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

swinging a silver headed cane. Following the opera, drawn by the
moontide he retired to a brothel to escape the rain, and there in the parlor
she sat, laughing darkly, clad in beads. Let me take you away, he said, and
no, she said, removing her beads, it is impossible.
"Very well," said the magician, "a piece of magic rarely seen west of
Morocco." He picked her up, laid her in the box. Just so, long ago, in the
shadow of the Sphinx, had he tucked her away, into the pyramid.
Upward she rose, with brilliant birds, to their paradise, where she
reclined on a couch in the heaven of her lover. It is for the secret of your
illusions that I love you, she said, as they floated through triangles.
She heard the music of the conch horn, bells, and he, on a platform,
thousand eyed, revealed himself to her as he truly was, and he was, in fact,
invisible. No, she said, I must have you, and there, she saw to her relief, he
was the swan and she his lake. These, my true regions, he whispered, and
became the lotus floating, then the toad.


". . . this perilous operation, learned in Cairo. . ." He closed the lid, sat
on the box. Glancing backstage through the curtains and cables, he saw
his wife, smiling at him from the wings. Yes, he thought, I'm in a bit of a
mess. Sweating coldly, he looked down at the box, inside of which his
subject lay sleeping.
And who am I? she asked, dissolving into this life, that life, here, there,
palaces and so forth, and then, satisfied that she was eternal, she relaxed,
recognizing from the heights: She was no one.
He began to saw.
She heard the slow beating of a drum, saw the jungle, wild plumage.
Her body covered in gold fur, she beheld him seated across from her, in
the door of a mountain cave, licking his great paw, ferocious, her king,
winking at her.
"It is not often I perform this feat for fear of arrest," said the magician.
"However, since we are at the end of townтАж" The teeth ripped through the
box and sawdust flew in the air.
Back, back, she was gone, more was coming. They were clumsy dragons,
loving in lost swamps. His long neck, green skin, ponderable his tail, and
her strange egg: The night was pterodactyl, sharp beaked, she was afraid.
Somewhere, she thought, I was a girl.
"I will now ask the gentleman in the front row, that is right, you sir, to
come up and examine the depth of the incision I have made in this box."
The magician leaned confidently on the box, inside of which the saw was
deeply inserted.
The camel will take us away, he whispered, and turning, she saw a
kneeling sad eyed beast. Lifting her silken robe, white, embroidered with
dragons, she climbed up to the cab atop the camel's back, where sat the
magician, smiling, clad in the cloak of the desert. Slowly the beast stood
and walked, like the rocking of waves.
"Very well, my good man," said the magician, "if you are satisfied that
no chicanery is being offered here, I shall proceed."
Across the night sand they rode, beneath the lonely heavens, he silent,
she in prayer, until they came to an oasis, around which a fierce tribe had