"Nicola Griffith - Yaguara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Griffith Nicola)

seen villagers walking through the trees to their milpas, mattocks
on their shoulders. They had greeted her with a smile and a wave.
Sometimes, too, she would look up from her camera to see
Cleis and Ixbalum together, out of earshot, talking. Jane wondered
why Ixbalum was now willing to speak to Cleis; wondered what she
was saying, what craziness she was spilling into CleisтАЩs eager ears.
But she did not ask. Instead, she tried to push Cleis from her mind
by working from first light until last. At night she would lie down,
exhausted, and fall into a troubled sleep. Her dreams were vivid
and fractured. More than once she woke to find Cleis gone from
her bed. Where do you go? Jane wanted to ask, and how? But she never
did. She imagined Cleis and Ixbalum gliding through the jungle,
looking into the dark with their golden eyesтАж
One night her dreams were jumbled images: time running
backward while she watched the ruins re-form into a city; vast
storms overhead; Cleis talking to her earnestly, explaining.
тАЬIxbalum doesnтАЩt care what I know anymore. It doesnтАЩt matter
what the children tell me. IтАЩm hers now.тАЭ Jane woke drenched in
sweat. She looked over at CleisтАЩs bed: she was sleeping like a baby.
Am I going mad?
She needed to get away. She got out of bed, pulled on her
clothes.
She waited until just after dawn to wake Cleis. тАЬThe
photography is ahead of schedule, and we need supplies. IтАЩm
driving to Benque Viejo. IтАЩll be gone two or three days.тАЭ
 Jane had expected to reach Benque Viejo, walk through its
streets, loud with traffic and thick with the stink of leaded gasoline,
and come slowly out of her nightmare. All the time she was pulling
Belize dollars from her wallet for bottled gas and beer and canned
food she wondered when it would stop feeling strange and
dangerous to be back in the world.
She booked herself into a hotel and took a bath, but the water
was only lukewarm and she found herself longing for the lake with
its water cabbage and kingfisher.
After weeks of eating fish and fruit and corn, the steak dinner
was alien and almost inedible. She left a tip on the table and walked
from the restaurant into the street. The sky was dusky pink,
streaked with pearl gray clouds. She wished Cleis could be there to
see it. And then she knew she did not want to spend three days here
in Benque Viejo when she could be at Kuchil Balum. The rains
would be coming soon.


There was no time. Because when the rains came, Cleis would
go back to New Mexico, and sheтАж
What is happening to me? She did not know. All she knew was
that she had to get back.


It was mid-afternoon of the next day when she parked in