"M. John Harrison - Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison John M)

a handful of pebbles which still smelled faintly of the sea, arranged carefully in front of a framed
photograph of himself at seven years old.
Though it was his own, the life these objects represented seemed unreadable and impassive. After
staring at them for a moment, he rubbed his hands across his face and lit the candle. He shook the
Shrander's dice out of their little leather bag: threw them repeatedly. Larger than you would expect, made
from some polished brownish substance which he suspected was human bone, they skittered and rolled
between the other objects, throwing up patterns he could make nothing of. Before he stole the dice, he
had cast Tarot cards for the same purpose: there were two or three decks in the chest of drawers
somewhere, grubby from use but still in their original cartons.
'Do you want something to eat?' Anna called from the bathroom. There was a sound of her moving in
the water. 'I could make you something if you like.'
Kearney sighed.
'That would be nice,' he said.
He threw the dice again, then replaced them and looked round the room. It was small, with bare
untreated floorboards and a window which looked out on the thick black foul-pipes of other flats. On the
off-white wall above the chest of drawers, Kearney had years ago drawn two or three diagrams in
coloured chalk. He couldn't make anything of them, either.
After they had eaten, she lit candles and persuaded him to go to bed with her. 'I'm really tired,' she
said. 'Really exhausted.' She sighed and clung to him. Her skin was still damp and flushed from the bath.
Kearney ran his fingers down between her buttocks. She breathed in sharply, then rolled away on to her
stomach and half-knelt, raising herself so that he could reach her better. Her sex felt like very soft suede.
He rubbed it until her entire body went rigid and she came, gasping, making a kind of tiny coughing
groan. To his surprise this gave him an erection. He waited for it to subside, which took a few minutes,
then said:
'I probably have to go away.'
She stared at him. 'But what about me?'
'Anna, I left you long ago,' he reminded her.
'But you're still here. You're happy to come and fuck me; you come for this.'
'It's you who wants this.'
She clutched his hand. 'But I see that thing,' she said. 'I see it every day now.'
'When do you see it? It doesn't want you anyway. It never did.'
'I'm so exhausted today. I really don't know what's the matter with me.'
'If you ate more тАФ '
She turned her back on him abruptly.
'I don't know why you come here,' she whispered. Then, vehemently: 'I have seen it. I've seen it in that
room. It stands in there, staring out of the window.'
'Christ,' he said. 'Why didn't you tell me before?'
'Why should I tell you anything?'
She fell asleep soon after that. Kearney moved away from her and lay staring at the ceiling, listening to
the traffic cross Chiswick Bridge. It was a long time before he could sleep. When he did, he experienced,
in the form of a dream, a memory of his childhood.

It was very clear. He was three years old, perhaps less, and he was collecting pebbles on a beach. All
the visual values of the beach were pushed, as in some advertising image, so that things seemed a little
too sharp, a little too bright, a little too distinct. Sunlight glittered on a receding tide. The sand curved
gently away, the colour of linen blinds. Gulls stood in a line on the groyne nearby. Michael Kearney sat
among the pebbles. Still wet, and sorted by the undertow into drifts and bands of different sizes, they lay
around him like jewels, dried fruit, nubs of bone. He ran them through his fingers, choosing, discarding,
choosing and discarding. He saw cream, white, grey; he saw tiger colours. He saw ruby red. He wanted
them all! He glanced up to make sure his mother was paying attention, and when he looked down again,