"Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years Of Rice And Salt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

a harness, an old Mongol trick from the hard campaigns on the steppes. But it seemed to him it had
worked better back there, on the endless grass, which was so much easier to cross than these baked
tortured white hills.
At the end of one day, after he had long got used to living alone in the world, scavenging it like Monkey
himself, he came into a little copse of trees to make a fire, and was shocked to see one already there,
tended by a living man.

The man was short, like Bold. His hair was as red as maple leaves, his bushy beard the same colour, his
skin pale and brindled like a dog. At first Bold was sure the man was sick, and he kept his distance. But
the man's eyes, blue in colour, were clear; and he too was afraid, absolutely on point and ready for
anything. Silently they stared at each other, across a small clearing in the middle of the copse.

The man gestured at his fire. Bold nodded and came warily into the glade.

The man was cooking two fish. Bold took a rabbit that he had killed that morning out of his coat, and
skinned and cleaned it with his knife. The man watched him hungrily, nodding at each familiar move. He
turned his fish on the fire, and made room in the coals for the rabbit. Bold spitted it on a stick and put it
in.

After the meat had cooked they ate in silence, sitting on logs on opposite sides of the fire. They both
stared into the flames, glancing only occasionally at each other, shy after all their time alone. After all that
it was not obvious what one could say to another human.

Finally the man spoke, first brokenly, then at length. Sometimes he used a word that sounded familiar to
Bold, but not so familiar as his movements around the fire, and no matter how hard he tried, Bold could
make nothing of what the man said.

Bold tried out some simple phrases himself, feeling the strangeness of words in his mouth, like pebbles.
The other man listened closely, his blue eyes gleaming in firelight, out of the dirty pale skin of his lean
face, but he showed no sign of comprehension, not of Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, Turkic, Arabic,
Chagatay, or any other of the polyglot greetings Bold had learned through his years of crossing the
steppe.

At the end of Bold's recitation the man's face spasmed, and he wept. Then, wiping his eyes clear, leaving
big streaks on his dirty face, he stood before Bold and said something, gesturing widely. He pointed his
finger at Bold, as if angry, then stepped back and sat on his log, and began to imitate rowing a boat, or
so Bold surmised. He rowed facing backwards, like the fishermen on the Caspian Sea. He made the
motions for fishing, then for catching fish, cleaning them, cooking them, and feeding them to little children.
By his gestures he evoked all the people he had fed, his children, his wife, the people he lived with.

Then he turned his face up at the firelit branches over the two men,
and cried again. He pulled up the rough shift covering his body, and pointed at his arms at his underarms,
where he made a fist. Bold nodded, felt his stomach shrink as the man mimed the sickness and cleat o all
the children, by lying down on the ground and mewling like a dog. Then the wife, then all the rest. All had
died but this man, who walked around the fire pointing at the leaf litter on the ground intoning words,
names perhaps. It was all so clear to Bold.

Then the man burned his dead village, all in gestures so clear, and mimed rowing away. He rowed on his
log for a long time, so long Bold thought he had forgotten the story; but then he ground to a halt and fell
back in his boat. He got out, looking around in feigned surprise. Then he began to walk. He walked