"Bruce Holland Rogers - Dead Boy At Your Window" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

A woman emerged from the grayness. Her head was bald, too, and her body dried out. "This!" she
rasped, touching the dead boy's shirt. "I remember this!" She tugged on the dead boy's sleeve. "I had a
thing like this!"
"Clothes?" said the dead boy.
"Clothes!" the woman cried. "That's what it is called!"
More shriveled people came out of the grayness. They crowded close to see the strange dead boy
who wore clothes. Now the dead boy knew where he was. "This is the land of the dead."
"Why do you have clothes?" asked the dead woman. "We came here with nothing! Why do you have
clothes?"
"I have always been dead," said the dead boy, "but I spent six years among the living."
"Six years!" said one of the dead. "And you have only just now come to us?"
"Did you know my wife?" asked a dead man. "Is she still among the living?"
"Give me news of my son!"
"What about my sister?"
The dead people crowded closer.
The dead boy said, "What is your sister's name?" But the dead could not remember the names of their
loved ones. They did not even remember their own names. Likewise, the names of the places where they
had lived, the numbers given to their years, the manners or fashions of their times, all of these they had
forgotten.
"Well," said the dead boy, "in the town where I was born, there was a widow. Maybe she was your
wife. I knew a boy whose mother had died, and an old woman who might have been your sister."
"Are you going back?"
"Of course not," said another dead person. "No one ever goes back."
"I think I might," the dead boy said. He explained about his flying. "When next the wind blows...."
"The wind never blows here," said a man so newly dead that he remembered wind.
"Then you could run with my string."
"Would that work?"
"Take a message to my husband!" said a dead woman.
"Tell my wife that I miss her!" said a dead man.
"Let my sister know I haven't forgotten her!"
"Say to my lover that I love him still!"
They gave him their messages, not knowing whether or not their loved ones were themselves long
dead. Indeed, dead lovers might well be standing next to one another in the land of the dead, giving
messages for each other to the dead boy. Still, he memorized them all. Then the dead put the stick back
inside his shirt sleeves, tied everything in place, and unwound his string. Running as fast as their leathery
legs could manage, they pulled the dead boy back into the sky, let go of the string, and watched with
their dead eyes as he glided away.
He glided a long time over the gray stillness of death until at last a puff of wind blew him higher, until a
breath of wind took him higher still, until a gust of wind carried him up above the grayness to where he
could see the moon and the stars. Below he saw moonlight reflected in the ocean. In the distance rose
mountain peaks. The dead boy came to earth in a little village. He knew no one here, but he went to the
first house he came to and rapped on the bedroom shutters. To the woman who answered, he said, "A
message from the land of the dead," and gave her one of the messages. The woman wept, and gave him
a message in return.
House by house, he delivered the messages. House by house, he collected messages for the dead. In
the morning, he found some boys to fly him, to give him back to the wind's mercy so he could carry these
new messages back to the land of the dead.
So it has been ever since. On any night, head full of messages, he may rap upon any window to remind
someone-- to remind you, perhaps-- of love that outlives memory, of love that needs no names.
Published by Alexandria Digital Literature. ( http://www.alexlit.com/ )