that changed our English
from growl to purr.
Look it up. Read how spit flew through the teeth of Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes in the good old days. Get facts on how the French came, conquered,
shoved our vowels to the left of the language, coated our tongues with
velvet fur.
For Hikhoff, the shift of the vowels made history's center. Before was a
time for the hairy man, the man who ate from the bone. After came silk
pants, phallic apology.
"From Teutonic to moronic," Hikhoff told me. "Emasculation. Drought
in the tonsil garden. No wonder so many strep throats in this town of
clowns."
Sounds. Hikhoff's life was sounds. The sounds that make your insides
wobble. Sounds of chalk screaming, of power saws cutting wood, of forks
on glass, scrapings, buzzings, the garbage disposal chewing, jet wails,
dentists drilling, pumps gurgling, drains sucking, tires screeching,
ambulance sirens, giants breaking wind, booms, bangs, clangings, ripping
and tearing, nails scratching silk.
Softer sounds too. Music and musical boxes, bells, chimes, bottle
players on Ed Sullivan, all that, all noise, but mostly noises that make you
squirm. His favorite: people sounds. Body sounds, sounds of talking,
squishing, words, singing, cajoling, cursing, ordering, asking, telling,
excusing, insisting. That is why the great vowel shift meant so much to
him.
"What those concupiscent Gauls did to me," he said. "They shriveled
half my vocal cords. They denied me my voice."
Hikhoff liked to rasp and sputter. His lungs were organ bellows for
rolling R's and CH's that choked to the point of dribble. He listened to
himself with much pleasure. He played himself back on a tape recorder,
reading from Beowulf or Chaucer or the Prose Edda, which tells of the
Wind Age and Wolf Age when the Sun swallows Earth.
"Aggchrrr, don't talk from your nostrils. Nose talkers are bastards.
Diaphragm. Lungs. The deepest tunnels. Use those. Form your words
slowly. Shape them in your head. Let them out of the mouth like starved
animals, hot smoke rings. Speak each sentence like a string of beautiful
sausages. Show me a mumbler and I show you a turd. SPEAK OUT. SAY
YOUR PIECE. YOU WILL NOT ONLY MAKE OUT BETTER BUT DO A
SERVICE FOR THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE."
Hikhoff. We became friends. I don't kid myself. At first he had motives,
improper designs. All right, think what you think.
"A despondent, disappointed soul." "A bitter person, a cynic." "A lump
of rage," "A bad influence." I have heard all that said, and worse. To me,
Hikhoff was redeemer, beloved comrade. I close my eyes and there he is in
full detail.
Hikhoff.
Body like a cantaloupe. Little head, big jaw. A wet mouth gated by