"Jack Dann - The Diamond Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

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.
Into a Baroque hall of mirrors that overlooked park-like grounds.
Hundreds of mirrors were set opposite windows and into the scrolled
columns and archways. The high ceiling was curved, and painted angels gazed
down from clouds in heaven upon gold and silver chairs and bejeweled trees. A
forest of gold. Glades of diamonds. In keeping with this stone and jeweled
forest was a grand piano that looked to be cut from a gigantic block of jade.
Our feet clacked on the inlaid floor of this formal hall that seemed to extend
into a finger-width arched door in the distance as Robert and Isaac led me to
the piano.
Robert bowed and said, "I will leave you now, sir."
Isaac stood over me, and I was sure that, should I stand up from the
piano, he would force me back down onto the cushioned stool.
"And what am I to play?" I asked.
"I would think that would be up to you sir," Robert said, and, nodding
to Isaac, he clattered away toward the far, perspective-shrunk doorway, his
reflections creating an army of stiff, marching Roberts.
"And who am I to play to -- ?"
I sat before the translucent green piano, and began warming up by
playing scales from Clementi's instruction book. Looking around the seemingly
endless room, I couldn't see anyone except for Isaac, reflected in a dozen
mirrors; he stood so still that I wondered if he even breathed. But I could
_feel_ other eyes watching me, and I remembered what crazy George Bernard had
said about God not allowing me to return to my gilded prison. What was he
planning for me, then? I wondered. Certainly Master Randolph Estes Jefferson
wasn't going to take any chances with me, although I wondered -- perhaps I
_could_ escape. I chuckled and looked around at this room constructed from
dream and imagination. Would I _want_ to escape?
But I could feel Isaac's presence pressing against me and knew I was
freer in the pit. No matter, I was here to play, and if I failed Jefferson's
test -- if that was what it was -- who knew what he might do. So I played,
beginning with Chopin's _Waltz in G Flat_, then playing his preludes and