"Ian McDonald - The Best and the Rest of James Joyce" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

Polar Fleet. In his armoured cubicle the Captain opens the envelope sealed with the
wax sigil of His MajestyтАЩs Directorate and after reading and burning the flimsy
within, calls a heading, altitude and velocity down the gosport to the flightbridge that
will, in 18 hoursтАЩ time, bring William and Mary and its secret passengers north to
Iceland, to the Keflavik Chronokinetics Research Facility.

****

In the summer of 1973 I was asked by a doctor of my acquaintance if I might
examine a patient of his, a gentleman from Ireland of late middle age who had come
to him complaining of persistent and severe insomnia. My doctor friend prescribed
sleeping tablets but the patient, who I shall hereafter refer to as Herr J., complained
that the prescription was ineffective and that the true source of the insomnia lay in a
powerful and disturbing dream that recurred nightly, whereupon my colleague
referred him to my practice. I was advised that the man, a writer of international
repute, would not make the most co-operative of patients.

My first interview with the patient was at an outside table at a caf├й on the
Burkliplatz. The tetchiness against which my colleague had warned me made itself
immediately evident in his response to my introduction of myself: тАЬAh yes, the Swiss
Tweedledee, not to be confused with the Austrian Tweedle-dum.тАЭ It was clear to me
that the caustic witticism with which he leavened his subsequent conversation
concealed a deep-seated discontent.

He was a tall, thin man, of protrusions and angularities. Behind the thick
glasses he woreтАФhe was a sufferer from persistent iritisтАФhis eyes were an
extraordinarily penetrating ice-blue. His hands moved constantly, making idle play
with the table utensils. He was quite refreshingly frank about the details of his life,
though more, I felt, from a mischievous delight in outrage: his first sexual experience
had been at the age of fourteen with a prostitute on the banks of a canal. This had
precipitated his lapse from the Catholic faithтАФan almost inevitable fall, I have heard,
for the intelligentsia of his country. At the age of 22 he had left Ireland with his
lover, Frau Nora B., and lived the following years as an artistic exile in Paris, Trieste
and Zurich, during which time he produced his most notable work. He confessed to
having been unfaithful to Nora B. only once; a short, tempestuous affair with one
Martha Fleischmann of this city.

Eighteen months ago he had embarked upon a new, major, work, to be
entitled Finnegans Wake, a тАЬstream of consciousnessтАЭ exploration of a single
nightтАЩs dream. After three months he had abandoned work on account of failing
concentration which he blamed on insomnia caused by a recurring and vivid dream.
Two months to the day after the first dream, the Travellers arrived and threw our
affairs into disarray. He found himself no longer capable of working on Finnegans
Wake and was convinced that the Travellers were the source of his dreams. Indeed,
his attention was continually being diverted from our table across the Burkliplatz to
the large number of spectators who thronged the promenade with telescopes and
field glasses, and from these spectators upward, to the focus of their observation,
the hazy curtain of air, half hidden by thin cloud, beyond which the
incomprehensible forms of the Travellers may occasionally be glimpsed.