"Simon Ings - The Wedding Party" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ings Simon)

Redson is younger than Hope by two years. They have a Malawian
mother, dead of AIDS. They have a Scottish father, a lapsed minister who
vanished as soon as they got of an age to start ask-ing about passports
and paternity. There is another brother, a half-brother, through whom I first
met themтАФOlaf, a surgeon at the hospital where I did my placement. It was
him who taught me how to fillet skin flaps for the scores of amputees we
were dealing with then. Malawian roads, for all that they are practically
empty, are some of the most dangerous in the world.

HopeтАЩs skin is as dark as OlafтАЩsтАФsheтАЩs as dark as any pure-bred
African. DadтАЩs pallid genes kept out of sight, dwelling instead, deep in the
bone, narrowing and tightening her features as she grew, lengthening her
neck and her back. DadтАЩs seed made her magically beautifulтАФpeople
imagine sheтАЩs desert stock, from Namibia or even further north. A regal
Saharan beauty. TheyтАЩd never guess the wet and windy truth.

Redson, though, heтАЩs the other side of the coin. DadтАЩs seed floats on
RedsonтАЩs surface like a rash. It has gingered his hair and freckled his
hands. Rough, blotched skin hangs off his heavy features like an old dog
blanket. Stocky, hairy, unpleasure-giving. Until you understand the nature of
my desire, my choice of lover seems ludicrous. You see, I was only half in
love with him, just as I was only half in love with Hope. I loved the person
they might be. But loveтАЩs all done with now. Unsa-tiated, love gnarls itself
into something else, something nameless.

He is saying things to me like, тАЬLeave me alone.тАЭ тАЬI want to stay in
France.тАЭ тАЬI can speak French.тАЭ Only he is a murdererтАФin the lawтАЩs eyes, if
not his own. And where might he procure a faster, more reliable change of
identity than from me, with all my contactsтАФand all of them on the other
side of that maddeningly narrow strip of water, that Channel?

And I am sitting here holding his hands, reassur-ing him for what
seems like hours, is hoursтАФ2pm now, and you can see the panic and the
exhaustion battling it out through that mottled, gingerish skin of his as he
slides down in his seat. I stir him, lift him, urge him to the room I have laid
out for himтАФdark, cool, looking landward, in an upper storey overlooked by
no one.

It is hard to let go of his hand, hard not to bring it to my face. It is hard
to face tomorrow.

So after a catnap I walk into town and have an early dinner at a
seafood restaurant done out like a Thirties Parisian metro. I order smoked
cod and cider and though the food is excellent I realize I have made a very
bad choice. I must not drink because of tomorrow, and without a drink, and
surrounded by this decor, how can I not fill my head with thoughts of metros
and train tunnels, nets closing in, of narrowing doorways and lids coming
downтАФ?

I am back before Redson wakes. Carefully, I let myself into his room.