"Rajnar Vajra - His Hands Pass Like Clouds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

It bothered me that I hadn't asked about the Cloudman. Now, I couldn't
stop thinking about him. And the more I thought, the more I wanted to go see
if he was still down there. Could I make it the entire two and a half blocks
without help? I hadn't walked that far in a single stretch since the accident.
I put on a jacket and pulled the crutches from my closet. My favorite




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physical therapist, Ms. Deborah Bloom, had suggested I stop using them.
"You'll never fully recover, Mr. Burns," she had told me without a smile, "if
you insist on using crutches as a crutch."
The hell with it, I thought. It's only a few stone-throws away, for
God's sake. I could _crawl_ there and back if necessary. So I obediently left
the crutches behind and cautiously hobbled down my porch steps, determined to
show the sidewalk who was boss.
****
The final half-block was terrible. It was all downhill, which was much harder
for me than uphill. My legs and hips were killing me, and with every step,
white-hot needles stabbed into my tailbone.
When I came to the parking lot directly behind the beach, I had to lean
on the bike-rack and simply breathe for a minute. I felt like I was six again,
recuperating from carrying Atlas's Sack. Looking toward the surf and shading
my tired eyes against the weak glare of a distant street light, I grew an
instant set of goose bumps. I hadn't really expected to see him but the
Cloudman was there all right, facing the sea as always, and also as usual,
looking upwards.
His set-up hadn't changed either. The same big easel was tethered to
the ground by staked ropes -- in my whole life, I'd only seen it blow over
once. The narrow tray that Joe used in lieu of a palette was still clamped to
the front of the easel and I wondered if he still rinsed it in brine and
scrubbed it clean with salt...
Walking through sand in my condition was no picnic. By the time I
reached Joe, my lower body was going into spasms.
"Good evening, young Gregory," he said warmly without glancing in my
direction. He raised both arms in a gesture that took me back nearly thirty
years and pointed at the sky with fingers and brush, letting his hands hang in
the air as if they were floating. "The moon visits the House of Aquarius
bringing -- ah! There's one now!" His arms descended and he resumed painting.
"Did you see it? The shooting star? How it streaked toward hidden Sagittarius
like one of his own arrows in reverse?" The man still had that phenomenal
voice and that rococo way of putting things.
"For God's Sake, Joe! You _remember_ me?" I was doubly amazed. He
hadn't seen me in eighteen years and not only had he recognized me instantly
-- and apparently without looking -- he'd remembered my childhood fascination
with astronomy.
"_Remember_ you, my young friend? October's pet, mighty, flighty,
Pegasus, watches from above as I watch from below and neither of us ... knows
how to forget." The artist shook his head grimly and continued in a more