"Dann,_Jack_-_The_Diamond_Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)
Nonsense madness lunacy, yet those words had little meaning deep in this castle of impossibility where ceilings were layered with gold and walls of diamond and ruby glowed translucently like dreams in the deepest sleep; where hammerhead sharks could fall like rain, and God's machines could play music as well as orchestras.
I found Phoebe in her mother's suite, which was the size of most people's houses, and Phoebe turned to me and said, "She wouldn't've gone to the bunkers on her own, how could Morgan and Marion leave without her?" Phoebe was wild-eyed. "They hate her, that's why."
"Why wouldn't your mother go to the bunkers?" I asked, trying to bring her back to reason.
"She's claustrophobic. She can't stand darkness, can't stand to be without windows and light and -- "
The sound of gunfire, the ceiling cracking, the house groaning, and then the expected waterfall, complete with all manner of fishes. Water poured over us, for the aquarium was two stories high, an aquatic crystalline house within the house, and I grabbed Phoebe and ran through the rain and wriggling, flapping, slapping fishes as the floors and walls and ceilings collapsed behind me, ran until I found another staircase, a narrow _escalier derobe_. The smell of wet ash was thick as we ran down the stairs, ran through the undecorated corridors used by servants, ran straight into blazing, blistering fire.
We found another way, which was blocked by the debris that had been ceiling and furniture, only moments ago. Coughing, panicking, we raced through darkness; now I was following Phoebe, who pulled me by the hand, down, down, into the damp stone cellars where we felt our way along the rough cold walls. Then an incline, the clanging of a heavy latch -- Phoebe had found an exit. We pushed open a heavy door and looked up through the swirling smoke and soot to glimpse the dawn-pink sky.
The attack had been planned perfectly.
From an emplacement on the roof of an adjacent building -- another burst of anti-aircraft guns. I could see only a few bodies of slaves scattered across the lawn; but in the dawn pinkness of this impossible morning, I couldn't see blood; nor could I smell the puke and feces of dying men, thank God, for the reek of gasoline, the acrid smoke, and the thunderstorm and metal odor of machine-guns firing on the roofs above were overpowering. I took a chance and stepped away from the castle to see what was in the sky; and you could've knocked me over with your pinky because the attackers-invaders-saviors, whatever they were, had just about everything in the air that could fly, all remainders from the war. Christ, there was a Vickers Gunbus, which hadn't been in service since 1916; and its gunner was strafing the slave quarters with his moveable Lewis machine gun. There were several Jennys in the sky, and from the sound of it, I guessed they had been fitted out with 7.7 mm machine guns, just like the Gunbus. The Jenny was the favorite of most barnstormers, and I was no exception. While everything was happening around me -- all the crashing and burning and exploding, I daydreamed about whisking Phoebe away in a Jenny, saving her from all this death and destruction; and I felt a sudden, unexpected rush of happiness. I would be saved, wouldn't have to spend my life a prisoner, or worse, become another one of those poisoned or strangled guests buried in an unmarked grave in the shallow soil of the diamond mountain. All that in a second, just like when I'd been in combat in the _Toulouse-the-Wreck_, the Spad that got me through Bloody April without so much as a bullet tearing through its delicate frame. I was again smelling oil and gasoline, hearing the peculiar and particular chinking sound of machine guns, and daydreaming. Time stretching, then collapsing, while my body, my hands and eyes, made all the moves.
Phoebe caught my arm, as though she had just read my mind and discovered my true thoughts of escaping with the enemy, and that's when I saw the twin-engined Handley Page 400, a British bomber that could carry a bomb load of around 1,800 pounds -- Lord knows how they got their hands on _that_, and again, daydreaming, I wondered who they were. The bomber made a wide circle, and I asked Phoebe where the bunkers were because once that Handley Page started dropping her guts, there wouldn't be much left to talk about.
"Look," Phoebe said, pointing, and, indeed, I saw slaves scrambling across the courtyard and leap-frogging up the inlaid tile perrons of the castle. They moved like trained and disciplined soldiers; the strafing fire of machine guns didn't deter them, even when two slaves were hit and fell backward over the stone steps.
We had to get out of here. I could hear the Handley Page's engines change tune as the great plane turned to begin its bombing run.
And then Phoebe shouted "Momma," and ran into the courtyard.
Sure enough, there was Giroma Jefferson strolling absently in her black chiffon evening dress embroidered with tiny beads.
I followed, but was too late: the Gunbus was strafing the courtyard, and in that second I felt time stretch out like some terrible gasoline-tainted gray wodge of taffy, wrapping itself around me -- suffocating me. I saw Phoebe's mother fall, hit by the strafing fire, and Phoebe screaming and falling on top of her; and then it was like being in the cockpit of my Spad again, feeling once again absolutely focused yet numb, as I did during every dogfight. The numbness was fear, but it was a distant thing; and -- as if I were a spectator still standing in the doorway of Jefferson's castle -- I could see myself pulling Phoebe away from her mother and dragging her out of the courtyard. Phoebe screamed and tried to bite me before she came to her senses.
"I can't leave my mother," she said desperately. "She might be alive, mightn't she?"
"No, darling," I said, "but don't think about that right now. We'll think about everything once you're safe. Now tell me where the bunkers are."
