"Garry Kilworth - The Sculptor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kilworth Garry)

The Sculptor
a short story by Garry Kilworth

NiccolЄ reached the pale of the Great Desert at noon on the third day. He
dismounted and led his horse and seventeen pack camels towards the last
water he would see for six weeks. There at the river's edge they drank.
Some would have said that so many camels was an expensive luxury, but
NiccolЄ knew the value of too many over too few. Only eight of them were
carrying the statuettes. Of the remaining camels, two were loaded with his
and his mount's personal supplies, three were carrying water, and three
were loaded with fodder to feed the other camels. The last camel was
packing fodder for the fodder-carriers but not for itself. It was possible
that this camel, or one of the others, would die of starvation before he
reached the Tower.
NiccolЄ had had to call a halt at seventeen. When he had consulted the
sage, Cicaro, the old man had recommended that to ensure survival he take
an endless string of camels with him. Distance, food-chains, energy
levels, temperatures, humidities, moisture loss - when all the relevant
information had been given to Cicaro, and the calculations made, the
result was camels stretching into infinity. Impossibilities were not the
concern of the sage. He merely applied his mathematics to the problem and
gave you the answer.
At least they were flesh and blood. Towards the end of the journey NiccolЄ
could begin eating them, if it became necessary. At that moment he found
the thought distasteful, though he was no sentimentalist, and had
refrained from even naming his horse. NiccolЄ knew, however, that when it
came to the choice between starvation or butchering one of the beasts,
whatever he promised himself now, he would use the knife without
hesitation. He had eaten worms, even filled his stomach with dirt, when he
had been without food. Man is a wretched creature when brought to the
level of death. When he has shed his scruples he will eat his own brother,
let alone a horse or a camel.
Yet there was a mystery there. Man also perplexes himself, NiccolЄ
thought, as he filled his canteens from the river. When he and Arturo had
almost run out of water in this very desert, they had fought like dogs for
the last few mouthfuls, would have killed each other for them. Then rescue
had come, at the last moment, preventing murder.
Yet, not two months afterwards, Arturo ironically committed suicide, hung
himself in the back room of a way station, for love of a whore.
Why does a man fight tooth and nail to live one day, and kill himself the
next? It was as if life was both precious and useless, not at the same
time, but in different contexts. Life changed its values according to
emotional colours. In the desert, dying of thirst, Arturo had only one
thought in mind - to live. It had been a desperate, savage thought,
instinctive.
Yet that instinct had vanished when Arturo had climbed on that ale barrel
and tied a window sash around his neck. Why hadn't it sprung out from that
place in which it was lurking, waiting to perform, to kill for life?
Perhaps it is hopelessness that kills the instinct in its lair? In the
desert, if he fought hard and callously enough, the water might eventually