"Ian McDonald - Tendeleo's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

vapour trails of the big UN jets scored our sky as they brought more men and
machines to study it, but it was another world. It was not our world. Our world was
church, home, shamba, school. Service on Sunday, Bible Study on Monday.
Singing lessons, homework club. Sewing, weeding, stirring the ugali. Shooing the
goats out of the maize. Playing with Little Egg and Grace and Ruth from next door in
the compound: not too loud, Father's working. Once a week, the mobile bank. Once
a fortnight, the mobile library. Mad little matatus dashing down, overtaking
everything they could see, people hanging off every door and window. Big dirty
country buses winding up the steep road like oxen. Gikombe, the town fool, if we
could have afforded one, wrapped in dung-coloured cloth sitting down in front of
the country buses to stop them moving. Rains and hot seasons and cold fogs.
People being born, people getting married, people running out on each other, or
getting sick, or dying in accidents. Kilimanjaro, the Chaga? Another picture in a
world where all pictures come from the same distance.

I was thirteen and just a woman when the Chaga came to my world and destroyed it.
That night I was at Grace Muthiga's where she and I had a homework club. It was an
excuse to listen to the radio. One of the great things about the United Nations taking
over your country is the radio is very good. I would sing with it. They played the
kind of music that wasn't approved of in our house.

We were listening to trip hop. Suddenly the record started to go all phasey,like the
radio was tuning itself on and off the station. At first we thought the disc was
slipping or something, then Grace got up to fiddle with the tuning button. That only
made it worse. Grace's mother came in from the next room and said she couldn't get
a picture on the battery television. It was full of wavy lines. Then we heard the first
boom. It was far away and hollow and it rolled like thunder. Most nights up in the
Highlands we get thunder. We know very well what it sounds like. This was
something else. Boom! Again. Closer now. Voices outside, and lights. We took
torches and went out to the voices. The road was full of people; men, women,
children. There were torch beams weaving all over the place. Boom! Close now,
loud enough to rattle the windows. All the people shone their torches straight up into
the sky, like spears of light. Now the children were crying and I was afraid. Most
High had the answer: "Sonic booms! There's something up there." As he said those
words, we saw it. It was so slow. That was the amazing thing about it. It was like a
child drawing a chalk line across a board. It came in from the south east, across the
hills east of Kiriani, straight as an arrow, a little to the south of us. The night was
such as we often get in late May, clear after evening rains, and very full of stars. We
all saw a glowing dot cut across the face of the stars. It seemed to float and dance,
like illusions in the eye if you look into the sun. It left a line behind it like the trails of
the big UN jets, only pure, glowing blue, drawn on the night. Double-boom now, so
close and loud it hurt my ears. At that, one of the old women began wailing. The fear
caught, and soon whole fami-lies were looking at the line of light in the sky with tears
running down their faces, men as well as women. Many sat down and put their
torches in their laps, not knowing what they should do. Some of the old people
covered their heads with jackets, shawls, newspapers. Others saw what they were
doing, and soon everyone was sitting on the ground with their heads covered. Not
Most High. He stood looking up at the line of light as it cut his night in half.
"Beautiful!" he said. "That I should see such things, with these own eyes!"