"Ballard, J G - Drowned Giant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ballard J G)

With its cool, detached style and its disturbing images, this
story is as mysteriously compelling as Kafka's Metamorphosis,
and I think it may be remembered as long.

THE DROWNED GIANT

J.G.Ballard
On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned giant
was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the northwest of
the city. The first news of its arrival was brought by a nearby
farmer and subsequently confirmed by the local newspaper
reporters and the police. Despite this the majority of people,
myself among them, remained skeptical, but the return of more
and more eyewitnesses attesting to the vast size of the giant
was finally too much for our curiosity. The library where my
colleagues and I were carrying out our research was almost
deserted when we set off for the coast shortly after two o'clock,
and throughout the day people continued to leave their offices
and shops as accounts of the giant circulated around the city.
By the time we reached the dunes above the beach a
substantial crowd had gathered, and we could see the body
lying in the shallow water 200 yards away. At first the
estimates of its size seemed greatly exaggerated. It was then at
low tide, and almost all the giant's body was exposed, but he
appeared to be a little larger than a basking shark. He lay on his
back with his arms at his sides, in an attitude of repose, as if
asleep on the mirror of wet sand, the reflection of his blanched
skin fading as the water receded. In the clear sunlight his body
glistened like the white plumage of a sea bird.
Puzzled by this spectacle, and dissatisfied with the matter-
of-fact explanations of the crowd, my friends and I stepped
down from the dunes onto the shingle. Everyone seemed
reluctant to approach the giant, but half an hour later two
fishermen in wading boots walked out across the sand. As their
diminutive figures neared the recumbent body a sudden
hubbub of conversation broke out among the spectators. The
two men were completely dwarfed by the giant. Although his
heels were partly submerged in the sand, the feet rose to at least
twice the fishermen's height, and we immediately realized that
this drowned leviathan had the mass and dimensions of the
largest sperm whale.
Three fishing smacks had arrived on the scene and with keels
raised remained a quarter of a mile offshore, the crews
watching from the bows. Their discretion deterred the spec-
tators on the shore from wading out across the sand. Impa-
tiently everyone stepped down from the dunes and waited
on the shingle slopes, eager for a closer view. Around the
margins of the figure the sand had been washed away, forming
a hollow, as if the giant had fallen out of the sky. The two