"Michaela Roessner - Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roessner Michaela)

Michaela Roessner - Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life

The length of the bar took just a few broad pen strokes to render. The
long mirror behind it was inadequate to the task of making the narrow,
cramped railway station beer hall appear larger, more like the expensive
taverns in uptown Chillicothe.
Just as well, for the clientele was meager too. Folks for whom Chillicothe
was the final destination caught a coach into town as soon as they
disembarked. Those leaving the town arrived at the station with barely
enough time to check their baggage and depart. Through the saloon window
Mac could see them bustling about in the chill March air.
The bar was scattered lightly with wayfarers like Mac, folks stranded for
an hour or so waiting for a connecting train. Far better to tarry warm,
surrounded by the yeast-and-hops smell of half-emptied steins, the rich
odors of sausages, bread and pickled herring wafting from the free lunch
cage.
Mac looked from the bar to the piece of paper before him and slashed in
diagonal lines to suggest the mirror's reflective quality. Then he lightly
sketched himself in behind the strokes; a regular bourgeois leprechaun Ч
pen raised and poised to draw, dapper suit smartly draped onto his small
tidy frame, a quizzical expression neatly tucked onto pixie features.
He glanced at the drawing, then restlessly shuffled the papers beneath it
Ч the five sketches he'd already completed since seeking refuge here from
the cold spring outside. Flipping finally, as he'd been doing over and
over again, to the newspaper which lay beneath.
To this new thing; a strip of pictures Ч wonderful, wonderful pictures,
such as he himself might draw. Such as he had been imagining and preparing
for the last five years. But not drawn by him. These were created by a man
named Outcault. The drawings were entitled The Yellow Kid.
Mac's heart was pitted with envy and desire. His distress was so great
that it interrupted his ceaseless, habitual drawing. The year was 1896,
and he knew that no one else understood what a miracle and a turning point
this was, four years before the great "Turn of the Century" everyone else
was yammering about.
He riffled the sketches back in place on top of the newspaper, irritated
at his self-indulgent jealousy, then looked critically at the drawing he'd
been working on. It still seemed sparse.
He glanced up again. The far end of the mirror just barely caught the
image of the free lunch cage behind him. Most of the saloon's other
customers Ч such as they were Ч lined up there, loading plates from its
bounty of pickled herring, liverwurst and other sausages, bread and
hard-boiled eggs. It was understood that the spread was designed as much
to stimulate thirst as to satisfy hunger.
Mac smiled as an image occurred to him: Dimly behind the veiling
reflection a line of stalwart men crawled groaning through a desert of
salty provender, wailing their way past dry crackers, pickles and
bratwurst in a Sisyphean attempt to reach tall cool steins of ale, stout
and beer. The mugs, however, wore seagulls' wings. They flitted, soared
and dove just beyond the grasp of the thirsty men. In desperation the
miserable fellows turned to the salty foods around them, as a shipwrecked