"Frei-TheGodsend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frei Urs)

A door opened near the front. Two black men struggled with a ladder which they
hooked onto the doorframe. The ladder swayed as they came down one-handed,
carrying luggage in their free hands, and at the bottom they made adjustments to
fix it to the tarmac. Then the American, a white man, appeared in the door. He
was so large that Arthur Nkobe wondered for a moment if he were seeing two men.
Cecil Deng snorted with astonishment. Nkobe held his breath until the American
had reached the bottom, for the plane seemed to sag as he climbed down. The
American stood for a minute in the shadow of the plane, panting. The Dinka had
become silent as he descended. Then as he began to cross the tarmac their voices
rose in alarm and they set out in his direction. When they had reached him one
of them took off his jacket and all six held it up as a screen for him to walk
under. Arthur Nkobe shook his head at the sight of the stately, comical
procession. Cecil, when Arthur caught his eye, could only shrug. At the terminal
door the American shook their hands.

"David Johnson," he said. "Call me Dave. Now get me out of this damn heat, will
you?"

In the restaurant of the European hotel all three air conditioners were turned
to full. Their noise made conversations at other tables inaudible and gave an
air of imminent disaster to the normally placid interior, with its paneled
walls, Parisian lampshades, and portraits of the contemporary European monarchy.
Arthur Nkobe and Cecil Deng waited at one of the tables for David Johnson to
finish washing. They discussed the Dinka languidly but without broaching what
was still puzzling them.

The American had changed into loose white cottons which slightly disguised his
corpulence, and sat down with a sigh. He was astonishingly, almost pitifully
ugly. Whatever expressiveness his face might have had was lost in fat; the shape
of his mouth reminded Arthur of the head of a fish he had once been served in a
hotel on the Red Sea. His eyes in contrast to those of the fish were almost
invisible. He wore a gold ring embedded with diamonds, and so embedded in flesh
that the very idea of trying to remove it was unpleasant. His voice was smaller
than himself and seemed condemned to eternal complaint.

"Another one of those damn places where you can't get a proper shower," he said.

"Water rationing," Arthur Nkobe said. "We're--"

"Oh please. Don't tell me it's different any other season. Where did you go to
school, Oxford or someplace?"

"London."

"For some reason all you people go to Oxford or Harvard or someplace like that.
God am I hungry. Service!" he called, turning as far as he could. "Where did
that waiter go.?"

As they awaited his meal the American recounted the horrors of his journey: six
hours delay in Cairo, the incompetence of immigration officials in Khartoum, a