"Elmore Leonard - pagan babies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leonard Elmore)

The man rose from the kneeler and in a moment Terry watched
him walking away, barefoot, skinny bare legs, a stick figure wearing a
checkered green shirt and today in the rain a raggedy straw hat with
the brim turned down. Terry didn't need to see the guy's face. He
knew him the way he knew people in the village by the clothes they
wore, the same clothes they put on every morning, if they didn't
sleep in them. He had seen that green shirt recently, only a few days

ago...


Among the stalls in the marketplace.

This one wearing the shirt and three of his friends drinking banana
beer from a tin trough, the trough long enough for all four of
them squatting around it to stick reed straws into the thick brew,
lower their heads and suck it up warm, the beer giving them a glow
that showed in dreamy eyes looking up at Terry walking past the


open stall, Terry catching the look and the one in the green shirt
commenting as the others laughed, his voice louder then, shrill, following
Terry to a man who was roasting corn in a pan of hot coals.
This was Thomas, wearing a yellow T-shirt Terry had given him
some months before. He asked Thomas about the guy with the shrill
voice and Thomas said, "Oh, the visionary, Bernard. He drinks banana
beer and our Blessed Mother speaks to him. Some people believe
him."

"What's he saying?"

"As you go by, 'Oh, here comes umugabo wambaye ikanu,' calling
you 'the man who wears a dress.' Then he say you come to buy the
food your Tutsi whore cooks for you, the one you are fucking but
don't want nobody to know it, you being a priest. Bernard say the
Blessed Mother told him what you doing. Now he say he isn't afraid

of you. 'Oh enyamaswa.' You were sired by animals."

"I don't even know him. What's he up to?"

"He talks to dishonor you in front of the people here. He calls you
'njigi. "" Thomas shrugged. "Telling everyone you stupid." Thomas
raised his face in the sunlight as he listened again. On the front of his
T-shirt were the words TrtE STONE COYOTES, and on the back, rtocI
WITH A TWANC. "Now he tells everyone he saw you and you saw him,

but you don't do nothing."

"When did I see him?"