"King Rat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miéville China)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Scrawled notes were appearing on walls.

In a hand at once gothic and subliterate, they entreated Saul to a peace. They were etched into the brick, scribbled in pencil, sprayed with aerosol.

The first, Saul found on the side of a chimney stack he had decided to sleep in.

listen sonny, it read. were blood and blood

STICKS SO LETS US LET BYGONES BE. TWOS BETTER NOR ONE YOU KNOW AND IN FACT TWO CAN BE THE DEVIL.

Saul had run his fingers over the thin scratches and looked around the roof. The stench of King Rat was on the air, he could smell it clearly. The rats with him had bristled, and been ready to bite or run. He was never alone now, always surrounded by a group whose number was unchanging even as the individuals who formed it came and went.

Saul and his entourage had crouched on the roof and sniffed the air. He had not slept in the chimneys that morning.

The next evening he had woken in the corner of the sewer he had found, and painted above his head was another message. This was in white paint, paint that had dripped and slid down the walls into the dirty water, leaving the words only just legible.

LOOK YOU AINT DOING NOONE ANY FAVOURS CEPT THE PIPER.

It had been written while he slept. King Rat was stalking him, afraid to speak but desperate for reconciliation.

Saul was angry. The ease with which King Rat was still able to sneak past him rankled. He realized that he was just a baby, a little ratling.

He could not think about whether or not King Rat was right. It was irrelevant to him. He had had enough of compromise. King Rat the rapist and murderer, destroyer of his family, had no right to his collaboration. King Rat had released the Piper, King Rat had made Saul what he was. He had released him, but only into his new prison.

So fuck King Rat, thought Saul. He had had it with being bait. He knew that King Rat could not be trusted.

So instead he thought about what he could do for himself.

For all that he felt liberated, for all that he felt powerful, Saul did not know what to do. He did not know where the Piper lived. He did not know when the Piper would attack. He knew nothing at all except that he himself was not safe.

Saul began to think more and more about his friends. He spent a lot of time speaking to the rats, but they were only cunning, not clever, and their stupidity alienated him. He remembered his thoughts on the night he had left King Rat, the realization that it was his decision whether or not his world would cross those of Fabian and others.

He wanted to see Fabian more than anything.

So one evening he bade the rats leave him alone. They obeyed immediately, disappearing in a sudden flurry. Saul began to cross the city, alone again.

He wondered if King Rat was with him, was watching him. As long as the fucker kept his distance, Saul decided, he did not care.

Saul crossed the river under Tower Bridge. He swung like an ape along the girders which festooned its underside, convoluted thickets of vast wires and pipes. In the middle, just at the point where the bridge could split and open for tall ships, he stopped and hung by his hands, swaying slightly.

The sky was taken from him; the great mass of the bridge above him was all he could see at eye-level and above. At the very edge of his sight, buildings appeared again over the river. But for the most part the city was inverted and refracted in the Thames, a sinuous shattered mirror. Lights glinted on the water, dark shapes punctuated with hundreds of points of light, the towers of the city, the far-off lights of the South Bank Centre, far more real for him then than their counterparts in the air above.

He stared down at the city below his feet. It was an illusion. The shimmering motion of the lights he saw was not the real city. They were part of it, to be sure, a necessary part… but the beautiful lights, so much more lively than those above them, were a simulacrum. They merely painted the surface tension. Below that thin veneer the water was still filthy, still dangerous and cold.

Saul held on to that. He resisted the poetics of the city .

Saul walked fast, making the passers-by ignore him, being nothing to them. He strode the streets like a cipher, invisible. Sometimes he stopped quite still and listened, to see if he was being followed. He could see no one, but he was not so naive as to think that was conclusive.

He approached Brixton from the backstreets, not wanting to run the gamut of its light and crowds. His pulse was up. He was nervous. He had not spoken to Fabian for so long, he was afraid they would no longer understand each other. How would he sound to Fabian now? Would he sound strange, would he sound ratty?

He reached Fabian’s street. An old woman walked past him, bent into herself, and he was alone.

Something was wrong. The air tasted charged. People moved behind the white curtains of Fabian’s room. Saul stood quite still. He stared at the window, saw the vague movements of men and women within. They milled uncertainly, investigating. With a growing horror, Saul pictured those within opening drawers, examining books, looking at Fabian’s artwork. He knew who moved like that.

Saul’s demeanour changed. One moment his shoulders were hunched, he was tightened into a drab stance, something to see but not notice, his disguise for the streets. Now he uncurled and sank towards the pavement. He bent in a sudden snap of motion, sidling simultaneously against the low wall. He crept through the thin strip of garden, the desultory tiny patios.

He was truly invisible now. He could sense it in himself.

