"Mike Resnick - The Lotus and the Spear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

they go to the village and drink pombe and dance. Soon some of them will marry
and sire children and start shambas of their own, and some day they will sit in the
Council of Elders." He spat on the ground. "Indeed, there is no reason why they
should not be happy, is there?"
"None," I agreed.
He stared defiantly at me.
"Perhaps you would like to tell me the reason for your unhappiness?" I
suggested.
"Are you not the mundumugu?" he said caustically.
"Whatever else I am, I am not your enemy."
He sighed deeply, and the tension seemed to drain from his body, to be replace
by resignation. "I know you are not, Koriba," he said. "It is just that there are times
when I feel like this entire world is my enemy."
"Why should that be?" I asked. "You have food to eat and pombe to drink, you
have a hut to keep you warm and dry, there are only Kikuyu here, you have
undergone the circumcision ritual and are now a man, you live in a world of
plenty...so why should you feel that such a world is your enemy?"
 He pointed to a black she-goat that was grazing placidly a few yards away.
"Do you see that goat, Koriba?" he asked. "She accomplishes more with her life
than I do with mine."
"Don't be silly," I said.
"I am being serious," he replied. "Every day she provides milk for the village,
once a year she produces a kid, and when she dies it will almost certainly be as a
sacrifice to Ngai. She has a purpose to her life."
"So have we all."
He shook his head. "That is not so, Koriba."
"You are bored?" I asked.
"If the journey through life can be likened to a journey down a broad river, then I
feel that I am adrift with no land in sight."
"But you have a destination in sight," I said. "You will take a wife, and start a
shamba. If you work hard, you will own many cattle and goats. You will raise many
sons and daughters. What is wrong with that?"
"Nothing," he said, "if I had anything to do with it. But my wife will raise my
children and till my fields, and my sons will herd my animals, and my daughters will
weave the fabric for my garments and help their mothers cook my food." He
paused. "And I...I will sit around with the other men, and discuss the weather, and
drink pombe, and someday, if I live long enough, I will join the Council of Elders,
and the only thing that will change is that I will now talk to my friends in Koinnage's
boma instead of my own. And then one day I will die. That is the life I must look
forward to, Koriba."
He kicked the ground with his foot, sending up little flurries of dust. "I will
pretend that my life has more meaning than that of a she-goat," he continued. "I will
walk ahead of my wife while she carries the firewood, and I will tell myself that I am
doing this to protect her from attack by the Maasai or the Wakamba. I will build my
boma taller than a man's head and lay thorns across the top of it, and tell myself that
this is to protect my cattle against the lion and the leopard, and I will try not to
remember that there have been never been any lions or leopards on Kirinyaga. I will
never be without my spear, though I do nothing but lean on it when the sun is high in
the sky, and I will tell myself that without it I could be torn to pieces by man or
beast. All these things I will tell myself, Koriba...but I will know that I am lying."