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

Then we can go back to Palestine together and you can decide what you
want to do there.”

“You’re Jewish, are you?” she said. “You don’t look Jewish.”

“I’ve lived in Carthage most of my adult life. My mum and dad died in
a riot and my brother took me there. It’s pretty peaceful now. Mostly
modern, of course.”

She liked the sound of Carthage and I liked the feel of her buxom,
soft and definitely sensuous body. She said she’d get the spear and the
cup back in the morning. He’d never know they’d gone. Meanwhile, we went
to bed.

I was weak, I know it. I should have insisted on her returning the gear
first, but my libido was already taking charge and I wasn’t the first to find
myself doing something very foolish because the pink lodestone couldn’t
help pointing north and dragging me with it. She was a very passionate
young lady who hadn’t experienced much fun with old Joseph. We had a
lovely time. You’d think I wouldn’t remember after some 2,000 years, but I
do. Anyway, Jessie was special. She knew the whole Etruscan range, as
we called it then. Very talented. I found it hard to believe that she had
picked up everything from a middle-aged Jewish merchant, but she insisted
she had. That and she had a vivid, creative imagination.

It won’t surprise you to know that just after cock-crow, when we were
warming up for a fresh arousal, the door downstairs banged open and I
heard Gerald the German telling the intruders to bugger off or he’d call his
Roman mates (of which he did have a lot) and send them all packing. I
knew what was going on. I told Jessie to stay where she was and, putting
on a robe, went downstairs where I found Gerald nose to nose with a
bellowing Joseph of Arimathea and some of his nerdy followers, getting all
het up about blasphemy and sacrilege and so forth.

“Look,” I said, producing the spear and the cup. “I swear I was going
to have her bring this back after breakfast. I promise you I haven’t nicked it.”
Whereupon the lot of them, men and women both, piled into the house and
knocked me to the ground. Which would have been all right except I was
pretty convinced that they were then going to stomp me and I wasn’t having
that. I pulled the covering off the spear, used it to get to my feet while
Gerald engaged them from behind. I poked the spear at them, hoping to
scare them off. Which was a big mistake since one of Joseph’s followers,
an unblinking, red-faced loony if ever I saw one, lunged towards me and got
the spear in his shoulder. “Sorry,” I said. What else could you say. But it
wasn’t enough.

“He has desecrated our holy relics. He has defiled the instruments of
the world’s salvation.” Joseph was in full priestly mode. And he didn’t stop
at my defiling. He got himself into a right old state. I wouldn’t have taken him
all that seriously if, through the door, I hadn’t seen big black clouds boiling