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

"Not on paper, not on air, Clarie, but in real life. I will make you the
real and living Queen of Polynesia."
The essence of the South Sea appeal is just plain charm. It may be that
this Bentley drama, The Voyages of Captain Cook, was the original charm bush
whence many things bloomed. No, in things of this sort, it is not necessary
that a scion ever be in contact with its source or even know its source.
Without the Voyages would there ever have been a Sadie Thompson, would there
have been a Nellie Forbush? Would there have been a Nina, daughter of Almayer?
Well, they wouldn't have been as they were if Clarinda Calliope hadn't, in a
way, played them first. Would there have been a White Shadows of the South
Seas if there hadn't first been The Voyages of Captain Cook? No, of course
there wouldn't have been.
5. Crimean Days was the fifth of the Aurelian Bentley television dramas.
In this, the multitalented Clarinda Calliope played the role of Florence
Nightingale, of Ekmek Kaya, a Turkish lady of doubtful virtue who was the
number-four wife and current favorite of the Turkish admiral, of Chiara
Maldonado, a young lady camp follower with the army of Savoy, of Katya
Petrova, who was a Russian princess as well as a triple spy, and of Claudette
Boud in, a French lady journalist. CIa rinda also masqueraded as Claudette's
twin brother Claude, a colonel with the French forces, and as such she led the
French to a surprising victory over the Russians at Eupatoria. The
unmasqueraded Claude himself was played by Apollo Mont-de-Marsan, a young
actor making his first appearance in the Bentley dramas.
The Crimean War was the last war in which the field officers of all
sides (Leslie Whitemansion was a British field officer, Kirbac Fouet was a
French, Jaime del Diablo was an officer of the forces of Savoy, Torres Malgre
was the Turkish admiral, Inspiro Spectralski was a general of the Czar, X.
Paul McCoffin was a special observer of the Pope), after their days of
tactical maneuver and sometimes bloody conflict, would dress for dinner and
have formal dinner together. And it was at these dinners that Clarinda
Calliope, in her various guises, shone.
There was a wonderful and many-leveled table intrigue, and I believe
that more and more of it will come through every time the drama is replayed.
And it was here in this drama that one of the most strange of the
Bentley-effect phenomena first appeared. There is unmistakable evidence that
some of the subvocalizations (thoughts) of the people were now to be heard as
"slow sound", which was really selenium-triggered "slow thought". Some of
these manifestations were the role thoughts of the actors so strangely
vocalized (Clarinda Calliope, for instance, could not speak or think in any
tongues except English and her own Pennsylvania Dutch in normal circumstances:
but in her triple spy roles we find her thinking out loud in Turkish and Greek
and Russian); and other of the vocalizations are the real thoughts of the
actors (the amazingly frank intentions of Leslie Whitemansion and of the new
Apollo Mont-de-Marsan as to their lady loves of the evening after they should
have received their two-dollar actors' fee for the day).
It was a wonderful play and too intricate to be described. This one,
above all, has to be seen. But again there was the anomalous intrusion of
voices that were not a part of the scenes of the play: "Get rid of that Greek
Wop kid, Clarie. I told him he was fired, and he said that he would stick
around and work for nothing. He said he loved the fringe benefits. What are