"Rhys Hughes - Toastmaster, Buttermistress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Rhys)

Toastmaster, Buttermistress
by
Rhys Hughes

I was feeling nervous, so I went to the funfair to relax. That was a mistake. The crowds were small but
noisy, and the smells were too mysterious. I wandered among the booths and rides, in the lattice shadow of
the rotting rollercoaster. The place was falling apart. I visited every stall, but nothing really tempted me. I
accosted a small man with a large hammer.

"Will you invite me to test my strength?" I said.

"No, I just check for structural defects. I'm an engineer, mister. See this rollercoaster? I hit the beams
and watch how much falls off. I have a collection of nails at home."

"Why don't they shut it all down?"

He shrugged and dragged his hammer by the shaft, between the tents. Later I saw him standing on the
carousel, swinging at the wooden horses. He knocked the head right off a varnished stallion and it went
tumbling to the edge of the spinning platform. Maybe a child or centrifugal force flung it out high above the
crowd. But it wasn't trampled into the mud. Eventually it found its way into a bed.

I had no right to be nervous and now I felt frustrated instead. Worrying about my job is a luxury, because
I'm the best in the business, at least in this city. But there was extra pressure on me today because I had a
personal involvement with my clients. I parted the flaps of a tent, seeking solitude. But it was the abode of a
mystic, a teller of fortunes. She was dark and exotic above her blank crystal ball. Her hands roamed over its
surface.

"Can you guess my career?" I sneered.

"I doubt it. I'm the electrician. They keep having problems with the fuses. This wiring is so old it was used
to hang rebels in forgotten civil wars and insurrections."

"That's a poor excuse for avoiding my challenge. I declare you to be a quack and charlatan, also a fraud,
sham, mountebank, impostor and swindler. I'll go further and label you a cheat, fake and confidence trickster.
How do you live with yourself, hoaxing money off the innocent and gullible? How can you justify taking
advantage of the emotions of the recently bereaved? It's a sad, sick and cynical trade you conduct here! I
suggest you are too incompetent to answer my question. What do you say to that?"

"You make speeches," she said.

"Why yes! I'm a professional toastmaster, a hired orator. I stand automatically whenever a spoon is
tapped against a glass, even if by accident. So your powers are real!"

She shook her head, picked up the crystal ball and fitted it into a socket in the ceiling. It glowed into life,
like some kind of lamp. And when she threw her wand down onto the table, I noted its resemblance to a
screwdriver. I hurried out.

I passed the Tunnel of Love. It was located in the centre of the funfair. An artificial river, too choppy to be
called a canal, ran in through the entrance, went on its hidden way inside the building and came out through
the exit, stagnant and oily. I sighed at the symbolism. There were boats shaped like huge lips, just wide