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

and down and back. He was dressed in his best velvet suit and he was hot and
uncomfortable. But he always dressed in this way when it was his mother's turn
to entertain the Kaffee Klatsch, even though he wasn't invited to join them.
Usually he was asked to come in just before the ladies left. They would ask him
the same questions as, they asked every tune and they would compliment his
mother on his looks and his size and his health and they would give him a little
piece of gateau. He was looking forward to the gateaux.

"Karl, you must wear your hat," said Miss Henshaw. Miss Henshaw was English and
her German was rather unfortunate in that she had learned it in a village. It
was Low German and it made her sound like a yokel. Karl's parents and their
friends spoke nothing but the more sophisticated High German. Low German
sounded just like English, anyway. He didn't know why she'd bothered to learn
it. "Your hat, Karl. The sun is too hot."
In her garishly striped blouse and her silly, stiff grey skirt and her own
floppy white hat, Miss Henshaw looked awful. How dowdy and decrepit she was
compared to Mother who, corseted and bustled and covered in pretty silk ribbons
and buttons and lace and brocade, moved with the dignity of a six-masted
clipper. Miss Henshaw was evidently only a servant, for all her pretense at
authority.

She stretched out her freckled arm, offering him the little sun hat. He ignored
her, making the swing go higher and higher.

"You will get sunstroke, Karl. Your mother will be very angry with me."
Karl shrugged and kicked his feet out straight, enjoying Miss Henshaw's
helplessness.

"Karl! Karl!"
Miss Henshaw's voice was almost a screech.

Karl grinned. He saw that the ladies were looking out at him through the open
window. He waved to his mother. The ladies smiled and returned to their
gossip.

He knew it was gossip, about everyone in Brunswick, because once he had lain
beside the window in the shrubs and listened before he had been caught by Miss
Henshaw. He wished that he had understood more of the references, but at least
he had got one useful tip - that Fritz Vieweg's father had been born "the wrong
side of the blanket". He hadn't been sure of the meaning, but when he had
confronted Fritz Vieweg with it, it had stopped Vieweg calling him a "Jew-pig"
all right.

Gossip like that was worth a lot.

"Karl! Karl!"
"Oh, go away Fraulein Henshaw. I am not in need of my hat at present." He
chuckled to himself. When he talked like his father, she always disapproved.

His mother appeared in the doorway of the french window.