"Jeff VanderMeer - Mahout (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

palms together.
"I am Arjun, mahout of the Amber Palace."
You, solemn, bowing also: "Gautam, boy of Jaipur."
He laughed. "And someday mahout, perhaps?"
You nodded, watching the elephant.

Only after your father shoved you up onto the side ladder and you climbed
into the carriage did you realize that the mendicant's pain was gone. From
the dizzying height, lurching forward, touching the prickly black hairs,
you could not feel the world's agonies spread out below you: the farmers
on the plate-sized fields, the swimmers in the lake. Nothing. You laughed.
You laughed and snuggled into your mother's arms.
You remember that moment as if it happened yesterday. You felt like a god,
free of pain. Though that is impossible. The elephant was the god and the
mahout its keeper.

"There was a big ditch at that time put there for the purpose of
draining … and they'd sent these boys to ride the elephants. They went
down to water them and on the way back each boy had a little stick-like
that was a spear or hook in the end of it … And this big old elephant,
Mary, reached over to get her a watermelon rind, about a half a
watermelon somebody eat and just laid it down there; 'n she did, the boy
Eldridge give her a jerk. He pulled her away from 'em and he just bowed
real big; and when he did, she took him right around the waist … and
throwed him against the side of the drink stand and just knocked the
whole side out o' it. I guess it killed him, but when he hit the ground
the elephant just walked over and set her foot on his head … and the
blood and brains and stuff just squirted all over."
-- W.H. Coleman, eyewitness.

Only one woman's face haunts you. You have been with many women, trying to
block the pain. It never works; even in the throes of orgasm there is
always a larger ache than before.
But you did not know this woman. Not even a name.
Four years ago - almost to the day you sit and eat at Dan's - she came to
you as the shadows began to shut down your booth. Exhausted, half in
trance, you had peered into the pains of a dozen men and women, lied for
the contented ones who hid their disappointments deep.
The woman cleared your thoughts. She had an elegance beyond her simple
cotton dress which reminded you of the leper woman as she might have been.
Around her, the circus folk melted away. The Scaled Man and the Bearded
Lady, the Man With Two Spears Through His Cheeks and the Lady Who Drank
Blood: they enhanced her beauty all the more. She smelled of jasmine and
treacle. You imagined her skin smooth beneath your touch.
You bowed to her, recited the routine the other performers had taught you,
in the despised pidgin English. You speak the language with only a hint of
accent.
She listened patiently, gave the drunken crowd gathered at her back a
single glance, but did not wave them away. A large crowd, enlivened by an
entire day of merry-making.