"Paul Park - Starbridge 03 - The Cult of Loving Kindness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Park Paul)

head bent low, his hands clasped in his lap. It was an attitude of meditation; a kerosene lantern on the
desk in front of him flickered in the humid wind, and it shone upon his narrow face, his naked scalp, his
veil. He was staring deep into the flame.

Standing on the porch’s lowest step, the deputy administrator watched him carefully. He took pleasure in
watching him, in examining his meager arms and legs, for the old man was a member of his own race,
living, like him, in a world of strangers. Old and thin, the man was still quite supple, and his spine still
made a graceful curve. Clearly he had crossed the seventh boundary of concentration, and was beginning
to perceive the essences of small inanimate objects. An inkwell, a pebble, and a leaf lay before him on
the tabletop, grouped around the base of the lantern.

The deputy administrator waited. After several minutes, the old man raised his head. His eyes glowed
bright with comprehension. “Please submit your documents face down upon the corner of the desk,” he
said. “Are you carrying liquor or illicit drugs?”

His voice was creaky and disused. Instead of answering, the deputy administrator climbed the steps until
he stood inside the circle of the light. The old man stared at him with luminous eyes. And then he shook
his head. “Sarnath,” he exclaimed. “Sarnath Bey.”

Mr. Sarnath took his bundle from his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. He pulled a chair up to the
table and sat down. Leaning forward with his hands over the lamp, he indicated the three objects on the
tabletop. “What do you see?” he asked.

The old man shrugged. “Three different kinds of death.”

They spoke in a Treganu dialect, using it gratefully and tentatively after so long away from home. The old
man unwrapped part of his long veil and pulled it down, so that it hung around his neck. “Why are you
here?” he asked.

Mr. Sarnath smiled. With his index finger, he reached forward and touched the stem of the dry leaf. “I
saw a moth drown in a bowl,” he said.

“Tell me.”

“No. It was as if I almost understood. Yet it was enough—I’m going home.”

The old man didn’t speak for half a minute. Then he shook his head, and his voice, when it came, was
softer, clearer, full of sadness. “They let you go?” he said.

“I was a volunteer. And they were all asleep.” Mr. Sarnath looked over the railing of the porch to the
dark forest all around. “You must know what I mean,” he said. “What keeps you here?”

The old man sighed, a melancholy sound. “You have all the luck,” he grumbled. “Yours is the first face
I’ve seen here in a week.”

“A moth was drowning in a bowl of light,” said Mr. Sarnath. “It is not the time or place that is important.”

“Even so,” replied the gatekeeper. He gestured toward the gate. “This can’t be what the master had in
mind when he told us to go out into the world. If I see seven clients in a month, I’m lucky. What can I
learn from them, or they from me? But you had boatloads every day.”