He sidled along the wall, sudden bursts of motion interspersed with unearthly stillness. His nose twitched. He smelt the air.

Saul stood before Fabian’s house. Soundlessly he vaulted the low wall and landed in a crouch below the window. He placed his ear to the wall.

Architecture betrayed those within. Bluff voices seeped out through cracks and rivulets between bricks.

‘… don’t like that bloody picture, though…’

‘… know that the DFs totally losing it over this. I mean he’s fucking well lost it…’

‘… geezer Morris, why have a go at him?… thought he was a mate’

The police talked in an endless stream of banalities, cliches and pointless verbiage. Their speech served no purpose, thought Saul in despair, no fucking purpose at all. He ached for conversation, for communication, and to hear words wasted like this… he felt like crying.

He had lost Fabian. He put his head in his hands.

‘Him gone, bwoy. Him with the Badman now.’

Anansi’s voice was soft and very near.

Saul rubbed his eyes without opening them. He breathed deeply. Finally he looked up.

Anansi’s face hovered just in front of his, suspended before him upside-down. His strange eyes were very close, staring right into Saul’s.

Saul looked at him calmly, held his gaze. Then he let his eyes slide casually up, investigating Anansi’s position.

Anansi was hanging from one of his ropes, suspended from the roof. He grasped it with both hands, effortlessly suspended his weight, his naked feet intertwined with the thin white rope. As Saul watched, Anansi’s legs uncoupled from the fibres and swivelled slowly and soundlessly through the air. His eyes held Saul’s, even as his face turned one hundred and eighty degrees.

His feet touched the concrete with a tiny pat.

‘You damn good now, you know, pickney. Not easy keep track of you, these days.’

‘Why did you bother? Daddy send you?’ Saul’s voice was withering.

Anansi laughed without sound. He smiled lazily, predatory — the big spider-man.

‘Come now. Me want fe talk.’ Anansi pointed with a long finger, straight up. Then hand over hand he seemed to fall up the rope, which was tugged peremptorily from view.

Saul slid silently to the corner of the building and gripped it on both sides. He hauled himself away from the earth.

Anansi was waiting. He sat cross-legged on the flat roof. His mouth worked as if he were preparing to say something unpleasant. He nodded a greeting to Saul and indicated with a nod that he should sit opposite him.

Instead, Saul interlaced his fingers behind his head and turned away. He looked out over Brixton.

There were noises all around them from the streets.

‘Mr Rattymon going crazy waiting for you now.’ Anansi spoke quietly.

‘Motherfucker shouldn’t have used me as bait, then,’ said Saul evenly. ‘Rapist motherfucker shouldn’t have killed my dad.’

‘Rattymon you dad.’

Saul did not answer. He waited.

Anansi spoke again.

‘Loplop come back and him crazy mad at you. Him want you dead fe true.’

Saul turned, incredulous.

‘What the fuck has he got to be angry with me for?’

‘You make him deaf, you know, and you done also make him mad again, mad in him head.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ spat Saul. ‘We were both about to be killed. He was about to kill me and get fucking taken apart himself. I think the fucking Piper’s done playing with us, you know? I think he just wants us all dead now, all the kings. Loplop would’ve fucking died, I saved his life…’

‘Yeah, man, but him save you. Could’ve watch while the Piperman done kill you, but him try to save you, and you fuck up him ear…’

‘That’s a load of crap, Anansi. Loplop tried to save me because you all… you all… know the Piper can’t hold me, and you all know I’m the only thing that can stop him.’

There was a long silence.

‘Well, Loplop him mad, anyway. Don’t be getting too close to him now.’

‘Fine,’ said Saul.

Again, a long pause.

‘What do you want, Anansi? And what do you know about Fabian?’

Anansi sucked his teeth in disgust.

‘You still green, bwoy, fe true. You sure got all the rats dem upon you side, but you don’t know what fe do with them. Rats everywhere, bwoy. Spiders everywhere. Them you eyes, the rats. My lickle spiders tell me what the Badman do with you friends. You ain’t never ask. You not care till now.’

‘Friends?’

Anansi screwed up his face and looked at Saul disdainfully.

‘Him have kill the fat bwoy.’ Saul’s hands fluttered about his face. His mouth stayed shut, but it quivered. ‘Him have take the black bwoy and the lickle DJ woman.’

‘Natasha,’ breathed Saul. ‘What does he want with her…? How does he know who they are…? How is he getting inside me?’ Saul grabbed his head with both hands, began to thump himself in despair. Kay, he thought, Natasha, he hit himself more, what was happening?

Anansi was on him. Strong hands gripped his wrists.

‘Stop now!’ Anansi was horrified.

Animals do not hurt themselves, Saul realized. There was still human inside him, then. He shook himself and stopped.

