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

"Are they real?"
"Of course, what else... They told me outright: the most, one could
say, Decisive Stage is coming, and you have six toes on your feet...
Couldn't I find a better time for that, they said."
"What is this `decisive stage' about?"
"I don't know. Everybody is on the edge, especially the Twenty Closest,
but nobody makes any sense. They all just run around screaming."
"Ah, I see," Hermit said. "This Stage, is it perhaps getting more and
more distinct by the hour? And its shape more clearly seen?"
"Exactly," Sixfinger was surprised. "How do you know that?"
"Well, I have seen about five or so of these Decisive Stages. They
called them differently each time, though."
"No way," Sixfinger said. "This is going to happen for the first time."
"Oh sure. I would be curious to see how it could happen for a second
time. But we are talking about somewhat different things."
Hermit laughed quietly, walked away a bit, then turned his back toward
the far-away Socium and started scratching the ground energetically with his
feet, until a cloud of garbage and dust hung in the air behind him.
Meanwhile, he was looking back, waving his hands and muttering something.
"What are you doing?" asked a somewhat frightened Sixfinger when Hermit
returned, breathing heavily.
"This is a gesture," Hermit answered. "Kind of an art form. You recite
a poem and make the corresponding action."
"And which poem did you just recite?"
"This one:

At times I feel sad,
looking at those I abandoned,
At times I do laugh,
and between us then rises
a cloud of yellowish fog."

"Why, it isn't a Poem," Sixfinger said. "Thank God, I know all the
Poems. That is, not by heart, of course, but I have heard all twenty-five of
them. This one is surely not one of the Poems."
Hermit regarded him in bewilderment but then seemingly understood.
"Do you remember any of those Poems?" he asked. "Say it."
"Just a minute. The twins... the twins... Well, anyway, we say one
thing, and we mean another. And then we again say one thing, and we mean
another, but the other way around1. It's very beautiful. Finally, we look up
at the Wall, and there..."
"Enough," Hermit said.
There was silence, until Sixfinger broke it:
"Listen, what about you -- where you also expelled?"
"No. Actually, it was I, I expelled them all."
"How could it happen that way?"
"Things happen in many ways," Hermit said, looked at one of the
celestial bodies, and added, as if he meant to stop chatting and start
talking seriously: "It's going to be dark soon."
"Stop that," Sixfinger said, "nobody knows when it's going to be dark."