"Ursula K. Leguin - Olders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

spoke or moved in that moment. "He is dead," she said in a whisper, drawing
back.

"He is alive," the doctor said. And the oldest of the litterbearers, Pask the
saddler, said in his rumbling bass, "He lives, Makalidem. But the wound was
deep."

The doctor looked with pity and respect at the Farmwife, at her bare feet and
her clear, bewildered eyes. "Dema," he said, "let us bring him in to the
warmth."

"Yes, yes," she said, rising and running ahead to prepare.

When the stretcher bearers came out again, half the people of Sandry were in
the
courtyard waiting to hear their news. Most of all they looked to old Pask when
he came out, and he looked at them all. He was a big, slow man, girthed like
an
oak, with a stiff face set in deep lines. "Will he live?" a woman ventured.
Pask
continued looking them all over until he chose to speak. "We'll plant him," he
said.

"Ah, ah!" the woman cried, and a groan and sigh went among them all.

"And our grandchildren's children will know his name," said Dyadi, Pask's
wife,
bossoming through the crowd to her husband. "Hello, old man."

"Hello, old woman," Pask said. They eyed each other from an equal height.

"Still walking, are you?" she said.

"How else get back where I belong?" Pask said. His mouth was too set in a
straight line to smile, but his eyes glinted a little.

"Took your time doing it. Come on, old man. You must be perishing." They
strode
off side by side toward the lane that led to the saddlery and paddocks. The
courtyard buzzed on, all in low-voiced groups around the other two returned
men,
getting and giving the news of the wars, the city, the marsh isles, the farm.

Indoors, in the beautiful high shadowy room where Farre now lay in the bed
still
warm from his wife's sleep, the physician stood by the bedside, as grave,
intent, careful as the polesman had stood in the stern of the channelboat. He
watched the wounded man, his fingers on the pulse. The room was perfectly
still.