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

job was to listen, only to listen. I wasn't trained to root out traumas. It wasn't up to me to
pronounce the kid an attempted suicide either, or to solve the mystery of how he got to the topmost
turret of a locked historical monument, or to elucidate the medical wonder of frostbite in a
hundred-degree heatwave - I was only a counsellor in a parochial school too poor and stupid to
afford an expert.

I wouldn't get anywhere by questioning his story. Perhaps I should start with something else. "How
often do they beat you up?" I said.

"What?" Terror flecked his eyes for a second. Then they went dead. He said, "Almost every day." It
was in the same tone of voice.

"Who?"

"Pete, my Mom's boyfriend."

"What?"

He told me about it, never raising his voice. I had been doing this for twenty years. After a while
you grow iron railings round your brains. Nothing hurts anymore. I listened, staring at my hands and
wishing a ton of Porcelana on them. I knew I would sit there and endure until the catalogue of
beltings and poundings had dissolved into incoherence, into tears, into hysteria, and then I would
flow into the cracks in the kid's soul like epoxy glue and make him seem whole for a while ... but he
didn't give me a chance. He went on in that same monotone, detail after detail, until it was I who
was ready to crack. I held up
my hand. He stopped.

"Don't you ever cry?" I said.

"Not any more," he said. "IтАЩve promised."

"What do you mean, you promised?"

"The Snow Dragon."

"Tell me about him."

"I knew it!" he cried. Now he was exultant, taunting. I wasn't prepared for the change in mood; I
started most unprofessionally. "You're supposed to be trying to help me or something, but all you
want to do is listen to me lie!"

Shifting gears to accommodate his outburst, "Is that why he hits you?"

"Yes! Yes! But I won't stop!"

"It's all right," I said. "You can lie if you want. You can tell all the lies you want in this room.
Nothing will ever escape from here ..."

"Like a confessional? Like a black hole?"