"William Kotzwinkle - The Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kotzwinkle William)

Instantly the waves enveloped her, her mind swam, she was under.
There was a city with waving banners. She stood inside an ocean shell and
felt the water on her feet. How sweet it was upon the beach and he who
danced upon the waves
No, he thought, pulling back from her, but he could not stop his
descent, for they were ancient lovers.
A thousand lives have I loved you, she said, seeing clearly in the mirror
of her heart the chain of their love.
Struggling in the tidal wave, he turned to the audience. "Now, ladies
and gentlemen, tonight I would like to perform for you a most daring feat
of magic!" With trembling hands, he lifted the girl and placed her between
two chairs. She lay stretched out in the air, stiff as a board.
 She saw now, worlds were tucked within worlds, memory was vast. She
came down a river and there on its banks she saw him dancing in a loose
gown. She lay in the river on stones as omens reared in the sky a
procession of elephants in gold harness, and he, dancing, brown-skinned,
an African prince.
"Now then," said the magician, snapping his fingers, "bring on the
box." He held to the edge of a chair, trying to pull himself together.
Two of the dancing girls came out, carrying a large wooden box, which
they placed between a pair of sawhorses.
"The subject is in deep trance," said the magician, raising one of her
arms in the air, where it remained motionless, until he lowered it again.
He noticed her eyes fluttering, and through the brief slits he saw the
Orient, shining. So, he had beheaded the Boss of Tu Shin for her, and, he
saw this quite clearly, placed the head on a pole in the Boss's garden.
Covered in fans, she saw in a mirror pool, sparkling, the eastern world.
Oh yes, elegantly had she performed, serving the warrior. Then, changing,
she was gone. The snowcapped mountains melted and she was in the
lowland. Sitting in the door of a temple, legs folded, was a yogi, thin as
paper, eyes flashing in exaltation. Devastated by his gaze, she surrendered
and became him.
"As you will notice, ladies and gentlemen=" The magician lifted the lid,
his forehead pounding. So he had loved her there, too, in the incense of
Benares the sacred city, in the seventy nine positions. " the box is empty."
He worked the lid, with shaking hands. The stage was covered in
visions. In the center was a beating heart from which civilizations were
streaming. Upon the Mayan cliffs he saw a priest in gold robes lower his
knife into a virgin, naked on an altar of stone.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will notice-' He turned the box
upside down. " no false bottom, no escape hatch."
The temple of the sun crumbled, was covered by the jungle, faded into
the earth. The priest vanished, only to emerge again from the beating
heart, into the court of the virgin, now a Syrian Queen, and it was she who
bestowed upon him the high honor of her favored circle. With great
ceremony and the blowing of trumpets was he castrated.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow,
"you will observe the teeth of this saw are sharp as a razor." He brushed
the air in front of his eyes, fighting through the cobwebs of memory: In
the last century, he had left a townhouse in top hat and evening cape,