"R. A. MacAvoy - Damiano's Lute" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

As a man of possibilities.
Damiano did not believe he was the best lutenist in the Italics, any more than
he had believed himself to have been the most powerful witch in the
Italics—when he had been a witch. After all, he had only been playing
(obsessively) for a handful of years. But Gaspare did believe that, and more.
Gaspare was the first and only person in Damiano's • life who was convinced of
Damiano's greatness.
It had been at first embarrassing, and then intoxicating, to have someone so
convinced.
It had become necessary.
The world was filled with strangers. Gaspare, with all his prickliness and his
ignorance (ignorant as a dog. Unreliable as a dog in heat), had become
necessary to the musician.
Damiano asked the horse for more speed, snapping the whip against the
singletree. Festilligambe bounded forward, honking more like a goose than a
horse. Harness snapped. The wagon boomed alarmingly.
This was no good. Two miles of this speed and the mismatched wheels would come
off.
Damiano's Lute
21
Damiano cursed the wagon. He'd rather be riding. But if he was to travel with
Gaspare again, he'd need the ramshackle vehicle. Perhaps He ought to catch
Gaspare on horseback, and then return to the wagon.
But what had become of the boy? Damiano rose up in the seat, bracing one
large-boned hand against the backboard and one ragged boot against the
footrest. He jounced, clothes flapping on his starved torso like sheets on a
line. His black screws of hair bounced in time with the wheels' squeal, except
for one patch in the back which sleeping'on branches had left matted with
pinesap. He squinted in great concentration.
The road opened straight before him, swooping south and west, losing elevation
as it went. Grass gave way to ill-tended fruit trees and bare stands of alder,
and the wet ground was hummocked with briar and swamp maple, which twined like
ivy. Less inviting countryside, was this, certainly. The clouds had returned
and were multiplying, or at least swelling. In the distance appeared what
might have been a village. (Or it might have been rock scree. Damiano was
always tentative about things seen in the distance.)
But nowhere could he spy a lean shape of yellow and red and green, neither
floating over the grass nor angrily trampling the briars. No Gaspare on the
road or among the swamp maple. Not even a suspiciously bright bird shape amid
the alder groves.
Damiano's curse began quite healthily, but trailed off into a sort of
ineffectual misery. For seeking people miss-ing or lost he was even less
equipped than the average man. He had always before known where people were,
known it literally with his eyes closed—been able to feel a distant presence
like a breath against his face. But he didn't know how to look for a boy,
using patience and reason, going up one country wagon rut and down the next.
He felt that at twenty-three he was too old to learn.
As a matter of feet he felt too old for many activities, and the best life had
to offer was most certainly sleep. As his mind spun in gripless circles around
the problem of Gaspare, his lower lids crawled upward and his upper lids sank