"Karl Glogaver - 02 - Breakfast In The Ruins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

What Would You Do? (2)
You have been brought to a room by the Secret Police.

They say that you can save the lives of your whole family if you will only
assist them in one way.

You agree to help.

There is a table covered by a cloth. They remove the cloth and reveal a
profusion of objects. There is a children's comforter, a Smith and Wesson .45,
an umbrella, a big volume of Don Quixote, illustrated by Dore, two blankets, a
jar of honey, four bottles of drugs, a bicycle pump, some blank envelopes, a
carton of Sullivans cigarettes, an enameled pin with the word 1900 on it (blue
on gold), a wrist-watch, a Japanese fan.

They tell you that all you have to do is choose the correct object and you and
your family will be released.

You have never seen any of the objects before. You tell them this. They nod.
That is all right. They know. Now choose.

You stare at the objects, trying to divine their significance.

3
Kaffee Klatsch in Brunswick:
1883: The Lowdown Bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favorite theory of
the male and female European nations. The Germans themselves, the three
Scandinavian peoples, the Dutch, the English proper, the Scotch, the Hungarians
and the Turks, he declared to be essentially male races. The Russians, the
Poles, the Bohemians, and indeed every Slavonic people, and all Celts, he
maintained, just as emphatically, to be female races. A female race he
ungallantly defined as one given to immense verbosity, to fickleness, and to
lack of tenacity. He conceded to these feminine races some of the advantages of
their sex, and acknowledged that they had great powers of attraction and charm,
when they chose to exert them, and also a fluency of speech denied to the more
virile nations. He maintained stoutly that it was quite useless to expect
efficiency in any form from one of the female races, and he was full of contempt
for the Celt and the Slav. He contended that the most interesting nations were
the epicene ones, partaking, that is, of the characteristics of both sexes, and
he instanced France and Italy, intensely virile in the North, absolutely female
in the South; maintaining that the Northern French had saved their country times
out of number from the follies of the "Meridionaux". He attributed the
efficiency of the Frenchmen of the North to the fact that they had so large a
proportion of Frankish and Norman blood in their veins, the Franks being a
Germanic tribe, and the Normans, as their name implied, Northmen of
Scandinavian, therefore also of Teutonic, origin. He declared that the fair-
haired Piedmontese were the driving power of Italy, and that they owed their
initiative to their descent from the Germanic hordes who invaded Italy under
Alaric in the fifth century. Bismarck stoutly maintained that efficiency
wherever it was found, was due to Teutonic blood; a statement with which I will