"There," and she pointed toward a strand of rocks where goats were trying to hide in the surrounding brush. "But we can't leave without Mother." So I picked up Mrs. Jefferson, who was just skin and bones, and we made our way under cover of the pine forest that was the west edge of Jefferson's zoo. I glimpsed zebras standing stock still, as if they were painted sculptures. Like Lot's wife, Phoebe looked back, seeking one last glimpse of paradise, and then we felt the concussion of an exploding bomb. For a few seconds, I could only hear a rushing, windy sound. I wasn't sure if the castle remained, as it was out of our sight from here; and we made our way, circuitously -- keeping under cover -- to the bunker. Phoebe pulled at an iron bar set cleverly into the rock -- the camouflaged opening could only be detected if one already knew where it was -- but nothing happened. I pulled the bar. Still nothing.
"They're in there, and they can hear us," Phoebe said to me. Turning to the cliff face of the bunker, she shouted, "Open the goddamn door, Morgan, you bastard. Mother's dead, and it's your fault."
But Morgan, if he was inside, was silent as the stone.
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*Nine*
We laid Mrs. Jefferson out in the family mausoleum between the marble sepulchers of her father-in-law, the World's Greatest Liar, and his brother, who was murdered for the family cause. The cacophony of machine guns and bombs was reduced to great sighs and groans; only the dead held sway in this great marble shrine at the end of the gardens, and they ruled imperiously over the spiders and dust. Phoebe and I -- and the cold and stiffening Mrs. Jefferson -- were dwarfed by loggia of fifty-foot columns and pavilions that supported hordes of stone beasts and angels; and a huge equestrian statue of a Jefferson glowered down upon us like a marble god in his adamantine heaven. But there were no glowing onyx or pearl walls here, and not a diamond or a ruby or a sapphire in sight. This grand tomb might well have been designed by Phoebe's mother, who defied her wealth by never wearing a jewel. Perhaps she was the only one in the family who understood that you couldn't take it with you.
"I can't leave her here like this," Phoebe said, her eyes glistening with tears, and at that moment I felt I was more in love with her than ever before.
"It's not safe here."
"I'm getting you away from here this very minute," I said, and she turned to me, her face lit by anger and perhaps even hatred.
"That's my mother lying dead there, and you want to -- you want to -- "
"I want to get you to safety."
"You're as flat as my brother," she said, "and I'm not leaving."
"Then what _do_ you propose to do?" I asked, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. She turned away from me, leaned over her mother's corpse, and began to cry softly.
"It's all over."
She allowed me to put my arms around her and pull her away from her mother. "Poppa should have been here. He should have saved us. But he's too interested in -- " She looked up at me and said, "_You_ should have saved us. So what are we to do now, Mr. Orsatti?"
She turned back to her mother, as though she could somehow find all the answers behind those dead and closed eyes. She was shivering, trembling; and then, by sheer act of will, I should imagine, she straightened up and became absolutely calm. Her eyes narrowed in determination, and I saw her father in her heart-shaped perfect face. I saw in that instant the inevitability that she -- and not her brother or sister or anyone else -- would control everything. She was her father's daughter; and love her as I did, I felt the sudden panicky urge to flee.
"I'm _not_ giving everything up," Phoebe said firmly to her dead mother. "I won't, and they can't make me." Then she finally turned to me and said, "Well -- ?"
"Well, what?" I asked, and for that instant I felt like a nervous schoolboy. The muffled booming of bombs and the thick bursts of machine guns became louder. "We've got to get out of here right now!"
"Will you help me or not?" she asked, ignoring my last remark.
"Help you to do _what_?"
She stepped across the flawless marble floor and reached behind the stone sarcophagus of the World's Greatest Liar and strained as she pulled something. "Well, are you just going to stand there?"
She stepped back and allowed me to squeeze into the space behind the marble coffin. I felt the smooth metal bar she had been pulling at, which was ingeniously hidden under the curl of the coffin's lower rail, and released it without straining my back. The coffin slowly and smoothly slid down toward the wall, as if by magic, to reveal a dark catacomb fronted by dirty marble steps.
"Go on," Phoebe said; and when she saw my hesitation, she said, "Are you afraid I'd close you in?"
I must admit that a nervous thought had crossed my mind.
"Maybe I should, but I wouldn't," and she grinned at me, as if she'd forgotten everything for an instant; then she took a last look at her mother, and led me down the steps and into the pit. She picked up a lantern from a ledge and scratched a match. Once the lantern radiated a halo of buttery light, she pulled at something in the wall. A rumbling echoed through what I imagined to be countless corridors, a hellish maze from which we would never escape; and I wanted to run back up the stone steps before the entrance was sealed. But the coffin fit into place like the last stone block of a pharaoh's tomb. The darkness seemed to sharpen my sense of smell. I breathed in the musty odors of the grave, and I was sure that this was a catacomb in the true sense -- that bodies had been left to rot on shelves like the one where Phoebe had found her matches and lantern.
"Follow me," Phoebe said.
"What on Earth is this place?" I asked.
"You'll see."
"It's where your guests end up, isn't it?"
"Well, it's where _you_ ended up."
"Answer me."
"I don't approve of overbearing men."
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