"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

 "Clarie, I have been took bad, for a big wad, and I don't know how it
happened. There is something funny about it all. There was something funny and
familiar about that Masked Alternate Rider for number seven. (I swear that I
know him from somewhere!) And there has always been something double funny and
familiar about that gambler Rakesly Rivertown. [I swear and be damned if I
don't know him from somewhere!]"
"Don't worry about it, Aurie. You are so smart that you will have all
that money made back in no time at all."
"Yes, that's true, I will. But how can I write and produce and direct a
drama and then get taken in it and not know what happened?"
"Don't worry about it, Aurie."
I myself doubt very much whether Aurelian Bentley knew about the "slow
sounds" from nowhere-town that sometimes broke into the playing of his dramas,
much less the "slow smells" which now began to give the dramas a character all
their own.
4. The Voyages of Captain Cook was the fourth of the Bentley-produced
television dramas of the year 1873. In this, Clarinda Calliope played the role
of Maria Masina, the Queen of Polynesia. If The Great Bicycle Race was a
journey into summertime, The Voyages of Captain Cook was a journey into
tropical paradise.
Hubert Saint Nicholas played Captain Cook. Inspiro Spectraiski (Is he a
Man? Is he a Fish?) played the Shark God. Leslie Whitemansion played the
Missionary. X. Paul McCoffin played the Volcano God. Torres Malgre played the
God of the Walking Dead. Jaime del Diablo played Kokomoko, the bronzed surf
boy and lover boy who was always holding a huge red hibiscus bloom between his
white teeth.
The people of the South Sea Islands of the Captain Cook drama were
always eating possum and sweet potatoes and fried chicken (a misconception)
and twanging on little banjoes (another misconception) and talking southern
U.S. Darky Dialect (but these ghost voices were not intended to be heard on
the television presentation).
The complete libretto for The Voyages of Captain Cook has survived,
which makes us grateful for those that have not survived for several of the
dramas. The story is replete. It is better to disregard the libretto with its
simultaneous curses invoked by the Shark God, the Volcano God, and the God of
the Walking Dead, and to give onself over to the charm of the scenery, which
is remarkable, considering that it was all "filmed", or "selenium-matrixed",
in the salt swamps of New Jersey.
The anomalous intrusive voices are in this drama again, as they will be
in all the subsequent dramas.
"A 'South Sea Bubble', yes, that's what I want, Aurie, one that can't
burst. Use your imagination [you have so very much of it] and your finances
[you have so very much of those] and come up with something that will delight
me."
"I swear to you, Clarie, as soon as my finances are in a little better
order, I will buy any island or group of islands in the Pacific Ocean for you.
Do you hear me, Clarie? I will give you any island or group you wish, Hawaii,
Samoa, Fiji. Name it and it is yours."
"So many things you promise! But you don't promise them on paper, only
on air. Maybe I will find a way to make the air retain the promises you make."