"Garry Kilworth - We Are The Music Makers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kilworth Garry)

out to play a game of chemin-de-fer at his club. On leaving the building
however, he was again accosted by the same man, who played a tune on the
organ as he approached, and then stopped when the colonel stepped into the
street to pass him by. The tin cup was thrust under his chin, it seemed
almost aggressively, and the colonel raised his stick to strike it away,
angry at being solicited twice during the same evening.
'You have forgot, haven't you?' hissed the man named Kesnek. 'You told me,
"I'll remember this, sergeant - I'll see you're rewarded for your bravery
in this matter." That's what you said. You was a major then. Now you're a
colonel, made up after that charge, promoted because you captured the
guns, even though you lost most of your men getting them. What do they
get, but their graves. What do I get, but this.' He banged his crutch on
the pavement with his one good arm.
'Don't take that tone with me, fellow,' said the colonel, sharply. 'I'll
call the constable and have done with you. We'll see if a prison cell is
more to your liking than bothering citizens in the streets of Prague.'
'God damn you then!' cried Kesnek, with such enmity and rancour it drained
the blood from the colonel's face and left him trembling on the stone
slabs, unable to speak. 'May you rot by slow degrees, you dirty bastard!'
By the time he had got over the shock of this verbal attack, Kesnek had
gone.
The cripple had clunked away quickly, down a side alley without lamps:
into a darkness where the colonel dare not follow. The colonel knew the
ex-sergeant would be heading for the river, down by the bank, where the
other beggars gathered to spend their nights. Most of them would be dead
before the end of the winter - frozen or starved - but that did nothing
for the fury of the colonel, once he had recovered his wits. He determined
to hire some men, to go down to the river and seek out Kesnek, to give the
fellow a beating he well deserved.
The thugs were hired, but they failed to find their man. Instead they beat
the wrong victims, other soldiers from the wars, until the colonel wisely
realised it was time to stop searching. He might murder all the scoundrels
in Prague and still come up without the man Kesnek.
He satisfied himself with the thought that a man with those hollow eyes
and sallow, sunken cheeks was surely not far from death in any case, and
that the winter would slowly squeeze the breath from his lungs, until the
time came for his fellow beggars to throw him into an icy sarcophagus, the
river.
The colonel soon forgot the sergeant and went back to his comfortable
life, visiting friends, enjoying the convivial atmosphere of his club,
eating in good restaurants, and attending functions which to one of his
class attendance was essential. In the late evenings or early mornings, he
would stroll back through the narrow, misty streets to his lodgings, to
find a maid or other waiting beneath the sheets.
In the chapels and churches, the halls and houses of Prague can be heard
beautiful music, mostly baroque, at almost any hour of the day. The
colonel was not especially fond of music, but it was no great punishment
to him to go to the Chapel of Mirrors, or the Opera House, and listen to a
concert. He went with friends of course, more to please them than himself.
The streets too, were always full of musicians, some of them playing the