"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

VENDETTA
by
Michael Dibdin



Wednesday, 01.50 -- 02.45



Aurelio Zen lounged on the sofa like a listless god, bring-
ing the dead back to life. With a flick of his finger he made
them rise again. One by one the shapeless, blood-
drenched bundles stirred, shook themselves, crawled
about a bit, then floated upwards until they were on their
feet again. This extremely literal resurrection had taken
them by surprise, to judge by their expressions, or per-
haps it was the sight of each others' bodies that was so
shocking, the hideous injuries and disfigurements, the
pools and spatters of blood everywhere. But as Zen con-
tinued to apply his miraculous intervention, all this was
set to rights too: the gaping rents in flesh and fabric healed
themselves, the blood mopped itself up, and in no time at
all the scene looked almost like the ordinary dinner party it
had been until the impossible occurred. None of the four
seemed to notice the one remarkable feature of this spuri-
ous afterlife, namely that everything happened
backwards.
'He did it.'
Zen's mother was standing in the doorway, her night-
dress clutched around her skimpy form.
'What's wrong, mamma?'
She pointed at the television, which now showed a
beach of brilliant white sand framed by smoothly curved
rocks. A man was swimming backwards through the
wavelets. He casually dived up out of the water, landed
neatly on one of the rocks and strolled backwards to the
shaded lounging chairs where the others sat sucking
smoke out of the air and blowing it into cigarettes.
'The one in the swimming costume. He did it. He was in
love with his wife so he killed him. He was in another one
too, last week, on Channel Five. They thought he was a
spy but it was his twin brother. He was both of them. They
do it with mirrors.'
Mother and son gazed at each other across the room lit
by the electronically preserved sunlight of a summer now
more than three months in the past. It was almost two
o'clock in the moming, and even the streets of Rome were
hushed.