"Robert Rankin - Waiting for Godalming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

the works of Crowley.
"Then today I think I will give you a Ramуn Navarro."
Outside a number sixty-five bus passed by.
The driver's name was Ramуn.
Stravino took up his electric clippers, held them close by his ear,
thumbed the power and savoured the purr.
Icarus snaked his hand around behind his seat and sought out
the brown envelope. There are many traditions and old charters
and somethings attached to the barbering trade. The brown
envelope is one of these, but one which few men know.
In the days before the Internet and the invention of the video,
the days in fact in which this tale is set, there was little to be
found in the way of real pornography. There was Tit Bits and
Parade and the first incarnation of Playboy magazine, which was
far too expensive to buy and always kept on the top shelf of the
newsagent's. But there was only one place where you could view
real pornography. Real genuine down-to-business smut. And that
was in the barber's shop.
And that was in the brown envelope.
Today things are different, of course. Today the discerning buyer
can purchase a specialist magazine dedicated to his (or her)
particular whimsy in almost any supermarket.
But way back when, in the then which is the now of our telling
(so to speak), there was only the brown envelope.
Icarus peeled back the flap and emptied the contents of the
brown envelope onto his lap. There were four new photographs
this week. The first was of two Egyptian women and a Shetland
pony. The second was of two blokes from Tottenham (who can
tie a knot'n'em). The third showed a midget with a tattooed dong
and the fourth a loving couple "taking tea with the parson".
A musician by the name of Cox would one day write a song about
the first three. He would sadly die in a freak accident whilst
trying to engage in the fourth.
Icarus perused the photographs, but found little in them to
interest him. Cormerant glimpsed the photographs and turned his
face away. Icarus became aware of Cormerant's most distinctive
watch fob.
"Babies," said Stravino, his clippers purring towards the crown of
the captain's head. "What do you think about babies, then?"
"I don't," said the captain. "Why should I?"
"You can't trust them," said Stravino. "They pee in your eye
when you're changing their nappies. And do you know why that
is?"
"I don't," the captain said.
"Ancestral voices," said Stravino. "All that gurgling they do.
That's not gurgling. That's an ancestral tongue. You have to keep
babies apart, you can't let them chat, there's no telling what they
might plot amongst themselves."
"Twins plot," said the captain.
"Exactly," said Stravino. "Because they were together as babies.