"Avram Davidson - Naples" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

At length the passageway widened into a sort ofa piazza .At one end was a church, on either side were
the blank walls of somepalazzio a good deal more antique than the brick ones down below: perhaps from
the days of Spanish viceroys, perhaps from the days of King Robert. Whoknows. There were anyway
no more shops, no stalls, no wide-open-to-the-street one-room "houses"тАж and, for once, no masses of
peopleтАж no beggars, evenтАж there was even a sort of alley that seemingly went nowhere and that,
surprisingly, held no one. And the traveler, who had so far only from time to time looked out from the
corners of his eyes at the young man cleaving close to him as a shadow does, and who had made no
reply at all to the soft murmurs with which the young man (ever clutching his jacket round about his naked
throat) continually offered his services as "guide"; now for the first time, the traveler stopped, gave a
direct look fleeting-swift, jerked his head toward the tiny passageway, and stepped inside.

The shirtless one's head went up and he looked at the heavens; his head went down and he looked at
the filthy worn stones beneath. His shoulders moved in something too slight for a shrug and his unclothed
throat uttered something too soft for a sigh.

He followed.

The traveler turned, without looking into the other's eyes, whispered a few short words into the other's
ears.

The face of the young man, which had been stiff, expressionless, now went limp.Surprise showed most
briefly. His brows moved once or twice.

тАФBut yesтАФhe said.тАФSurelyтАФhe said.
And he said, with a half bow and a small movement of his armтАФI pray,follow . Very nearтАФhe said.

Neither one paused at the church.

And now the streetsbecame, all of them, alleys. The alleys became mere slits. The shops grew
infrequent, their store ever more meager. The lines of clothes dripping and drying overhead seemed to
bear little relation to what human beings wore. What actually dangled and napped in the occasional gusts
of flat, warm, and stinking air may once have been clothing.Might once more, with infinite diligence and
infinite skill, with scissors and needle and thread, be reconstituted into clothing once again. But for the
present, one must either deny the rags that name, or else assume that behind the walls, the scabby walls,
peeling walls, broken walls,filthy damp and dripping-ichorouswalls, there dwelled some race of goblins
whose limbs required garb of different drape.

The traveler began to lag somewhat behind.

How often, now, how carefully, almost how fearfully, theyoungman guide turned his head to make sure
the other was still with him. Had not stepped upon some ancient obscenely greasy flagstone fixed upon a
pivot and gone silently screaming down into God knows what. Had not been slip-noosed, perhaps, as
some giant hare, hoisted swiftly up above the flapping ragsтАжRags? Signal flags? What strange fleet might
have its brass-bound spyglasses focused hither? Or perhaps it was fear and caution lest the other's fear
and caution might simply cause him to turn and flee.In which case theyoungman guide would flee after
him, though from no greater fear than loss of the fee.

When one has no shirt, what greater fear?

Turned and into a courtyard entered through a worm-eaten door whose worms had last dined centuries