‘We have to get them back. We have to find them’

‘How, bwoy? Be real.’

Saul’s head spun. ‘What did he do to Kay?’ Anansi pursed his lips. ‘Him took the bwoy apart.’

They ran for a while, then there was a short scurrying climb, and they stood on Brixton Rec, the sports centre. They could hear the faint thump of MTV from the weights room below. Saul stood at the very edge of the roof, a little way forward from Anansi. He pushed his hands in his pockets.

‘You could have told me, you know…’ he said. He heard himself, and hated his plaintive tone. He half turned, glanced at Anansi, who stood quite still, his arms folded over his bare chest.

Anansi sucked his teeth in contempt.

‘Cha, bwoy, you still full to the brim with rubbish. You talk about how the Rattymon him you father? What for me want tell you that?’

Saul looked at him. Anansi was insistent.

‘What for me want tell you? Hmmm? Listen, bwoy, pickney, hear me now. Me one bigass spider, understand? The Rattymon, him a rat. Loplop him the bird, the Bird Superior. Now you, you some strange half ting, fe true, but what for we gwan tell you ting like that? Me tell you just what me want you fe know. Always, there you have a promise. No more hypocrisy now, you see, bwoy? No need. Animal like me no need for such ting. You leave that behind. You can trust me to be just so trustworthy, never no more, but never no less. Y’understand?’

Saul said nothing. He watched a train arrive at Brixton station and trundle away again.

‘Was Loplop going to tell the Piper where I was? Were you all going to come for him when he tried to take me?’ he asked finally.

Anansi shrugged, almost imperceptibly.

They sidled along the side of the railway, the British Rail line which rose above the market and the streets. They slid along without speaking, heading for Camberwell. Saul appreciated the company, he realized, though it was hardly what he had hoped for when setting out this evening.

‘How could he find my friends?’ said Saul. They sat on the climbing frame in a nondescript schoolyard.

‘Him search all you books an tings. Him find some address tings fe sure.’

Of course, thought Saul. My fault.

He was numbed. If he was still human, he realized, he would be in shock. But he was not, not any more; he was half rat, and he felt inured.

Anansi was very silent. He made no attempt to persuade Saul to return to King Rat, or to do anything, for that matter.

Saul looked at him curiously.

‘Does King Rat know you’re here?’ he asked.

Anansi nodded.

‘Has he asked you to say anything? Get me back?’

Anansi shrugged. ‘Him want you back, sure. You useful, y’know? But him know you can’t be told nothing you don’t want. You know what him want. If you want come back, you will come.’

‘Do you… do you understand why I won’t come back to him?’

Anansi looked at his eyes. Gently, he shook his head.

‘No, bwoy, not at all. You can survive better with him, with us, fe true. And you are rat. You should go back. But I know you don’t think like that. I don’t know what you are, bwoy. You can’t be rat, you can’t be man. I don’t understand you at all, but that’s alright, because I know now that I will never understand you, nor will you me. We are not the same.’

In the small hours, after they had eaten, they stood together at an entrance to the sewers. Anansi looked behind him, planning his route up the side of the warehouse beside them. He looked back at Saul.

Saul stuck out his hand. Anansi grasped it.

‘You are the only hope, bwoy. Come back to us.’

Saul shook his head, twisted, uncomfortable before the sudden intensity.

Anansi nodded and dropped his hand.

‘See you around.’

He turned and slung one of his ropes over an overhang, disappeared at speed over the vertical bricks.

Saul watched him go. He turned and examined where he was. The grille in a yard littered with hulking pieces of machinery. They loomed solemnly in the dark, looking vaguely pathetic. There were no roads visible from here, and Saul enjoyed the moment of solitude. Then he reached down without looking and pulled the grille from the earth.

He hesitated.

He knew there was little point searching for Natasha and Fabian. The city was so large, the Piper’s powers so prodigious, it would not be hard for him to hide two humans. But he knew also that he could not bear to leave them in his power. He knew he had to search, if only to prove that he was still half human. Because he was disquieted by his passivity, his acceptance, the speed with which he had conceptualized their absence as inevitable, as done, as a done thing. He was becoming dulled. Kay’s death was utterly unreal to him, but that was a human reaction. More disturbing to him was his reaction to the Piper’s abduction of his two closest friends.

The acceptance of the unacceptable was a kind of reactionary stoicism, a dynamic that dulled his feelings for these others. He could feel it within him, a growing cunning, a hyper-real focus on the here and now. It frightened him. He could not battle it head on, he could not decide what to feel and what not to feel, but he could challenge it with his actions. He could change it by refusing to behave as if it were how he felt. He abhorred his own reaction, his own feeling. It was an animal trait.