"Bethmoora" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

perhaps. What worlds have they gone into? Whom have they
met? But my thoughts are far off with Bethmoora in her
loneliness, whose gates swing to and fro. To and fro they
swing, and creak and creak in the wind, but no one hears
them. They are of green copper, very lovely, but no one
sees them now. The desert wind pours sand into their
hinges, no watchman comes to ease them. No guard goes round
Bethmoora's battlements, no enemy assails them. There are
no lights in her houses, no footfall in her streets; she
stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, and I
would see Bethmoora once again, but dare not.
It is many a year, as they tell me, since Bethmoora
became desolate.
Her desolation is spoken of in taverns where sailors
meet, and certain travellers have told me of it.
I had hoped to see Bethmoora once again. It is many a
year ago, they say, when the vintage was last gathered in
from the vineyards that I knew, where it is all desert now.
It was a radiant day, and the people of the city were
dancing by the vineyards, while here and there one played
upon the kalipac. The purple flowering shrubs were all in
bloom, and the snow shone upon the Hills of Hap.
Outside the copper gates they crushed the grapes in vats
to make the syrabub. It had been a goodly vintage.
In little gardens at the desert's edge men beat the
tambang and the tittibuk, and blew melodiously the zootibar.
All there was mirth and song and dance, because the
vintage had been gathered in, and there would be ample
syrabub for the winter months, and much left over to
exchange for turquoises and emeralds with the merchants who
come down from Oxuhahn. Thus they rejoiced all day over
their vintage on the narrow strip of cultivated ground that
lay between Bethmoora and the desert which meets the sky to
the South. And when the heat of the day began to abate, and
the sun drew near to the snows on the Hills of Hap, the note
of the zootibar still rose clear from the gardens, and the
brilliant dresses of the dancers still wound among the
flowers. All that day three men on mules had been noticed
crossing the face of the Hills of Hap. Backwards and
forwards they moved as the track wound lower and lower,
three little specks of black against the snow. They were
seen first in the very early morning up near the shoulder of
Peol Jagganoth, and seemed to be coming out of Utnar Vehi.
All day they came. And in the evening, just before lights
come out and colours change, they appeared before
Bethmoora's copper gates. They carried staves, such as
messengers bear in those lands, and seemed sombrely clad
when the dancers all came round them with their green and
lilac dresses. Those Europeans who were present and heard
the message given were ignorant of the language, and only