"Nicholas Royle - Flying Into Naples" - читать интересную книгу автора (Royle Nicholas)

straights. She's not wearing her seat belt; I unclip mine, wind down my
window and put my foot up on the plastic moulding in front of me. At one
point -- when I draw my elbow into the car quickly to avoid a bus coming
up on the other side of the road -- Flavia turns her head and smiles at me
just as she did eight years earlier before falling asleep.

We skid into a parking place and Flavia attacks the handbrake. Once out of
the car she's quiet again, gliding along beside me. "Where are we going?"
I ask her. Beyond the city the summit of Vesuvius is draped in thick grey
cloud. Out over the sea on our right a heavy wedge of darkest grey
thunderheads is making its way landwards trailing skirts of rain. In the
space of two minutes the island of Capri is rubbed out as the storm passes
over it and into the bay.
"She must want to be alone," Flavia says and, when I look puzzled,
continues, "They say that you can see a woman reclining in the outline of
the island."
But Capri is lost behind layers of grey veils now and just as Flavia
finishes speaking the first drops of rain explode on my bare arms. Within
seconds we are soaked by a downpour of big fat sweet-smelling summer rain.
My thin shirt is plastered to my back. The rain runs off Flavia's still
body in trickles. She seems impervious to the cleansing, refreshing effect
that I'm enjoying. Dripping wet with rain bouncing off my forehead I give
her a smile but her expression doesn't change. "Shall we walk?" I suggest,
eyeing some trees in the distance that would give us some shelter. She
just turns and starts walking without a word so I follow. The trees --
which I realise I have seen previously from Flavia's balcony -- conceal
the city aquarium, housed in the lower ground floor of a heavy stone
building. I pay for two tickets and we pass in front of a succession of
gloomy windows on to another world. It's so damp down there I feel almost
as if we've entered the element of the fishes. My shirt clings to my back,
getting no drier under the dim lights. Flavia's white blouse is stuck to
her shoulders but there's no tremor of life as far as I can see. She
stares unseeing at the fish, the sinister skate and lugubrious octopus
which regard us with an expression I feel but can't put a name to. Because
I'm beginning to feel quite anxious I hurry past the shrimps and seahorses
-- which I see only as a blur of commas and question marks -- and I'm
relieved to get back into the open air.
Flavia takes me to a restaurant she knows and I eat cousins of the
creatures we've just seen in the aquarium. Flavia orders mineral water and
oysters but then hardly touches them. My teeth grind on tiny particles of
grit or shell in my sauce but I don't say anything because it seems to be
a city-wide problem. The waiter's black patent leather shoes are matt with
a fine layer of dust.
I watch Flavia as I eat and she stares out of the window at the teeming
rain. When she moves it's with an incredible slowness that sets up a
tension in me. Her stillness makes me want to protect her. She must have
suffered so much, like a tree that's been buffeted by so many storms it's
been stripped of leaves and twigs, but still stands, proud and defiant. I
want to reach across and touch her cheek in the hope she might soften and
smile, but such a deliberate act seems reckless. The worst thing would be