"viktor_pelevin_-_hermit_and_sixfinger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelevin Viktor)

Viktor Pelevin. Hermit and Sixfinger

© Copyright Victor Pelevin
Translation into English © 1996 by Serge Winitzki and Sergey
Bratus
Original etogo teksta raspolozhen po adresu
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5344/fun/friends.html#translations

1

"Get lost."
"???"
"Like I said, get lost. Let me watch."
"But what is it you are watching?"
"Oh God, what an idiot... The Sun, OK?"
Sixfinger looked up from the black turf covered with food, sawdust and
peatcrumbs. He squinted and stared upward.
"Well... We live and live -- but what for? A mystery of ages. And did
anybody even begin to grasp the thin, thread-like nature of the suns?"
The stranger turned his head and stared at Sixfinger with disdainful
curiosity.
"Sixfinger," he immediately introduced himself.
"I am called Hermit," the stranger answered. "Do they say that in your
Socium? About the thin, thread-like nature?"
"It's not `my Socium' any more," Sixfinger said and suddenly whistled:
"Look at that!"
"What?" Hermit asked suspiciously.
"There, look! A new sun just appeared!"
"So what?"
"In the center of the world it never happens. Three suns together..."
Hermit chuckled condescendingly.
"Once I saw eleven at once. One was in the zenith and five more in each
epicycle. Although it wasn't around here."
"Where was it then?" Sixfinger asked.
Hermit kept silence. Turning away, he went aside and chopped off with
his foot a piece of food from the ground, and ate. A gentle warm breeze and
the reflection of the two suns in grayish-green planes of the distant
horizon made for such a serene and sad mood that the ponderous Hermit
twitched when he saw Sixfinger again.
"You are back. What do you want now?"
"I just... wanted to talk."
"Well, but I think you are stupid," Hermit answered. "You'd better go
back to the Socium. You've wandered too far, really, go back..."
He waved his hand toward a narrow, slightly undulating and trembling,
dirty-yellow stripe -- amazingly, that was what the huge, roaring crowd
looked like from here.
"I would go," Sixfinger said, "but they expelled me."
"Really? And why? Political reasons?"
Sixfinger nodded and scratched one foot on the other. Hermit looked at
his feet and shook his head.