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

violin or flute, some turning a handle.
One morning in January the colonel was hurrying back along the river walk,
with the freezing fog chilling his ankles, when he heard the sound of a
tune being played. He stopped and listened, not because it was a pleasant
sound, but because it grated on his nerves. It was the tune Kesnek had
been playing, on the Charles Bridge, at their first post war encounter.
Once he had established the direction of the player, he went off at
another point of the compass, away from the music, taking a circuitous
route back to his lodgings.
He was no sooner in bed, without company on this occasion, when the tune
came again, insistent, reaching up from the streets below and invading his
room. The colonel tried to ignore it, pulled the heavy blankets over his
head and attempted to sleep. The notes of the song penetrated his
bedclothes, however, and he soon developed a sharp headache. At one point
he rose in fury, to fling open his window, only to find the street below
empty of any musician. He thought there might be a shape in the fog, a man
with a barrel organ, but too far away to hear a shout.
In the morning the colonel complained to his landlord.
'Did you hear that infernal music? At three o'clock in the morning, I ask
you! If it happens again, I shall be forced to think of moving my
accommodations, unless you do something about it.'
'I never heard a blamed thing,' answered the landlord, peeved that he
should be receiving the short end of the colonel's temper when he had
supplied a very nice breakfast. 'But if it comes back, you let me know.
I'll send out Pik.'
Pik was the boot black, a man of low intellect but of great strength. If
Pik caught anyone outside, and had been given instructions to deter their
further presence, then even if that man was not a cripple, he would be
once Pik had finished with him. This thought warmed the colonel's heart
and he said no more on the subject but enjoyed his breakfast ham bone.
That night the musician returned, playing the same song over and over
again, driving the colonel to madness. The headache returned. The colonel
could feel the artery in his temple, constricting with the tension, and
the blood pulsing through the narrowness of it in a painful manner. Pik
was sent out into the street, though the landlord could still hear nothing
himself, but returned looking forlorn and expecting a row. Pik had found
no one within two streets of the lodgings and yet the colonel could still
hear the dreadful music drifting into his room.
After eight nights of the same, the colonel hired a gang of men to comb
the streets around the lodgings. They had strict instructions to break the
player's limbs, to smash a hole in the ice on the river, and to drop the
broken man down into its freezing currents. The pack found nothing, though
they hunted high and low, and even entered private houses hoping to find
the player hiding in some room or closet. In the end the colonel paid them
off, moved his rooms to the other side of the city, and waited in
apprehension for the player to find him.
It took less than twelve hours before the music was again heard by the
colonel. He moved yet again, secretly, without even telling his new
landlord. And again. And yet again. And each time the musician found his
new accommodation. It was a hopeless task, to attempt to divest himself of