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

sunlight, occasionally calling out to passers-by, but reserving most of her attention for two or three
pigeons hobbling about in front of her. Kearney handed her the bag.
'Now,' he said. 'Tell me what you see.'
She gave him a cheerful smile. 'I don't see anything,' she said. 'I take my medication. I always take it.'
She held the Pret bag for a moment then returned it to him. 'I don't want this.'
'Yes you do,' he said, taking things out to show her. 'Look! All Day Breakfast!'
'You eat it,' she said.
He put the bag down next to her on the bench and took her by the shoulders. He knew that if he said
the right thing she would prophesy. 'Listen,' he assured her, as urgently as he knew how, 'I know what
you know. Do you see?'
'What do you want? I'm frightened of you.'
Kearney laughed.
 'I'm the one frightened,' he said. 'Look, have this. Have these.'
The woman glanced at the sandwiches in his hands, then looked over her left shoulder as if she had
seen someone she knew.
'I don't want it. I don't want them.' She strained to keep her head turned away from him. 'I want to go
now.'
'What do you see?' he insisted.
'Nothing.'
'What do you see?'
'Something coming down. Fire coming down.'
'What fire?'
'Let me go.'
'What fire is that?'
'Let me go, now. Let me go.'
Kearney let her go and walked away. Aged eighteen, he had dreamed of himself at the end of a life
like hers. He was reeling and staggering down sc me alley, full of revelation like a disease. He was old
and regretful, but for years something had been combusting its way from the cent re of him towards the
outer edge, where it now burst uncontrollably from his fingertips, from his eyes, his mouth, his sex, setting
his clothes on fire. Later he had seen how unlikely this was. Whatever he might be, he wasn't mad, or
alcoholic, or even unlucky. Looking back into Soho Square, he watched the schizophrenics passing his
sandwiches from hand to hand, peeling them apart to examine the filling. He had stirred them like soup.
Who knew what might come to the surface? In principle, he felt sorry for them, even amiable. The praxis
of it was bleaker. They were as disappointing as children. You saw light in their eyes, but it was the ignis
fatuus. In the end, they knew less than Brian Tate, and he knew nothing at all.
Valentine Sprake, who claimed to know as much as Kearney, perhaps more, wasn't at the Lymph
Club; no one had seen him there for a month. Eyeing the yellowed walls, the afternoon drinkers, the TV
above the bar, Kearney bought a drink and wondered where he should look next. Outside, the afternoon
had turned to rain, the streets were full of people talking into mobile phones. Knowing that he would be
forced, sooner or later, to face an empty apartment on his own, he sighed with impatience, turned up the
collar of his jacket, and went home. There, ill at ease but worn out by what he thought of as the
emotional demands of Brian Tate, Anna Kearney and the woman in Soho Square, he turned on all the
lights and fell asleep in an armchair.

'Your cousins are coming,' Kearney's mother told him.
He was eight. He was so excited he ran away as soon as they arrived, off across the fields behind the
house and through a strip of woodland, until he came to a pond or shallow lake surrounded by willows. It
was his favourite place. No one was ever there. In winter, brown reeds emerged from the thin white
cat-ice at its margins; in summer, insects buzzed among the willows. Kearney stood for a long time,
listening to the diminishing cries of the other children. As soon as he was sure they wouldn't follow him, a