"Edgar Pangborn - A Master of Babylon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pangborn Edgar)

Franck," said the hunters for comparisons whom we have always with us.) It did not help Brian to be old,
remembering the inner storms of forty years ago and more.
His single candle fluttered. For once Brian had for-gotten to lock the door into the Hall of Music.
This troubled him, but he did not rise from the piano chair. He chided himself instead for the foolish
neu-roses of aloneness—what could it matter? Let it go. He shut his eyes. The sonata had long ago been
memor-ized; printed copies were safe in the library. He played the opening of the first movement as far
as the double bar, opened his eyes to the friendly black-and-white of clean keys, and played the
repetition with new light, new emphasis. Better than usual, he thought—
Yes. Good. . . . Now that naïve-appearing modul-ation into A major, which only Carr would have
wanted just there in that sudden obvious way, like the opening of a door on shining fields. On toward the
climax—I am playing it, I think—through the intricate revelations of development and recapitulation.
And the conclusion, lingering, half-humorous, not unlike a Beethoven I’m-not-gone-yet ending, but with
a ques-tioning that was all Andrew Carr. After that—
"No more tonight," said Brian aloud. "Some night, though . . . Not competent right now, my friend."
He replaced the cover of the piano and blew out the can-dle. He had brought no torch, long use having
taught his feet every inch of the small journey. It was quite dark. The never-opened western windows of
the audi-torium were dirty, most of the dirt on the outside, crusted windblown salt.
In this partial darkness something was wrong.
At first Brian found no source for the faint light, dim orange with a hint of motion. He peered into the
gloom of the auditorium, fixing his eyes on the ob-long of blacker shadow that was the doorway into the
Hall of Music. The windows, of course!—he had almost forgotten there were any. The light, hardly
deserving the name of light, was coming through them. But sunset was surely past. He had been here a
long time, delaying and brooding before he played. Sunset should not flicker.
So there was some kind of fire on the mainland. There had been no thunderstorm. How should fire
start, over there where no one ever came?
He stumbled a few times, swearing petulantly, lo-cating the doorway again and groping through it into
the Hall of Music. The windows out here were just as dirty; no use trying to see through them. There
must have been a time when he had looked through them, enjoyed looking through them. He stood
shivering in the marble silence, trying to remember.
Time was a gradual, continual dying. Time was the growth of dirt and ocean salt, sealing in, covering
over. He stumbled for his cloakroom cave, hurrying now, and lit two candles. He left one by the cold
stove and used the other to light his way down the stairs to his raft; once down there, he blew it out,
afraid. The room a candle makes in the darkness is a vulnerable room. Having no walls, it closes in a
blindness. He pulled the raft by the guide-rope, gently, for fear of noise.
He found his canoe tied as he had left it. He poked his white head slowly beyond the sill, staring
west.
Merely a bonfire gleaming, reddening the blackness of the cliff.
Brian knew the spot, a ledge almost at water level, at one end of it the troublesome path he usually
fol-lowed in climbing to the forest at the top of the Pali-sades. Usable driftwood was often there, the
supply renewed by the high tides.
"No," Brian said. "Oh, no! . . ."

Unable to accept or believe, or not believe, he drew his head in, resting his forehead on the coldness
of the sill, waiting for dizziness to pass, reason to return.
It might have been a long time, a kind of blackout. Now he was again in command of his actions and
even rather calm, once more leaning out over the sill. The fire still shone and was therefore not a
disordered dream of old age. It was dying to a dull rose of embers.
He wondered about the time. Clocks and watches had stopped long ago; Brian had ceased to want
them. A sliver of moon was hanging over the water to the east. He ought to be able to remember the
phases, deduce the approximate time from that. But his mind was too tired or distraught to give him the