"Robert Rankin - The Fandom of the Operator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

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1



It was a Thursday and once again there was rancour in our back parlour.

I never cared for Thursdays, because I cared nothing for rancour. I liked things quiet. Quiet and
peaceful. Wednesdays I loved, because my father went out, and Sundays because they were Sundays.
But Thursdays, they were noisy and filled with rowdy rancour. Because on Thursdays my Uncle Jon
came to visit.

Uncle Jon was lean and long and loud and looked a lot like a lizard. There's a bit of an animal in each of
us. Or a reptile, or a bird, or an insect. Or even a tree or a turnip. None of us are one hundred per cent
human; it's something to do with partial re-incarnation, according to a book I once read. But, whether
it's true or not, I'm sure that Uncle Jon had much of the lizard in him. He could, for instance, turn his eyes
in different directions at the same time. Chameleons do that. People don't. Mind you, Uncle Jon's eyes
were made of glass. I never looked too much at his tongue, but I bet it was long and black and pointy at
the end.

Uncle Jon was all curled up, all lizard--like, in the visitors' chair, which stood to the east of the
chalky-drawn line that bisected our back parlour. The line was an attempt, upon the part of my father, to
maintain some sort of order. Visitors were required to remain to the east of the line, whilst residents kept
to the west. On this particular Thursday, Uncle Jon was holding forth from his side of the line about
pilgrims and parsons and things of a religious nature, which were mostly unintelligible to my ears. Me
being so young and ignorant and all.

My father, or `the Daddy', as I knew and loved him then, chewed upon sweet cheese and spat the rinds
into the fire that lick-lick-licked away in the small, but adequate, hearth.

I perched upon the coal-box, beside the brass companion set that lacked for the tongs, which had been
broken in a fight between my father and my Uncle Jon following some long-past piece of rancour. I was
attentive. Listening. My pose was that of a Notre Dame gargoyle. It was a studied pose. I had studied it.



`Thousands of them,' rancoured my Uncle Jon, voice all high and hoarse and glass eyes rolling in their