"Lavie Tidhar - The Gunslinger of Chelem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tidhar Lavie)

features. His voice was a kind of faded memory of the way people spoke in the old
westerns.
“You work here long?”
“All the time,” the gravedigger said.
“And at night?”
The gravedigger shrugged. “Night?”
The place that is always one minute from high noon...
“Anyone ever leave here and not through the cemetery?”
The gravedigger shook his head. His movements, too, were limited, Raphael
saw. Shoulders, head. The hands either digging or resting. “Never.”
“He’s good, then?”
“He’s invincible.”
Raphael woke up. No cemetery. No gravedigger. The desert remained.
How do you beat someone like that? The rules of the dream were the
gunslinger’s rules. You couldn’t change the dream and give Raphael, say, a machine
gun. Or a cannon. Or a bullet-resistant body. The dream was Stephen Cohen’s
dream, the gunslinger of Chelem’s dream.
The rules. There was only one way to fight the gunslinger. At high noon, in the
town square, by the clock-tower. Guns drawn.
And then he began to think. There was a way. Maybe. He thought of the old
films.
He went and talked to Michal. She was looking into the distance, into the
desert, towards the town. She had a dreamy look in her eyes.
“Michal!”
She shook her head, stood up, and opened the camp bed above the sand for
him. Raphael sighed. He hated going into the field.
He climbed into bed and curled up in the blanket. “Where’s Teddy?”
“What?” Michal said.
“Teddy,” Raphael said. “Where’s Teddy!”
Michal sighed, said, “Hold on.” Looked in the back seat of the car and
brought out a teddy bear with one eye missing.
 “There’s Teddy,” Michal said, but Raphael no longer heard, nor did he see
her look towards the town, sigh again and begin stepping towards Chelem, leaving
light footprints in the sand, two heavy guns around her waist.
Raphael, instead, fell asleep. His sleep was immediate, and deep.
He slept, and in his sleep he dreamed.
****
The Man With No Name walked in the desert. He wore a dusty poncho, and a
wide-brimmed hat covered his face. He had been in the desert for a long time. He
was searching for the gunslinger. He and the gunslinger had met in the past. The
gunslinger had killed the Man With No Name’s sweetheart. If he ever had a name it
was buried deep in the past. The Man With No Name planned to leave the gunslinger
himself buried in the past. He had been searching for him for a long time. And now
he had found him.
The town was before him. A wooden sign that creaked in the wind said
‘Chelem’.
He passed through the open gate. Main Street spread out before him. He saw
a lone figure, a scared old man who approached him and began to timidly measure
him from head to toe.
Measure him for a coffin.