"Dann,_Jack_-_The_Diamond_Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

"Oh, probably everything."
"Can you tell me how to get out of here?" I asked.
"That's easy," he said, smiling and obviously enjoying himself hugely. "But you'll find out everything soon enough."
"How?"
He pointed upward, then poured himself another drink and topped mine up.
"For crying out loud, what are you getting at?"
"But don't break anything, 'cause he won't take you back."
"Who won't take me back where?"
"God won't take you back here."
Completely nuts, I thought.
After one more go-round with the trains, I left.
* * * *
He probably was nuts.
But as I soon discovered, he was also probably right.
--------
*Four*
It seemed like a dream, but, of course, it wasn't. I hadn't drunk very much, only a highball with Farley James and Keith Boardman in the library where we'd played a few games of mah-jongg after dinner. That might not sound like a very manly thing to do, but then none of that mattered in the pit. I'd become a veteran.
We shouted "Pung!" and "Chow!" and "Kong!" and swore blue murder as we rolled the dice and tried to build winning hands out of the inlaid ivory tiles. After about an hour, I started feeling queasy and headachy and cotton-mouthed, and so did Farley and Keith. We figured it was the food and blamed Snap Geraldson, who must have requested shit-on-a-shingle again -- aka tuna on toast -- and the dumbwaiter in the dining room obliged.
So we dispersed and went to our rooms.
I fell asleep immediately, fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion, as though I was back in the war, flying mission after mission; and I dreamed that I was looking up at my ceiling, which glowed dimly like faraway neon; and it was like being a kid again and seeing faces and animals and buildings in the stucco ceiling of my bedroom. Only now part of the ceiling was slowly floating down toward me, and two slaves dressed in white uniforms were standing on what might have been a scaffold platform. They were black angels, and they carried me up to heaven. I smelled sweat and ambergris and roses and
I dreamed that I would float upward forever --
* * * *
As I woke up, blinking in the strong morning light, I could see ebony panels on tracks sliding open to reveal formal gardens with stone hermae, geysering fountains, lamps, a marble wellhead, terra-cotta jars tall as a man, and statues of sylphs and mythical animals so lifelike that they almost seemed to move through the boughs and terraced pathways. My new chamber was now open to the world, and I could smell perfume and the richness of loamy soil. Beyond the gardens lay a small village of cottages massed around a church; but it was no ordinary church; it rose into the brittle blue sky like it was all of a steeple; and it was transparent as glass, proof that man could rise up and tear into the very fabric of Heaven.
"The gardens are indeed beautiful this morning, are they not, sir," said a man dressed in the same uniform as the men in my dream. He looked to be in his seventies, but he carried himself like an officer who was used to giving orders. His strong face and bald pate seemed polished; the wrinkles that radiated from his eyes and the corners of his thin mouth resembled fine scrolling chiseled into mahogany.
"Yeath," I said, my mouth dry and swollen and tasting of iron. My tongue didn't seem to be working right; it filled my entire mouth and wouldn't get out of the way of my teeth.
I'd surely been drugged.
"Whey am I an' ha'ad I get hea?"
The old man smiled, as one would at a child, and said, "You're in the north bedroom of the guest suite. You're a guest of the master, and it's my privilege to serve you, Mr. Orsatti." I couldn't place his accent. It seemed Southern, but it had a certain crispness, a _wrongness_, as if an Englishman or German were speaking with a drawl.
I heard a rustling behind my bed, and although my head felt like it was half-filled with some vile-tasting, vile-smelling liquid, I managed to turn -- and see a giant dressed in white like the old man.
"Don't give no never mind to Isaac, Mr. Orsatti. You can think of him as your shadow -- or your own personal bodyguard, if you prefer. Isaac won't be a bother, as he understands no English -- Now, _you've_ got a big day today, sir. A bath to start the morning right, sir?"
My head began to clear and I found my voice. "Tell me what the hell I'm doing here?"
"It's up to the master alone to explain his intentions, sir. But I believe you're to give a recital in an hour."
"The master?"
"Master Jefferson, sir. Surely you know -- "
"And you, what do _you_ know?" I asked Isaac, who stood as still as one of the statues in the garden and gazed at me disinterestedly.
"I told you, sir, he cannot understand you."
"Can't slaves understand English?"
"Sir, I am not in a position to advise -- or to educate you. But I'm sure Master Jefferson will see to all your questions in his time."
"Are _you_ a slave?" I asked. I would recite the Gettysburg Address to him if I had to.
"I have served Master Jefferson for many years, sir. Now would you prefer rosewater and a salt-water finish or a milk bath followed by warm water? Isaac will remove your pajamas."
I wasn't letting Isaac or anyone else near me.
I heard the old man sigh and nod his head, and then the bed tilted, and before I could gather my wits to grab hold of something, I was sliding toward the wall, pajamas and all. Drapes parted, as I slid down an incline into warm water. I heard myself shouting, but brought myself under control immediately. The chute folded back into the wall. I was in a sunken bath, the water warm as a womb; but swimming all around me -- and above and below -- were salt-water fish of every description: spiny fire fish, huge groupers, barramundi, mackerel, cod, orange-striped dragon fish, and there were jellyfish with long, almost transparent tentacles, a diamond-toothed moray eel, sea snakes, turtles, black spotted cuttlefish, and a hammerhead shark that was at least seven feet long.
The shark swam toward me, swam through the illuminated water.
Only a layer of crystal separated the shark from my feet, for my bathroom was inside an aquarium, and the great mass of water pressing against the walls cast shimmering, coruscating reflections everywhere. Then rain began to fall from the ceiling, and jets of rosewater and liquid soap bubbled into the bath while electric paddles churned the water into a blanket of sparkling soap bubbles. Music began playing, as if a chamber orchestra composed of mermaids were playing beside me.
The old man and Isaac stood on either side of the white marble sunken bath.
"My name is Robert," the old man said. "When you have completed your bath, Isaac will give you a rubdown and a shave and dress you. I will serve you breakfast in the sitting room," and with that he bowed and left.
Perhaps it was a combination of the drugs and warm bath, but -- against my will -- I found myself enjoying this warm, voluptuous kaleidoscope of a bath.
Nevertheless, I had the cold, dead feeling that I was being prepared for my last meal.
* * * *
Washed, bathed, massaged, dressed, and fed steak filet and eggs and hills of fried potatoes on plates shaped out of layers of emerald and diamond and ruby, I was led -- like a royal prisoner -- through corridors and rooms with walls created entirely of diamonds and other precious gems, through rooms where fire seemed to coruscate over walls and ceilings, through rooms composed of deep green crystal that could have held back the weight of an ocean with its dark, deep creatures, through elegant rooms, antique rooms, and rooms that might have been designed by Klee and Kandinsky to defy the normal rules of up and down. I walked over carpets of the rarest furs, glimpsed walls covered with paintings by Rubens, Caravaggio, da Vinci, Titian, Giotto, Manet, Monet, Poussin, Cezanne, and Miro, Picasso, Ernst, Gris, Demuth, and Modigliani. Marble creatures reached out to me: naiads, sylphs, satyrs, soldiers, gods, and goddesses by Michelangelo, Saint-Gaudens, Rodin, and Brancusi; and I was led up stairs cut into a huge, marble-veined extended hand.