"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 02 - Tales of Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

notice just how magic-imbued they really were. Casey Szymansky and Mary
Catherine Carruthers also belonged to these special creatures, but Duffey
had seen them almost daily from their childhoods.
But here about him now were five of his creatures that Duffey had
never seen before, and a sixth one whom he had never seen with open eyes
before. Since when had a sixth one become Absalom Stein? Hadn't he used to
be somebody more grubby?
Oh, there were the old 'Unreality Fringes' about all of the
magnificent animations. And yet they were real. That sort of smokey halo
that they all had, it was called the 'unreality fringe' in the lingo of
sorcerers. But these persons were real.
The people at the Rounders' Club had discovered that Duffey was in
their midst now. For a whthe there, this artist had been in the dark shadow
of his own animated art. He had been dwarfed by it. Now it was recognized
that these special people had all been made by Duffey, that they were among
his easy masterpieces. A little combo there played 'The King Shall Ride'.
And then it played the rousing 'Gadarene Swine Song.' Olga Sanchez of the
torchy shoulders still worked there. She came and caressed him, as others
did. Duffey was back in his legendary feifdom.
Duffey had a whole riot of mixed feelings about this colorful sprawl
of youngish people that he had created. Each one of them was clearly an
expression of his art at its best, but maybe they expressed him a little too
strongly. Oh, they were all brainy and brawny and brilliant, but it may be
that triey were somewhat excessive in all of it. Was this flamboyance in the
right line of real art? Maybe. These special people were arts and statuaries
of Duffey, were they not? They even conceded that they were.
"Duffey misunderstands his own processes," Marie Monaghan Schultz
said. "He does not make us. He collects us and gives us our settings and our
sparkle. He found our souls hidden away and forgotten in old junk stories.
He bought us all for a song. I think it was the 'Gadarene Swine Song' he
bought us for. And now he puts us on display. We were all in 'Razzle Daz'
and when you have been in Razzle Daz, you can't get any higher than that."
Duffey gaped almost without understanding her. He had difficulty
remembering, with all this light shining in his eyes and in his ears. But
Razzle Daz had been a little comic strip he drew for the Crock. He had done
it with unused parts of his mind and with unbusy moments of his hands, but
many persons had thought that it was absolutely the best thing in the Crock,
which Duffey had never quite understood. And, yes, of course, these splendid
animations had been the models for the characters in Razzle Daz. Those
characters had even gone by the nicknames of some of the splendid
animations, 'Finnegan' for instance, and 'Hans', and 'Show Boat'.
"Duffey collects works of art," Marie Monaghan went on, "and we are
all of us works of art."
"You are wrong, Marie," Duffey inswasted. "I do make you. But I
haven't collected you, and I don't know how you have collected yourselves in
this town. I did not give you your settings and sparkle quite as you have
them now. I think you're a little overdone. You may have to be changed."
"You will change us at your peril, grubby sorcerer," Dotty Yekourwas
told him. "We like us just the wy we are, and we like you the way you are.
Oh, may your nose never heal!"