"Burgess, Anthony - Enderby Quartet 04 - Enderby's Dark Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burgess Anthony)

But Silversmith was addressing the imbecilic stewardess as honey. He knew her, he had come this way before. Or perhaps not. Enderby was obliged to sit next to Silversmith and then to put on a headset attached to a Japanese cassette recorder which Silversmith eagerly took from a scuffed bag. "Listen," Silversmith said. Enderby heard a voice, Silversmith's from the sound of it, scrannelling perverted words from Hamlet while a guitar thrummed chords.

"To be or not to be
In love with you,
To spend my entire life
Hand in glove with you."

Then the voice, having no more words, lahed and booped on to the end, which was the same as the beginning. Enderby carefully fastened his seatbelt. He as carefully freed his ears of the noise and the foam rubber. Silversmith said:
"You take it from there, right?"
"Wrong," Enderby said. "If you think I'm going to permit William Shakespeare to sing inanities like that --"
"What's that word?"
"Inanities. It's a desecration."
Silversmith sighed. "I can see," he said, "it's going to be like I told Gus Toplady it was going to be. You got too many long words in that thing you sent him. You got to consider the public."
"I've got to consider Shakespeare."
"Ah, Jesus," Silversmith said.
"After all," Enderby said, "we were all warned."
"Warned about what?"
"About disturbing his bones. There's a curse waiting."
"Yeah, sure," Silversmith said, and he pretended to go to sleep. The aircraft started to bear them to Indianapolis.





3


"More of a prologue or induction really," Enderby said.
"In what?" somebody crossly asked.
"Come, come," Enderby said in an unwisely schoolmasterly tone. "You all remember your Taming of the Shrew."
This resident company, lounging in deplorable rags in a kind of classroom complete with blackboard, did not seem to like being instructed in the terminology of drama by a man in a decent, though old, clerical grey suit. Their director was not dressed like that. He was too old, though, for the co√ture and coiffure he affected. Dirty grey sculpted sideburns. Silk shirt of black covered with sharpnosed Greek heroes in gold in postures of harmless aggression. Grey chest hairs and dangling medallions. Chinos stained at the crotch. Bare feet in fawn suede cowboy boots. Enderby felt he himself was there as for the reading of a will, which in a sense he was.
The people not there were the people who should have been there. But Shakespeare was to be played by a film actor who was the husband of Ms Grace Hope, and he was making a film. The dark lady who was to play the Dark Lady was completing a nightclub engagement. Hamlet without the prince, Enderby had quipped. Gus Toplady had morosely replied that he had tried it in Minneapolis at the Tyrone Guthrie but it had not really worked. Hamlet off stage all the time, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern eavesdropping on inaudible soliloquy. What's he say now? He say he not know whether he live or die but he use too many big words. Toplady had done a nude Macbeth somewhere. He appeared to have little confidence in Enderby. Enderby reciprocated with all his heartburn.
"Shakespeare," Enderby said, "is dying. His ageing wife and two daughters sit by his bed, the wife audibly jingling two pennies. These are to put on his eyes when he shall finally close them."
"Why?" asked a girl whom Enderby knew to be Toplady's mistress.
"The custom in those days. These are not what ah you would call pennies. Not cents I mean. Big pennies. English ones."
"Okay," Toplady said without compassion. "He's dying. Forget the pennies."
"You can't," Enderby said. "Shakespeare says: 'Ah, I hear you jingling your pennies to put on my eyes. Do not fret, wife. I shall not keep you waiting long.' Then, though it's still April, he hears the song of boys and girls bringing in the May. They sing the ah following:

'Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home.' "

"A deathless lyric," Toplady said.
"There's more to it than that," Enderby said, red. "It goes on:

'Custom has blessed this strange festivity,
Licensing every gross proclivity,
Here's the year's nativity,
Here is life, let's live it.