"Fritz Leiber - Coming Attraction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

The first policeman shrugged. "If women were to stop wearing masks, in six weeks you wouldnтАЩt know


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 COMING ATTRACTION - Fritz Leiber


the difference. You get used to anything, if enough people do or donтАЩt do it."
I agreed, rather regretfully, and left them. I turned north on Broadway (old Tenth Avenue, I believe) and
walked rapidly until I was beyond Inferno. Passing such an area of undecontaminated radioactivity
always makes a person queasy. I thanked God there werenтАЩt any such in England, as yet.
The street was almost empty, though I was accosted by a couple of beggars with faces tunneled by H-
bomb scars, whether real or of make-up putty I couldnтАЩt tell. A fat woman held out a baby with webbed
fingers and toes. I told myself it would have been deformed anyway and that she was only capitalizing
on our fear of bomb-induced mutations. Still, I gave her a seven-and-a-half-cent piece. Her mask made
me feel I was paying tribute to an African fetish.
"May all your children be blessed with one head and two eyes, sir."
"Thanks," I said, shuddering, and hurried past her.
" тАж ThereтАЩs only trash behind the mask, so turn your head, stick to your task: Stay away, stay awayтАФ
fromтАФtheтАФgirls!"
This last was the end of an anti-sex song being sung by some religionists half a block from the circle-
and-cross insignia of a femalist temple. They reminded me only faintly of our small tribe of British
monastics. Above their heads was a jumble of billboards advertising predigested foods, wrestling
instruction, radio handies and the like.
I stared at the hysterical slogans with disagreeable fascination. Since the female face and form have been
banned on American signs, the very letters of the advertiserтАЩs alphabet have begun to crawl with sexтАФ
the fat-bellied, big-breasted capital B, the lascivious double 0. However, I reminded myself, it is chiefly
the mask that so strangely accents sex in America.

A British anthropologist has pointed out that, while it took more than five thousand years to shift the
chief point of sexual interest from the hips to the breasts, the next transition, to the face, has taken less
than fifty years. Comparing the American style with Moslem tradition is not valid; Moslem women are
compelled to wear veils, the purpose of which is to make a husbandтАЩs property private, while American
women have only the compulsion of fashion and use masks to create mystery.
Theory aside, the actual origins of the trend are to be found in the antiradiation clothing of World War
III, which led to masked wrestling, now a fantastically popular sport, and that in turn led to the current
female fashion. Only a wild style at first, masks quickly became as necessary as brassieres and lipsticks
had been earlier in the century.


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 COMING ATTRACTION - Fritz Leiber


I finally realized that I was not speculating about masks in general, but about what lay behind one in
particular. ThatтАЩs the devil of the things; youтАЩre never sure whether a girl is heightening loveliness or
hiding ugliness. I pictured a cool, pretty face in which fear showed only in widened eyes. Then I
remembered her blond hair, rich against the blackness of the satin mask. SheтАЩd told me to come at the
twenty-second hourтАФ10 P.M.
I climbed to my apartment near the British Consulate; the elevator shaft had been shoved out of plumb