"R. A. MacAvoy - L3 - The Belly of the Wolf" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

I had asked for a platitude and had gotten one. “The news must be two weeks old, at least,” I
thought aloud, and Keighl answered, “Three, I am told. The Velonyan government concealed the death
for over a day, and then the winter winds make shipping slow.”
It took some moments for his words to form meaning in my brain. I heard the gulls; they were very
loud. “The government concealed the death?’ I looked into the doctor’s eyes, trying to be calm, to see
clearly. “Does rumor say who killed him?”
With this, Doctor Keighl’s figure seemed to open up, to gain movement and life, as though I had
served up for him what was the real meat of the conversation.
“Of course, it is bandied about that the Old Ve-lonyan faction did it.”
“How? The paper gave no hint.”
“Poison,” said the doctor diffidently.
Poison could be a rending agony, or a mere falling asleep. Which had occurred meant a lot to me. I
asked him what poison, and the question caused surprise. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “But I would bet
money that it was the queen’s party that did it.”
I sighed, thinking that Navvie must be told. I hoped she did not know already, had not heard
off-handedly, as I had. “Isn’t it curious,” I said to the doctor, since he seemed so interested in the matter,
“that it should be called the Old Velonyan Party, when the queen is not a Velonyan of any sort, old or
new.”
Then, with great sobriety, Doctor Keighl asked me what I planned to do in response to this atrocious
deed. I glared at him in alarm. “Do! What on earth can I do, my dear doctor? Throw the government of
Velonya into prison as a whole? Cut them to ribbons individually? What?”
The look of expectation on his moderate, oval Cantoner face did not fade. “I don’t know. But I have
heard about you. So much about you.”
I was looking at my hands, which were clasped in front of me. Smaller hands than average, with skin
slightly loosened by fifty-live years of life. I showed him those hands, as though they would communi-cate
something to the man, and then I gave up on self composure and ran off to find my daughter.
Canton is an easy town to run in, as all the streets are even and wide. There is poverty here, but not
as much as elsewhere. There is aristocracy here, but it does not get in the burghers’ way. Most notably,
Canton is dean. Though the colors of its flag stand for water, its true banner should represent a
win-dowbox of flowers. When its citizens curse (as they cursed me smashing through them along the
streets), they do it with moderation and without originality. I passed along Provot Street, which was all
ware-houses, and across the Mariner’s Park and the Old Mariner’s Shelter, where one fellow passed a
witty comment concerning the sight of a man my age pumping his short legs so energetically. (He, like me,
a foreigner. )
The university has a large brick gate with no wall but only a short hedge surrounding it. Because the
gate was clogged with dons in uniform, I did not attempt it but leaped the roses. Here the response was
more outraged and less witty, because univer-sity instructors tend to regard their institution with the
sobriety others reserve for cemeteries. I seem to be making this whole incident into a joke, and I can-not
say why. By this time I was in pain enough,
The lecture halls were closed for the midday meal, so I ran on to the herb museum, where Nahvah
had employment “arranging” the exhibits. In truth, her job was to take a large library of specimens, which
over the years had been labeled and glassed by the methods of superstition and pure chance, and to
match the correct plant to its Allec and vernacular names. Among my daughter’s gifts is a power of
memory.
She was not in the display hall; few students were. I found her in the less impressive but more useful
drying houses on the building’s flat roof. She was seated on a simple wooden chair, her hands in her lap
and her feet folded under her skirts. I had not succeeded in finding her first.
“I am so sorry, Papa,” she said. By her voice she had been crying. She was not crying now. “I know
how you must hurt.”
The smell of the fresh herbs around us was intox-icating. There was anise and coriander seed, giving