"S. P. Somtow - The Fallen Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Somtow S. P)

Scanned by gojukai
From Tales of Fantasy, Elsewhere Vol. II
Edited by Terri Windling &
Mark Alan Arnold

v1.1: 2005-05-10 by reb тАУ removed hard returns, corrected all obvious errors; unclear passages marked by [sp?]; not checked
against hard copy




The Fallen Country
Somtow Sucharitkul


He had blank, sky-blue eyes and confused blond hair. He had a wry, dry voice with just a lemon
twist of longing in it. He was small for his age, almost as though he had willed himself not to grow.
As I closed the door behind us, my hand brushed against his and he flinched away violently in the
split second before willing himself to smile; from this I pegged him as a victim of child abuse.

"Hi," I said, answering him. "My name is Dora Marx." I eased him into the brown, wombish chair
that faced my desk. "You may call meтАФ" I sat down myself, with the stuck-record-in-a-groove
smoothness that comes from seeing a thousand children a year for twenty years, "тАФeither Dora, or
Mrs. Marx. Whichever makes you feel more comfortable."

"I think IтАЩd prefer Mrs. Marx," he said. "But," he added, "you can call me Billy." Touche.

He didn't look at me. I went to the window to slam out the eleven o'clock yelling from the
schoolyard. God damn it, they should never make you work under these conditions ...

I said, "You're the one whoтАФ"

"They found at five in the morning, dinging to the steeple of Santa Maria's. You read the papers?"

"Sometimes," I said, flicking the dipping out of his file.

BILLY BINDER. AGE 12тАФ

"Where'd you get that scar?" тАФlike an albino earth-worm, wriggling into the sleeve of his teeshirt.

"Fell off my bike." Sure.

тАФFOUND HALF-DEAD ON THE LEDGE, HIS ARMS AROUND THE STEEPLE ON THE
SIDE OVERLOOKING ANGEL PLAZA. FATHER EPSTEIN, SUMMERTIME PASTOR
STANDING IN FOR FATHER SANTINI, WHILE TRYING TO RING THE BELLтАФ

"It says here," I said, "that you were suffering from severe frostbite."

"Yes. From the snow."
"It doesn't snow in Florida in the middle of AugustтАФ" No point trying to argue with him yet. My