"China Mieville - Details" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mieville China)

you see into a window, and you see what you want through it. You
make what you see a sort of door."
She was silent for a long time. Then: "Is it cloudy again?" she asked
suddenly. She went on before I answered.
"If you look up, you look into the clouds for long enough and you'll
see a face. Or in a tree. Look in a tree, look in the branches and soon
you'll see them just so, and there's a face or a running man, or a bat
or whatever. You'll see it all suddenly, a picture in the pattern of the
branches, and you won't have chosen to see it. And you can't unsee
it.
"That's what you have to learn to do, to read the details like that and
see what's what and learn things. But you've to be damn careful.
You've to be careful not to disturb anything." Her voice was
absolutely cold, and I was suddenly very frightened.
"Open up that window, you'd better be damn careful that what's in
the details doesn't look back and see you."
The next time I went, the maudlin drunk was there again wailing
obscenities at her through her door. She shouted at me to come back
later, that she didn't need her food right now. She sounded resigned
and irritated, and she went back to scolding her visitor before I had
backed out of earshot.
He was screaming at her that she'd gone too far, that she'd pissed
about too long, that things were coming to a head, that there was
going to be hell to pay, that she couldn't avoid it forever, that it was
her own fault.
When I came back he was asleep, snoring loudly, curled up a few

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China Mieville - Details


feet into the mildewing passage. Mrs. Miller took her food and ate it
quickly, returned it without speaking.
When I returned the following week, she began to whisper to me as
soon as I knocked on the door, hissing urgently as she opened it
briefly and grabbed the bowl.
"It was an accident, you know," she said, as if responding to
something I'd said. "I mean of course you know in theory that
anything might happen, you get warned, don't you? But oh myтАж oh
my God it took the breath out of me and made me cold to realize
what had happened."
I waited. I could not leave, because she had not returned the bowl.
She had not said I could go. She spoke again, very slowly.
"It was a new day." Her voice was distant and breathy. "Can you
even imagine?
Can you see what I was ready to do? I was poisedтАж to changeтАж to
see everything that's hidden. The best place to hide a book is in a
library. The best place to hide secret things is there, in the visible