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

Karl has removed his clothes and lies naked on the double bed in the hotel
suite. The silk counterpane is cool.

- Do you feel any better now?
- I'm not sure.

Karl's mouth is dry. The man's hands move down from his head to touch his
shoulders. Karl gasps. He shuts his eyes.

Karl is seven years old. He and his mother have fled from their house as the
Versaillais troops storm Paris in their successful effort to destroy the Commune
established a few months earlier. It is civil war and it is savage. The more
so, perhaps, because the French have received such an ignominious defeat at the
hands of Bismarck's Prussians.

He is seven years old. It is the Spring of 1871. He is on the move.

- Do you like this ? asks the black man.

KARL WAS SEVEN. His mother was twenty-five. His father was thirty-one, but had
probably been killed fighting the Prussians at St. Quentin. Karl's father had
been so eager to join the National Guard and prove that he was a true Frenchman.

"Now, Karl." His mother put him down and he felt the hard cobbles of the street
beneath his thin shoes. "You must walk a little. Mother is tired, too."
It was true. When she was tired, her Alsatian accent always became thicker and
now it was very thick. Karl felt ashamed for her.

He was not sure what was happening. The previous night he had heard loud noises
and the sounds of running feet. There had been shots and explosions, but such
things were familiar enough since the Siege of Paris. Then his mother had
appeared in her street clothes and made him put on his coat and shoes, hurrying
him from the room and down the stairs and into the street. He wondered what had
happened to their maid. When they got into the street he saw that a fire had
broken out some distance away and that there were many National Guardsmen about.
Some of them were running towards the fires and others, who were wounded, were
staggering in the other direction. Some bad soldiers were attacking them, he
gathered, and his mother was afraid that the house would be burned down.
"Starvation - bombardment - and now fire," she had muttered bitterly. "I hope
all the wretched Communards are shot!" Her heavy black skirts hissed as she led
him through the night, away from the fighting.

By dawn, more of the city was burning and all was confusion. Ragged members of
the National Guard in their stained uniforms rallied the citizens to pile
furniture and bedding onto the carts which had been overturned to block the
streets. Sometimes Karl and his mother were stopped and told to help the other
women and children, but she gave excuses and hurried on. Karl was dazed. He
had no idea where they were going. He was vaguely aware that his mother knew no
better than he. When he gasped that he could walk no further, she picked him up