"Eric Flint - The Philosophical Strangler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

surprised at how well scrubbed the floor is. If they survive the first month, they understand the reason
for it. If they don't, they're the latest occasion for the mop.
First, though, it's time for genuflection. Turn to your right, and worshipтАФ
The Bar Itself.
O, Eighth Wonder of the World!
The Bar Itself runs the entire length of one side of the taproom. You can't usually see the end of it,
on account of the smoke and the gloom. It just kind of fades away, like all your first-class religious
mysteries. It's wood, of courseтАФnone of your foppish hoity-toity stuff. Oak, mostly, although you can
find almost any other kind of wood used to patch up the many busted sections.
Contemplating the Bar Itself is the closest I ever get to philosophy. Willingly, I mean.
I'm serious. All the fancy problems that philosophers waste their time fretting over can be solved
just by studying the Bar Itself.
The distinction between Essence and Appearance, for instance, shows up in the way the Bar Itself
actually dissolves into its many components. Each portion of the Bar Itself has its own distinct identity.
First and foremost, there's the Old Bar. That's the first twenty or so feet of it, right by the door. The
Old Bar is actually an upturned watering trough which, legend has it, served as the original bar when
the place first opened in the dim mists of ancient history. (Yeah, I knowтАФthat conflicts with the legend
of the minor farm god. So? Legends conflict, it's the nature of the beasts.)
In modern times, this original section of the barтАФalso known as The Trough Proper, by the wayтАФ
is reserved by right and custom for the most aged of The Trough's customers. These heroesтАФsure,
they're a lot of doddering oldsters, but you have to be a genuine hero to survive the number of years it
takes to be elevated to the Old BarтАФsit there for hours on end quaffing ale through toothless gums and
squabbling over their reminiscences of days gone by. They also, I might mention, serve The Trough as
its Court of Final Appeal.
Next to the Old Bar, as we move away from the doorтАФ Oh. Yeah, I should mention that there's an
elaborate nomenclature by which directions in The Trough are specified. I won't get into itтАФway too
technical for laymen, don't you know?тАФbut, for the record, moving down the Bar Itself away from the
door is called "nethering," or, by your real hard-core Trough-men, "nether-reaching."
Anyway, nethering from the Old Bar we come to Anselm's Cursed Yard-and-a-Half, as the next
stretch is called. But we won't linger on Anselm's Cursed Yard-and-a-Half. Nobody ever sits there, not
since Anselm cursed it some two hundred years ago. (And if you don't know who Anselm was, or why
he cursed it, or why anyone worries about an old curse, that's tough. I'm a proper Trough-man, I am,
and there's some things you just don't talk about.)
The next stretch, comprising some thirty-five feet in length, are called the Blessed Planks. The oak
slabs which make up most of the Bar Itself are absent here. Sometime back in the dawn of historyтАФ
after the Suspected Soap Bead Uprising, according to legendтАФthey were replaced by planks of cheap
pine. Miraculously, as century succeeded century, the pine lasted. Unscarred, ungouged, uncarved,
pristine and perfect. This, given the nature of The Trough, is an obvious miracle. Most Trough-men
believe that a pot of ale served up on the Blessed Planks is better than any served elsewhere.
Superstitious sots. I've got no truck with that nonsense, myself. Ale's ale, and there's an end to it.
The ale at The Trough is the best in the world, and that's that. Doesn't matter where it's served or where
you drink it, just as long as it makes its way down your throat.
Our hearts lighten, now, as we come to the next portion of the Bar Itself. This is where I hang out,
whenever I'm not sitting at a table like I usually am on account of how Greyboar and I are too couth to
belly up to a bar like your average lowlifes.
Eddie Black's, it's usually called. If you want to get formal about it, it's The Stretch Where Eddie
Black Was Probably Conceived. And if you really want to go black-tie over the matter, it's The Stretch
Where Eddie Black Was Probably Conceived If You Believe His Slut of a Mother and If You Ignore
The Bloodstains Which Is What's Left of Smooth-Talking Ferdinand After Eddie Black's Father John-
the-Ill-Tempered Carved Him Up On Account of How Eddie Black's Pop Was Convinced That Eddie