"Christopher Priest - The Discharge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

jobs, how to live as cheaply as possible. I was learning the island patois, quickly adjusting my knowledge
as I came across the different argots that were used from one island to the next.

No one would speak to me about the war except in the vaguest ways. I was often spotted as a steffer as
soon as I landed somewhere, but the further north I moved and the warmer the weather became, the less
this appeared to matter.

I was moving through the Dream Archipelago, dreaming of it as I went, imagining what island might come
next, thinking it into an existence that held good so long as I required it.

By this time I had operated the islands' black market to obtain a map, which I had realized was perhaps
the hardest kind of printed material to get hold of anywhere. My map was incomplete, many years old,
faded and torn and the place and island names were written in a script I did not at first understand, but it
was for all that a map of the part of the Archipelago where I was travelling.

On the edge of the map, close to a torn area, there was a small island whose name I was finally able to
decipher. It was Mesterline, one of the islands my unreliable memory told me we had passed on the
southward journey.

Salay, Temmil, Mesterline, Prachous тАж it was part of the litany, part of the route that would lead me
back to Muriseay.



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It took me another year of erratic travels to reach Mesterline. As soon as I landed I fell in love with the
place: it was a warm island of low hills, broad valleys, wide meandering rivers and yellow beaches.
Flowers grew everywhere in a riot of effulgent colors. The buildings were constructed of white-painted
brick and terra cotta tiles and they clustered on hilltops or against the steep sides of the cliffs above the
sea. It was a rainy island: midway through most afternoons a brisk storm would sweep in from the west,
drenching the countryside and the towns, running noisy rivulets through the streets. The Mester people
loved these intense showers and would stand out in the streets or the public squares, their faces upturned
and their arms raised, the rain coursing sensually through their long hair and drenching their flimsy clothes.
Afterwards, as the hot sun returned and the ruts in the muddy streets hardened again, normal life would
go on again. Everyone was happier after the day's shower and began to get ready for the languid
evenings that they passed in the open-air bars and restaurants.

For the first time in my life (as I thought of it with my erratic memory), or for the first time in many years
(as I suspected was the reality), I felt the urge to paint what I saw. I was dazzled by light, by color, by
the harmony of places and plants and people.

I spent the daylight hours wandering wherever I could, feasting my eyes on the brashly colored flowers
and fields, the glinting rivers, the deep shade of the trees, the blue and yellow glare of the sunlit shores,
the golden skins of the Mester people. Images leapt through my mind, making me crave for some artistic
outlet by which I could capture them.

That was how I began sketching, knowing I was not yet ready for paint or pigments.