"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Royals of Hegn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

The Royals of Hegn
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Hegn is a small country, an island monarchy blessed with a marvelous climate and
a vegetation so rich that lunch or dinner there consists of reaching up to a
tree to pluck a succulent, sunwarmed, ripe, rare steakfruit, or sitting down
under a llumbush and letting the buttery morsels drop onto one’s lap or
straight into one mouth. And then for dessert there are the sorbice blossoms,
tart, sweet, and crunchy.
Four or five centuries ago the Hegnish were evidently an enterprising, stirring
lot, who built good roads, fine cities, noble country houses and palaces, all
surrounded by literally delicious gardens. Then they entered a settling-down
phase, and at present they simply live in their beautiful houses. They have
hobbies, pursued with tranquil obsession. Some take up the cultivation and
breeding of ever finer varieties of grapes. (The Hegnian grape is self-
fermenting; a small cluster of them has the taste, scent, and effect of a split
of Veuve Clicquot. Left longer on the vine, the grapes reach 80 or 90 proof, and
the taste comes to resemble a good single malt whiskey.) Some raise pet gorkis,
an amiable, short-legged domestic animal; others embroider pretty hangings for
the churches; many take their pleasure in sports. They all enjoy social
gatherings.
People dress nicely for these parties. They eat some grapes, dance a little, and
talk. Conversation is desultory and, some would say, vapid. It concerns the kind
and quality of the grapes, discussed with much technicality; the weather, which
is usually settled fair, but can always be threatening, or have threatened, to
rain; and sports, particularly the characteristically Hegnish game of sutpot,
which requires a playing field of several acres and involves two teams, many
rules, a large ball, several small holes in the ground, a movable fence, a
short, flat bat, two vaulting poles, four umpires, and several days. No non-
Hegnish person has ever been able to understand it. Hegnishmen discuss the last
match played with the same grave deliberation and relentless attention to detail
with which they played it. Other subjects of conversation are the behavior of
pet gorkis and the decoration of the local church. Religion and politics are
never discussed. It may be that they do not exist, having been reduced to a
succession of purely formal events and observances, while their place is filled
by the central element, the focus and foundation of Hegnish society, which is
best described as the Degree of Consanguinity.
It is a small island, and nearly everybody is related. As it is a monarchy, or
rather a congeries of monarchies, this means that almost everybody is related to
a monarch or is a member of the Royal Family.
In earlier times this universality of aristocracy caused trouble and dissension.
Rival claimants to the crown tried to eliminate each other; there was a long
period of violence referred to as the Purification of the Peerage, a war called
the Agnate War, and the brief, bloody Cross-Cousins Revolt. But all these family
quarrels were settled when the genealogies of every lineage and individual were
established and recorded in the great work of
the reign of Eduber XII of Sparg, the
Book of the Blood.

Now
four hundred and eighty-eight years old, this book is, I may