"Bruce Holland Rogers - Wind Over Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Gero didn't answer immediately. He was searching among the unlabeled jars that cluttered his shelves.
When he squinted, the Asian slant of his gray eyes was more pronounced than usual. The water in the
saucepan began to boil vigorously, but Gero ignored it until he had found what he was looking for-- a jar
of bright yellow powder that was probably mustard. But perhaps not. On those rare occasions when
Gero wasn't in the restaurant, Eric would sometimes examine the contents of the jars, sniffing this, tasting
a pinch of that. Some of the ingredients were spices that he recognized, but many of them remained
mysteries. Gero's stock of ingredients was like his ethnicity-- exotic and impossible to name.
Gero turned the flame back down, tapped some of the yellow powder into the water, then pulled at his
reddish Magyar mustache as he searched through the jars again.
"Some parasites, you would not choose them," he said, "but once you have them..." He shrugged. "In
Thailand there is a pickled fish that is so white, so firm." He kissed his fingertips. "You want to taste
things. At least once. Well, this fish has a price for tasting. In his flesh, there are cysts. Tiny. Once you
eat, the cysts break, and in your liver, in a little while, there are worms. Maybe in my liver. I don't know.
Just a few are no trouble."
Gero's accent, Eric decided, sounded Russian today. Slavic, anyway. But it could shift. Sometimes it
sounded Chinese.
Gero was showing Eric his smallest fingernail. "Not even that big, these worms. Flat, like that. I just eat
the fish one time, no problem. Parasites are not so bad, then. Everything is balance, yes? I keep
explaining to you. Balance."
"Balance, right," Eric said. "Every time we have one of our little business dinners, Sutherland hits me
with another surprise. But I should find some way to balance him. Sure."
Gero took down another jar. This one contained a woody root suspended in alcohol. It looked like a
smaller version of the roots that Gero had hanging from the ceiling, up there with a wreath of bay leaves,
the long strings of peppers, and the bunches of bulbs that looked like garlic, but weren't. Gero spooned a
little of the alcohol into the boiling water and re-sealed the jar.
"You are impatient," Gero said. "When you are sick, you think only of cures."
"Well, of course!"
"First you must think of the sickness. Its nature."
"Okay, look," Eric said, "so maybe parasite isn't the right word for him."
"Sounds perfect," Gero said. "Business is good like always, but something is happening to money.
Poof." He was adding a pinch from this jar and a pinch from that one to the boiling water. He turned
down the heat. "Your partner is like tapeworm. Restaurant brings in same as before, but is getting skinny.
How skinny? Little bit isn't bad. Most people, if they have tapeworm, they don't know it. Tapeworm isn't
so bad."
"What I'm talking about," Eric said, "is embezzlement. Mismanagement. All these decisions he forces
down my throat."
"And what I am talking about," Gero said, "is balance." He strained the contents of the saucepan
through a paper filter into a ceramic carafe. "Wind over heaven."
"What?"
Gero tapped one of the Chinese books stacked next to his jars. "The ninth hexagram is wind above,
heaven below. The Taming Power of Small Things. This is no time to act. Be subtle. Observe. Seek
balance." Gero poured a few ounces of the amber infusion into a teacup. "You are agitated. Too much
worry is too much bile. Drink this."
Eric opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He accepted the cup with a sigh. It was no use trying
to decline Gero's remedies. Gero would pester him until he drank it. In any case, the brews seemed
harmless enough.
"Be patient," Gero said. "Don't make another mistake. He is your partner, now, and that was your
choice. Now you want him out. What do you have to do to get him out? If you have a tapeworm, you
must take poison enough to kill tapeworm, but not to kill you. How much poison must Tarragon Leaf
swallow to get rid of this partner? How sick you are going to make my restaurant?"