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

But if Duffey had made these people, and of course he had, how did
their excellence become independent of his. Their wit was too fast for him
to keep up with, and all their jokes were obsoleted by new jokes every
minute. When had Duffey's mind ever worked so fast as did the minds of these
creatures of his?
"I knew that you would be exactly like this," Mary Virginia said,
"banging your hands together as you do! It's as though you still had a
'maker's malfet' in your hands!"
She kissed him with that transcendent way she would always have.
Yes, he'd made them with a 'maker's mallet'. He remembered that part of it
now.
But these people were all just a little bit larger than life, and
maybe they were too large. Henri Salvatore, the Fat Frenchman, was
tremendous. And Hans Schultz was at least enormous. And Absalom Stein, was
he really that big? But Duffey hadn't seen him for quite a few years. He had
never seen him since he had gone by the name of Absalom Stein.
Those three master-work girls who were here right now, Dotty
Yekouris, Mary Virginia Schaeffer, Marie Monaghan, they didn't look overly
large beside the men they were with. And yet each of them would have stood a
quarter of an inch over six feet, barefooted and slouching and smiling
wickedly. They were ample in all ways.
That estimate of their size was Duffey's subjective estimate, of
course. They may not have loomed that large to other people. But Duffey was
their maker, and what size he comprehended for them should have been the
size imposed on them. Duffey recalled that Mary Catherine Caruthers, also in
this town somewhere, was larger than she would seem to ordinary eyes.
Hans and Marie, Henri Salvatoree, Dotty and Mary Virginia, they were
overwhelming. Even Absalom Stein was overwhelming tonight.
Just when had Absalom Stein outgrown his grubby pupa form as Hugo
Stone? Or hadn't he been one of the many mouthy little Stone brothers and
cousins anyhow? Yeah, Absalom was Hugo. But what, by all the compounded
mysteries, was this Stein doing with the others of them in St. Louis. How
did he even happen to be acquaints with the other talismanic children? There
was a wealthy and lurid Jewishness to him such as has not been so powerfully
expressed since the times of the Elizabethans, and then only on-stage. In
life, there had never been such a type before. Absalom gave the impression
that he was wearing a quantity of splendid jewelry, and he wasn't wearing a
single bauble.
The lavish talk that these people poured out! If only it could be
recovered it could be bottled and sold. If it could be created again after
it was gone, then you would have something. But even the creator Duffey
could not create it again. As with all demiurges, angelics, cavern spirits,
pure intellects, monsters, the extraordinary conversations of these splendid
animations could never be recalled later.
Hans Schultz was a thunder-head out of mythology, a holy ox in the
manner of Aquinas himself. But he was such a clash of bulky colors and bulky
speed and bulky fellowship! He was too loud.
There was bad and overdone art in every one of them except Mary
Virginia. They weren't such things as Melchisedech would put on the market
with his reputation for taste behind them. They were such things as he would