"Kim Stanley Robinson - Venice Drowned (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Japanese back into the Piazza and swam down. The ground was silted, and Carlo was careful not to
step on it. His charges saw the great stone chair in the center of the Piazza (it had been called
the Throne of Attila, Carlo remembered from one of his moldy books, and no one had known why), and
waving to each other they swam to it. One of them made ludicrous attempts to stand on the bottom
and walk around in his fins; he threw up clouds of silt. The other joined him. They each sat in
the stone chair, columns of bubbles rising from them, and snapped pictures of each other with
their underwater cameras. The silt would ruin the shots, Carlo thought. While they cavorted, he
wondered sourly what they wanted in the church.
Eventually, Hamada swam up to him and gestured at the church. Behind the mask his eyes were
excited. Carlo pumped his fins up and down slowly and led them around to the big entrance at the
front. The doors were gone. They swam into the church.

Inside it was dark, and all three of them unhooked their big flashlights and turned them on. Cones
of murky water turned to crystal as the beams swept about. The interior of the church was
undistinguished, the floor thick with mud. Carlo watched his two customers swim about and let his
flashlight beam rove the walls. Some of the underwater windows were still intact, an odd sight.


file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/D...Stanley%20Robinson%20-%20Venice%20Drowned.txt (4 of 12) [2/5/2004 12:08:59 AM]
 file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/Kim%20Stanley%20Robinson%20-%20Venice%20Drowned.txt

Occasionally the beam caught a column of bubbles, transmuting them to silver.

Quickly enough the Japanese went to the picture at the west end of the nave, a tile mosaic. Taku
(Carlo guessed) rubbed the slime off the tiles, vastly improving their color. They had gone to the
big one first, the one portraying the Crucifixion, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Day of
Judgment: a busy mural. Carlo swam over to have a better look. But no sooner had the Japanese
wiped the wall clean than they were off to the other end of the church, where above the stalls of
the apse was another mosaic. Carlo followed.

It didn't take long to rub this one clean; and when the water had cleared, the three of them
floated there, their flashlight beams converged on the picture revealed.

It was the Teotaca Madonna, the God-bearer. She stood against a dull gold background, holding the
Child in her arms, staring out at the world with a sad and knowing gaze. Carlo pumped his legs to
get above the Japanese, holding his light steady on the Madonna's face. She looked as though she
could see all of the future, up to this moment and beyond; all of her child's short life, all the
terror and calamity after that . . . . There were mosaic tears on her cheeks. At the sight of
them, Carlo could barely check tears of his own from joining the general wetness on his face. He
felt that he had suddenly been transposed to a church on the deepest floor of the ocean; the
pressure of his feelings threatened to implode him, he could

scarcely hold them off. The water was freezing, he was shivering, sending up a thick, nearly
continuous column of bubbles . . . and the Madonna watched. With a kick he turned and swam away.
Like startled fish his two companions followed him. Carlo led them out of the church into murky
light, then up to the surface, to the boat and the window casement.

Fins off, Carlo sat on the staircase and dripped. Taku and Hamada scrambled through the window and
joined him. They conversed for a moment in Japanese, clearly excited. Carlo stared at them
blackly.