"Orson Scott Card - Ender's Saga 03 - Xenocide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

had not spoken before and now she did speak. Her voice was very soft. But Han
Fei-tzu could hear her clearly, for the house was silent. He had asked his
friends and servants for stillness during the dusk of Jiang-qing's life. Time
enough for careless noise during the long night that was to come, when there
would be no hushed words from her lips.
"Still not dead," she said. She had greeted him with these words each time she
woke during the past few days. At first the words had seemed whimsical or ironic
to him, but now he knew that she spoke with disappointment. She longed for death
now, not because she hadn't loved life, but because death was now unavoidable,
and what cannot be shunned must be embraced. That was the Path. Jiang-qing had
never taken a step away from the Path in her life.
"Then the gods are kind to me," said Han Fei-tzu.
"To you," she breathed. "What do we contemplate?"
It was her way of asking him to share his private thoughts with her. When others
asked his private thoughts, he felt spied upon. But Jiang-qing asked only so
that she could also think the same thought; it was part of their having become a
single soul.
"We are contemplating the nature of desire," said Han Fei-tzu.
"Whose desire?" she asked. "And for what?"
My desire for your bones to heal and become strong, so that they don't snap at
the slightest pressure. So that you could stand again, or even raise an arm
without your own muscles tearing away chunks of bone or causing the bone to
break under the tension. So that I wouldn't have to watch you wither away until
now you weigh only eighteen kilograms. I never knew how perfectly happy we were
until I learned that we could not stay together.
"My desire," he answered. "For you."
"'You only covet what you do not have.' Who said that?"
"You did," said Han Fei-tzu. "Some say, 'what you cannot have.' Others say,
'what you should not have.' I say, 'You can truly covet only what you will
always hunger for.'"
"You have me forever."
"I will lose you tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week."
"Let us contemplate the nature of desire," said Jiang-qing. As before, she was
using philosophy to pull him out of his brooding melancholy.
He resisted her, but only playfully. "You are a harsh ruler," said Han Feitzu.
"Like your ancestor-of-the-heart, you make no allowance for other people's
frailty." Jiang-qing was named for a revolutionary leader of the ancient past,
who had tried to lead the people onto a new Path but was overthrown by
weak-hearted cowards. It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die
before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives
should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves.
They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary
as a man alone.
Jiang-qing refused to let him return to brooding. "When a man's wife is dead,
what does he long for?"
Rebelliously, Han Fei-tzu gave her the most false answer to her question. "To
lie with her," he said.
"The desire of the body," said Jiang-qing.
Since she was determined to have this conversation, Han Fei-tzu took up the
catalogue for her. "The desire of the body is to act. It includes all touches,