"Lian Hearn - Tales of the Otori 01 - Across the Nightingale Floor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

Across the Nightingale Floor
Tales of the Otori - Book One
by Lian Hearn
e-text based on the 1st hardcover edition, 2002, ISBN I-57322-225-9



AUTHORтАЩS NOTE

The three books that make up the Tales of the Otori are set in an imaginary country in a feudal
period. Neither the setting nor the period is intended to correspond to any true historical era, though
echoes of many Japanese customs and traditions will be found, and the landscape and seasons are
those of Japan. Nightingale floors (uguisubari) are real inventions and were constructed around
many residences and temples; the most famous examples can be seen in Kyoto at Nijo Castle and
ChionтАЩIn. I have used Japanese names for places, but these have little connection with real places,
apart from Hagi and Matsue, which are more or less in their true geographical positions. As for
characters, they are all invented, apart from the artist Sesshu, who seemed impossible to replicate.
I hope I will be forgiven by purists for the liberties I have taken. My only excuse is that this is a
work of the imagination.



The deer that weds
The autumn bush clover
They say
Sires a single fawn
And this fawn of mine
This lone boy
Sets off on a journey
Grass for his pillow

MANYOSHU VOL. 9,
NO. 1,790



Across the Nightingale Floor
Chapter 1
My mother used to threaten to tear me into eight pieces if I knocked over the water bucket, or
pretended not to hear her calling me to come home as the dusk thickened and the cicadasтАЩ shrilling
increased. I would hear her voice, rough and fierce, echoing through the lonely valley. тАЬWhereтАЩs
that wretched boy? IтАЩll tear him apart when he gets back.тАЭ
But when I did get back, muddy from sliding down the hillside, bruised from fighting, once
bleeding great spouts of blood from a stone wound to the head (I still have the scar, like a silvered
thumbnail), there would be the fire, and the smell of soup, and my motherтАЩs arms not tearing me
apart but trying to hold me, clean my face, or straighten my hair, while I twisted like a lizard to get
away from her. She was strong from endless hard work, and not old: SheтАЩd given birth to me before
she was seventeen, and when she held me I could see we had the same skin, although in other ways
we were not much alike, she having broad, placid features, while mine, IтАЩd been told (for we had no
mirrors in the remote mountain village of Mino), were finer, like a hawkтАЩs. The wrestling usually