"Robert Charles Wilson - The Blue Gularis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

Wilson, Robert Charles - The Blue Gularis [F&SF 1985-07].htm




Robert Wilson was born in 1953 in California, now lives in Toronto, from which he sends this perfectly
chilling story about little Sarah, who undertakes piano lessons and instead receives instruction in
something quite strange...


The Blue Gularis
BY

ROBERT CHARLES WILSON


T
here was nothing for it, little Sarah must have Lessons; and so the small, dark shrunken man was introduced into
the household like a Lobe-Fin amongst a school of Gourami.

It wasn't Sarah's idea. Sarah, in fact, was dead set against it. The Lessons — piano lessons — were her mother's
notion. Mrs Chesley had married into her husband's shiftless family, subsisted as they did on the remains of the
family fortune, but she was determined that her daughter would not be raised an idler. And so Sarah, who would
have been perfectly happy attending school during the day and tending her tropical fish in the evenings, was
persuaded into an uncomfortable dress (yellow, a color she hated) and presented to Mr. Bodega on a Saturday
morning.

"Sarah Chesley," he said. "How do you do."

Sarah looked at him with dismay. She had imagined a piano teacher to be a formidable and horrible thing, but
Mr. Bodega was even more formidable and horrible. He was so small and old as to seem deflated, a pinkish
brown skin from which the contents had been partially drained. His eyes were an unsettingly bright, focused
blue; and his teeth, which he displayed prominently, were uneven and matched her dress.

Sarah's mother, a buxom woman capable of lifting the dining room table unaided, pushed Sarah forward. "Shake
hands, dear."

She extended her small white hand tenuously. Mr. Bodega put down his valise — an enormous mud-brown case
peeling at the corners, which seemed from the way he carried it to contain something heavy but fragile — and
reached out (too eagerly, Sar-

The Blue Gularis


39


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Robert%20Charles%20Wilson%20-%20The%20Blue%20Gularis.htm (1 of 15)8-12-2006 23:41:26
 Wilson, Robert Charles - The Blue Gularis [F&SF 1985-07].htm