"Christopher Priest - The Watched" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

THE WATCHED
Christopher Priest




Christopher Priest has been writing a series of
stories about the world of the Dream
Archipelago, a planet with one huge continent
in its northern hemisphere and one to the
south, plus many islands between. The
peoples of the two continents are at war, while
the inhabitants of the archipelago try to remain
neutral. Psychologically oriented readers may
consider this world terribly symbolic, and they
may be right, but the situation leads to stories
that are intriguing on the literal level. Here, for
instance, is a tale of the guilt and the
obsession of one man who’s caught in the
middle of a situation he can’t understand.
Christopher Priest is an English writer whose
novels include The Inverted World and The
Perfect Lover. A collection of his shorter
stories, An Infinite Summer, was recently
 published.




I

Sometimes Jenessa was slow to leave in the mornings,
reluctant to return to the frustrations of her job, and when she
lingered in his house on these occasions Yvann Ordier had
difficulty in concealing his impatience. This morning was one such,
and he lurked outside the door of the shower cubicle while she
bathed, fingering the smooth leather case of his binoculars.
Ordier was alert to Jenessa’s every movement, each variation
in sound giving him as clear a picture as there would be if the door
were wide open and the plastic curtain held back: the spattering of
droplets against the curtain as she raised an arm, the lowering in
pitch of the hissing water as she bent to wash a leg, the fat drops
plopping soapily on the tiled floor as she stood erect to shampoo
her hair. He could visualize her glistening body in every detail, and
thinking of their lovemaking during the night he felt a renewed lust
for her.
He knew he was standing too obviously by the door, too
transparently waiting for her, so he put down the binoculars case
and went into the kitchen and heated some coffee. He waited until
it had percolated, then left it on the hot plate. Jenessa had still not