"Elizabeth Hand - Prince of Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

Prince of Flowers
Elizabeth Hand
Helen's first assignment on the inventory project was to the Department of
Worms. For two weeks she paced the narrow alleys between immense tiers of glass
cabinets, opening endless drawers of freeze-dried invertebrates and tagging each
with an acquisition number. Occasionally she glimpsed other figures, drab as herself
in government-issue smocks, grey shadows stalking through the murky corridors.
They waved at her but seldom spoke, except to ask directions; everyone got lost in
the museum.
Helen loved the hours lost in wandering the labyrinth of storage rooms, research
labs, chilly vaults crammed with effigies of Yanomano Indians and stuffed jaguars.
Soon she could identify each department by its smell: acrid dust from the feathered
pelts in Ornithology; the cloying reek of fenugreek and syrup in Mammalogy's roach
traps; fish and formaldehyde in Icthyology. Her favourite was Palaeontology, an
annex where the air smelled damp and clean, as though beneath the marble floors
trickled hidden water, undiscovered caves, mammoth bones to match those stored
above. When her two weeks in Worms ended she was sent to Palaeo, where she
delighted in the skeletons strewn atop cabinets like forgotten toys, disembodied
skulls glaring from behind wastebaskets and bookshelves. She found a fabrosaurus
ischium wrapped in brown paper and labelled in crayon; beside it a huge hand-hewn
crate dated 1886 and marked Wyoming megosaur. It had never been opened. Some
mornings she sat with a small mound of fossils before her, fitting the pieces together
with the aid of a Victorian monograph. Hours passed in total silence, weeks when
she saw only three or four people, curators slouching in and out of their research
cubicles. On Fridays, when she dropped off her inventory sheets, they smiled.
Occasionally even remembered her name. But mostly she was left alone, sorting
cartons of bone and shale, prying apart frail skeletons of extinct fish as though they
were stacks of newsprint.
Once, almost without thinking, she slipped a fossil fish into the pocket of her
smock. The fossil was the length of her hand, as perfectly formed as a fresh beech
leaf. All day she fingered it, tracing the imprint of bone and scale. In the bathroom
later she wrapped it in paper towels and hid it in her purse to bring home. After that
she started taking things.
At a downtown hobby shop she bought little brass and lucite stands to display
them in her apartment. No one else ever saw them. She simply liked to look at them
alone.
Her next transfer was to Mineralogy, where she counted misshapen meteorites
and uncut gems. Gems bored her, although she took a chunk of petrified wood and
a handful of unpolished amethysts and put them in her bathroom. A month later she
was permanently assigned to Anthropology.
The Anthropology Department was in the most remote corner of the museum; its
proximity to the boiler room made it warmer than the Natural Sciences wing, the air
redolent of spice woods and exotic unguents used to polish arrowheads and
axe-shafts. The ceiling reared so high overhead that the rickety lamps swayed slightly
in draughts that Helen longed to feel. The constant subtle motion of the lamps sent
flickering waves of light across the floor. Raised arms of Balinese statues seemed to
undulate, and points of light winked behind the empty eyeholes of feathered masks.
Everywhere loomed shelves stacked with smooth ivory and gaudily beaded
bracelets and neck-rings. Helen crouched in corners loading her arms with bangles
until her wrists ached from their weight. She unearthed dusty, lurid figures of temple