"Walter Jon Williams - The Last Ride of German Freddie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

work." He did not mention the other problems, the nervous complaints, the sudden attacks of migraine,
the cold, sick dread of dying as his father had died, mad and screaming.
"We turn here," Josie said. They turned left on Fifth Street. On the far side of the street was the Oriental
Saloon, where Wyatt Earp earned his living dealing faro. Freddie glanced at the windows, saw Earp himself
bathed in yellow light, standing, smoking a cigar and engaged in conversation with Holliday. To judge by
his look, the topic was a grim one.
"Look!" Freddie said in sudden scorn. "In that black coat of his, Earp looks like the Angel of Death
come to claim his consumptive friend."
The light of the saloon gleamed on Josie's smile. "Wyatt Earp's a handsome man, don't you think?"
"I think he is too gloomy."
She turned to him. "You're the gloomy one."
He nodded as they paced along. "Yes," he admitted. "That is just."
"You are a sneeze," she said. "He is a belch."
Freddie smiled to himself as they crossed Fremont Street. "I will tell him this, when I see him next."
"Tell me about the Superman."
Freddie shook his head. "Not now."
"But you will tell me some other time?"
"If you wish." Politely, doubting he would speak a word to her after this night.
"Here's our house." It was a small place that she shared with Behan, its frame unpainted, and like the
rest of the town, thrown up overnight.
"I will bid you good night then," he said formally.
She turned to face him, lifted her face toward his. "You can come in, if you like," she said. "Johnny won't
be back for hours."
He looked into her eyes and saw Troy there, on fire in the night.
"Good night, miss," he said, and touching his hat he turned away.

She is a Jewess! Freddie wrote in his journal. Run away from her family of good German bourgeois
Jews—no doubt of the most insufferable type—to become, here in Tombstone, a goddess among the
barbarians.
Or so Brocius tells us. He says her name is Josephine Marcus, sometimes called Sadie.
I believe I understand this Helen now. She has sprung from the strangest people in all history, they who
have endured a thousand persecutions, and so become wise—cunning. The world has tried with great
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energy to make the Jews base, by confining them to occupations that the world despises, and by depriving
them of any hope of honor. Yet they themselves have never ceased to believe in their own high calling; and
they are honored by the dignity with which they face their tormentors.
And how should we think them base? From the Jews sprang the most powerful book in history, the most
effective moral law, Spinoza the most sublime philosopher, and Christ the last Christian. When Europe
was sunk in barbarism, it was the Jewish philosophers who preserved for us the genius of the ancients.
Yet all people must have their self-respect, and self-respect demands that one repay both good and bad.
Without the ability to occasionally revenge themselves upon their despisers, they could scarcely have
held up their heads. The usury of which the Jews are accused is the least of it; it was the subtle, twisted,
deceitful Jewish revolution in morals that truly destroyed the ancients—that took the natural, healthy joy
of freedom, life, and power, that twisted and inverted that joy, that planted this fatal sickness among their
enemies. Thus was the Jewish vengeance upon Rome.
And this is the tradition that our Helen has inherited. Her very existence here is a vengeance upon all
that have tormented her people from the beginning of time. She is beautiful, she is gay . . . and what does
she care if Troy burns? Or Rome? Or Tombstone?

When next Freddie encountered Josie, he was vomiting in the dust of Toughnut Street.