"R. A. MacAvoy - L1 - Lens of the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

behind them, straining for some sound. My hair was pale, pelty, and weightless, like the down of a
day-old chick.
Even then I was undersized, though mostly through having short legs, slightly crooked by some
infantile disease. It was only later I discovered how unambitious my growth was to be.
As a boy I spent many stolen moments staring at my reflection, hating it but fascinated, as many
people are by spiders. I don’t remember any particular feeling of self-pity—self-pity is not one of the
original flaws of children—but rather [hugged my repulsive peculiarities to me. Unlike many young boys, I
knew who I was: Nazhuret of the goblin face, Nazhuret of no family, Nazhuret of Sordaling School.
My king, I know you will grow angry merely to read again that the Royal School at Sordaling has
had masters and even boys who used the youngsters sexually. The school is under your own
sponsorship, certainly, and was founded by your family, but still no king can be responsible for human
nature being what it is. Your own education was very noble, good, and private, and I remember your
saying that your greatest stumbling block as a child was that your tutors couldn’t wallop you as you
needed.
Most of us are not princes-heir, and we have to come by our learning in any way we can. We have
different stumbling blocks, and randy masters were one of mine.
In Sordaling, all sorts of boys and men meet, most not staying beyond a year, or two, and I have
spent so much of my life there that I cannot judge its good and evil as simply as a stranger might, though I
knew both very well. Being the youngest boy at Sordaling for my first four years and the small-est for
two more, I was frequently held down and brutalized. Had, the drillmaster (usually it was the, drillmaster,
ironically) done this to me in exchange for favors, or had he petted or praised me, I probably would have
had my honesty or my independence of spirit mined, but although there was buggery in my childhood,
there was very little catamitery.
I disliked being buggered, but I also disliked being bashed about the head with wooden swords by
boys twice my size. No one ever led me to think the two experiences were of different quality, and when
I finally learned to avoid them, it was in the same manner.
By the time I was nine years old, it was rare for any but the most proficient students to be able to rap
my skull with the practice bat, and the masters found whatever enjoyment my small form provided (thank
God I was ugly) unworthy of the struggle.
The yellow brick buildings of the military school make a sort of city within a city, and the fact that
students are denied the rest of Sordaling is of minor interest, especially to the young. To spend eight of
the ten months of the school year in a loose confinement made up mostly of boys one’s own age is no
hardship, as long as one does not carry the mark of the victim on his brow. The usual two years spent in
training and study are a bright memory for many of the most boring lords of Velonya.
Of course, I spent not two years but fifteen years at the school, but the routine did not wear as thin as
might have been expected. The fact that I was as much a servant as a student meant I had frequent
access of the outer city, and even when there was. no errand to be run, I knew a dozen inobvious ways
out, and could be trusted to carry messages from students to young-cock town-bred rivals, or to these
rivals’ sisters.
I was never betrayed, though the hotbloods were frequently caught. That’says something about the
character of the stu-dents at Sordaling. Or perhaps of their recognition of my usefulness. Or of their fear
of me.
Can a strapping young lord be afraid of an undersized boy without family whose job it is to change
the young lord’s sheets? Yes he can, when the boy has friends among both schoolmasters and cooks.
Especially among cooks. And when the boy is so habituated to use of the stick that he can strike his
enemy up the crotch in full view of the class in such a manner that all the students and the master will miss
see-ing the illegal blow and mock the injured fellow for self-dramatization.
This is a very poor thing to be proud of, isn’t it, sir? Perhaps I was not proud of it; that I can’t
remember.
 I can hear you saying that there is no such thing as a young lord at Sordaling School, since all