"Esther M. Friesner - A Pig's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

He was on the grounds of an impressive, imposing, implicitly British boys' school. Instead of the
tender hand of an older sister to brush away the leaves that had fallen on his face while he drowsed, he
met the stern gaze of a Master who instructed him to get his lazy carcase into chapel for Evensong or
expect six of the best across his backside afterwards.
The years that followed thereтАФand at Cambridge afterтАФ are of little interest to the general reader
and less to the pig. No one on the faculty, staff, or student body at his first school ever remarked upon
the fact that there was an extra mouth to feed, a new bed to be made up, a fresh face to be recognized.
The bills were paid in timely fashion; that sufficed.
The pig went home with his friends during the school holidays, where he was duly presented to this
or that brace of beaming parents as the son of a duchess. (True enough.) On the school records, he
rejoiced in the name of Anthony Piperade, Lord DuCoeur. He grew up straight and tall and honest, with
a healthy pink complexion and an appetite that made fond mothers admonish their own chicks to emulate
him.
He did not get fat. He did not see anything wrong with eating bacon.
When he attained his majority, he was summoned to the Inns of Court where he was solemnly
invested with full control over his inheritance. Documents were pushed back and forth across the table.
Thus did young Lord Anthony learn that the Mad Hatter's mercury-induced insanity had not left him blind
to the advantages of investing (heavily) in textile interests. A sealed letter was placed in the pig's hands.
It's too late for me, my boy, it read. They have brought up the big guns. By the time this reaches
you, I will have succumbed to being an Orphic archetype. Madness and poetry supposedly sleep in
one bed. Fools that they are, they willfully overlook the fact that some poets manage to earn a
living at it. Adieu and toadies. Destroy this before reading.
'There was also this," said the man of law, giving the pig a small pasteboard box. It held the
fragments of a broken teacup.
The pig looked up. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he asked.
The man of law chuckled and said that his lordship was pleased to be jocular.
Now that the mystery had been removed from his finances, he was his own pig. It was a very good
feeling. He read Law at Cambridge and came to be a barrister with rooms in town and a fine place in the
country. He continued to keep up his public school and university friendships. He traveled abroad and
was enriched without becoming unduly aesthetic.
One drizzly day he encountered his mother in a Paris sidewalk cafe. The Duchess was sipping
absinthe and reading a copy of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. (Time had passed. It will, given half the
chance.) "Mother?" the pig inquired.
The Duchess looked up from her reading. "Oh, it's you," she said in an affable manner. "Join me,
won't you?"
The pig was rather nonplussed by his mother's casual attitude. After all, he'd thought her dead, and
what she'd thought his fate had beenтАФ
Or had she given that matter any thought at all? Women who thrust their infants into the care of
other childrenтАФtotal strangersтАФcannot possibly have more on their minds than whether they've left
themselves enough time to get good seats at the theater.
So the pig ordered a glass of gin-and-bitters when the waiter came, and made small talk until the
drink was brought, and in general made himself as agreeable a companion as his social reputation always
painted him. ("Good old Tony! He's a safe guest to make up your dinner party, Mavis. Pleasant-looking,
wellborn, rich, nowhere near as witty as me, eats what's put in front of him, and he goes with any
decor.")
But eventually the demon of Meaning would have his day, and the pig heard himself telling the
Duchess that she was looking quite well for someone who had ostensibly burned to death in a
conflagration lo, these many years agone.
"Oh, that," said the Duchess. She snapped her fingers and the waiter brought her another absinthe,
although the fashion for the drink of Decadents has passed with the turning of the century and the