"Ballard, J G - The Crystal World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ballard J G)

THE CRYSTAL WORLD
by J.G. Ballard

Copyright 1966 by J.G. Ballard



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By day fantastic birds flew through the petrified forest, and jeweled crocodiles glittered like heraldic salamanders on the banks of the crystalline river. By night the illuminated man raced among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels, his head like a spectral crown . . .
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Contents



I. Equinox

1 The dark river
2 The jeweled orchid
3 Mulatto on the catwalks
4 A drowned man
5 The crystallized forest
6 The crash


II. The illuminated man

7 Mirrors and assassins
8 The summer house
9 Serena
10 The mask
11 The white hotel
12 Duel with a crocodile
13 Saraband for lepers
14 The prismatic sun



I. Equinox


1 The dark river


Above all, the darkness of the river was what impressed Dr. Sanders as he looked out for the first time across the open mouth of the Matarre estuary. After many delays, the small passenger steamer was at last approaching the line of jetties, but although it was ten o'clock the surface of the water was still gray and sluggish, leaching away the somber tinctures of the collapsing vegetation along the banks.
At intervals, when the sky was overcast, the water was almost black, like putrescent dye. By contrast, the straggle of warehouses and small hotels that constituted Port Matarre gleamed across the dark swells with a spectral brightness, as if lit less by solar light than by some interior lantern, like the pavilions of an abandoned necropolis built out on a series of piers from the edges of the jungle.