"Harlan Ellison - Stalking the Nightmare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

I fear striking up acquaintances. Who would be my friend, in any event? I live in the last of the forests and I sleep in
caves. The countryside is best for me. The cities are like the surface of the sun: great flares blast off the concrete; there
are no places to hide, no cool corners in which to wait. Geomagnetic storms, sunspot occurrences, enormous air
masses. I am wary of the cities. She rules without mercy there. And the people do not touch each other. Like those
who are terribly sunscorched they avoid each other, passing in silence but with their teeth bared.
A dayтАЩs walk from the forest, there is a small town. I began going to the town innocently, making myself
known by showing only that edge of myself that would not alarm anyone. And after a time I came to know a small
group of young people who enjoyed hearing my stories.
Now they come to the small cave where I sit cross-legged. They do not tell their parents where theyтАЩre going.
I think they gather roots and herbs as a cover for the afternoons in which they sit around me and I tell them of
transcending destiny, of the three most important things in life, of true love and of my travels. They lie about having
gone on many picnics. And each time they bring one of their friends who can be trusted--one of the ones with that
special sly, impish smile that tells me the flame burns steadily. Inside. Where She cannot snuff it out. Not yet. (1 do not
believe in Gods, but I ask God never to let Her discover a way of reading the inside of the people. If She ever finds a
way to probe and drain the heart, or the head, then all hope will be lost.)
 The young people surprised me. The last time they came, they brought a much older woman to the cave. She
was in that stretch of life somewhere between seventy and the close of business. For an instant I cursed their
enthusiasm. It had blurred their judgment. Now I would have to run again and find a far place to begin again.
But the sly smile was there on her wrinkled face as she stooped to enter the cave. Firelight caught my wary
expression and as she entered, she drew a pinback button from the pocket of her padded jacket and clipped it on the
left breast. It read: ├Йtonne-moi!
She grinned at me as she sat down on the other side of the fire. тАЬI read French imperfectly,тАЭ I said.
тАЬDiaghilev to Jean Cocteau in 1909,тАЭ she answered. тАЬAstonish me!тАЭ
I laughed, as the children settled down around us. How long had this woman kept her badge of defiance
secret? Surely since the Great Sweep. Fear dissolved. The old woman was not one of Her subjects. This dear old
woman, corpulent and cat-eyed, with pain in her joints, was determined to live every moment with sanctification until
the end. So I spun spiderwebs about looking for true love, about transcending destiny, about the three most important
things in life, about times before the Great Sweep, and about just desserts.
тАЬYouтАЩre a Calvinist,тАЭ she said. тАЬIrreducible morality.тАЭ But she said it with humor, and I shrugged, feeling
embarrassed. тАЬI donтАЩt think you really like shouldering the burden, even if you do it.тАЭ
тАЬYouтАЩre right,тАЭ I answered. тАЬI would gladly lay it down; if I knew others would carry it.тАЭ
She sighed. тАЬWe do, friend. We do.тАЭ
I learned later that She had sent myrmidons against the old woman and her brother; and they were killed.
They had tried to lead a strike. No one joined them and they were caught out naked in the daylight. And were killed.
The children told me. The terrible sight of it had not been wasted on them. They were angry when they told me.
I loved her, that old woman. She was the locust.

I heard the sound of the locust from the hills one night. It was a man with an alto saxophone playing all alone,
long after midnight. He was playing the kind of music I havenтАЩt heard in years. It was jazz. But it was the kind of
sky-piercing jazz that long ago I had resisted, wondering if it was jazz at all. It had been rooted in the old order of what
тАЬNegroesтАЭ were lauded for playing, but as intense as steel, passionately soaring, the breaker of the circle. It had
manifested radical inclinations; and I had refused to hear it.
But hearing it now, a solitary corner of one manтАЩs loneliness, afloat in the night, I longed to hear more. To
return in time to that place where the music had been new, and I swore if the miracle of transport could be done, I
would listen without insisting memory be served. I would hear it without narrow judgments. The locust played Green
Dolphin Street and Since I Fell For You. I remembered the name of the man who had played those tunes, years before
the Great Sweep. His name had been Eric Dolphy, and I wished he would come down out of the far hills and travel with
me.
I miss friendship. I miss music. What She gives them now, what She has led them to believe they want to
hear, is as empty of human concern or enrichment as the fury of a thunderstorm.