"Michael Moorcock - London, My Life or The Sedentary Jew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

I understood a corn king myth when I heard it, even though I wasn’t
used to one being attached to the Greek and Jewish derived beliefs then
prevalent in Palestine. So I accepted that the wrapped vessel Joseph
carried was seed and that he would use his ceremonial hoe (the long thing
all bound up in red cloth) to plant the first year’s barley or whatever it was
and get his little group started. There was plenty of room in those days,
especially over near the East Coast where few local tribes had established
towns on account of the awful climate. But Joseph of Arimathea, as it
turned out, was more interested in heading west. I advised him to keep the
ship handy and wait until my friends got back, since they would be returning
up the coast any day now. He seemed grateful for my recommendation and
suggested that on the following Saturday (his Sabbath) I join them in prayer
and so forth, but I politely told him that Moloch, with all his faults, was good
enough for me, along with the variety of household gods I carried in my
purse or had stuck up on a little shelf in my digs, only a short distance from
the inn. I wasn’t deeply religious, still aren’t, but, in common with most of the
people I knew and did business with, thought it best to stay on the safe
side. Joseph, however, was distinctly dependent, one of those
old-fashioned Jews you still ran across in Palestine where religion was
enjoying a revival, as so frequently happens amongst conquered peoples
who can’t raise much in the way of an army. I’ve seen it happen a thousand
times. He started preaching at me, in the way they do, and I nodded and
smiled and said I’d think about it but that Saturday was my busiest period,
when all the Brits came in from the outlying farms to sell their cereals and
livestock.
 And that would have been it if Jessie, the afore-mentioned young
wife, hadn’t taken a fancy to me and asked me out of Joseph’s hearing if
there was a chance I might change my mind, in which case where would
she be able to find me.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the appearance of the average
lantern-jawed British lady of the period, but let’s just say they weren’t my
type whereas Jessie, all dark, smouldering eyes and black curly hair, was. I
told her where I was staying. A house we had built, because we came and
went so frequently, which was looked after by a displaced German, an
ex-legionnaire and a reliable bloke whom we paid well. You could see it
from the inn, because it was built above the flood zone, had two substantial
storeys and a tiled roof of the Roman type. A lot of people actually thought
it was a Roman’s house and we were pretty proud of it, though it had no
central heating and could get horribly smoky in winter, it didn’t smell much
since the privy was served by a pipe going directly into a small river they
called the Flid and would become, of course, the Fleet.

I wasn’t surprised, after I’d been in bed for about half-an-hour and the
German was snoring his head off downstairs, to hear a tap on the door.
Against my better instincts I threw on an old bit of toga and padded down to
inch it open. It was her, sure enough. I checked what I could of the outside
and let her in. “I’ve left him,” she said. “I’m sick and tired of his raving on
about this bloody cup and this bloody spear.” She had brought them with