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

queasy. Surely diere was bravery in their actions, and they undoubtedly
canceled out a great number of sins, but still it seemed to Damiano there was
more to be gained from a well-sung
Damiano's Lute
31
mass. As he passed beneath the village gate, crude and heavy as a deadfall, he
met the pale eyes of die former executer, now victim. They were bright, round
and electric with pain. At first die man's face held his gaze by its power to
raise pity. But that power" faded as the musician saw in those eyes nothing
pitiful, but rather a horrible sort of ecstasy, which lit die gray face from
within like living coals under a bed of ash.
And then, between one moment and the next, the penitent's face underwent a
subtle alteration without seeming to change at all. Damiano stared down
through the man's flesh at another face that glowed from within: a face with
perfect, elegant features which were molded out of malice and fire, and which
stared burning malice up at him.
It was a face Damiano had known before—a face strangely like diat of Raphael,
were the angel seen in a wicked dream.
It made his heart shiver and jump within him, and his knees buckled. But for
his hand on the horse's lead rope he would have fallen, and it was only the
strength of the gelding (who only saw the Devil when leaves blew over die
road) which led Damiano by.
This was not the first time diat Damiano had seen Satan face to face, but it
was the first time in a year and more, and never before had Satan appeared to
him nnsummoned. Fear coursed like cold water through his body.
Inside, he turned die horse and looked back, only to find a perfectly
normal-looking fanatic being scourged by another of the same variety. He stood
confused, listening to his heart regain its proper rhydim.
The streets and stoops were littered widi people, yes. But despite diat, this
was no market, for there were no barrows to be seen. Also, die shops were
closed, unswept, some of diem boarded. Drunks and singing implied a festival,
yet this looked like no festival Damiano had ever seen, unless it were the
third hour of night after a long day's carouse.
Along the foul street lounged men in gay velvets, sitting in die dirt next to
men in rags. Women, too, mixed with diem in die gutters on terms of easy
familiarity. One
32
Damiano's Lute
(at woman seemed to be wearing every bit of white linen she possessed, in
onion-layers over a purple woolen gown. She squatted on the stoop of a decayed
shop, while above her a cart-wheel-sized wooden olive swung on chains in the
wind. The door of the shop was staved in, and a pungent litter of broken
olives lay scattered about the street. Her apron, too, was filled with olives.
Beside her, not touching, removed as if by time and distance, sat the
undisciplined bass, singing "gaudeanws" as he juggled olives in his oily
hands. He was not smiling, this reveler, not was the well- (or at least much-)
dressed woman. Nor was anyone on the street or in the square beyond. The dry
smell of wine warred with that of olives, while above both rose a reek of
excrement.
And this whole assemblage of unsmiling maniacs gazed directly at Damiano.