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

"I know you want to kill him," the princess said, seeming to read his mind. "But you won't, you
know. He is more real than you will ever be."

And then she stepped out of the window and left him stranded; for the bridge was gone, melted into
the air. And it was because he had lain aside his anger for a moment.

"ThatтАЩs how I ended up on top of the church," Billy told me. But how could I believe such a thing?
And yet it was so neat, so cleverly paradigmaticized. That the real world and the fantasy should
have such interfaces of confluence: the church, the castle. Piety and passion, authority and
rebellion, father-shadow and princess-anima, superego and id. An amateur analystтАЩs dream.

I said to Billy, "Let's work together now, you and I. Let's come out of the fallen country into the
real world, let's fight this inner grief of yours." The words sounded so false. They were false.

"You know what he told me?" said Billy. "The Snow Dragon, I mean."
"What?"

"He told me that I would never have to leave if I didn't want to."

That bastard Pete! But itтАЩs people like him who pay my rent. I too am a vampire, feeding myself on
children's emotions. Would Billy understand, if I told him, how we all have a piece of Pete inside
us?

Billy said, "Our time's up, Mrs. Marx."

"Wait a momentтАФ" I had no business going on longer than the allotted time. "Billy, won't you stop
and just let me help?"

He paused at the door. We confronted each other for a moment, an innocent child who daily
harrowed hell and a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-grade counsellor jaded with trivialities who
must supposedly know all the answers.

His face was trusting. He was a pathological liar, a liar of frightening vividness, but all I saw was a
frightened kid who yearned for something I did not have to give. He said, "How can I let you help
me if you won't even believe me?"

I said тАФ I couldn't lie, even to reassure him тАФ "No, I don't believe you."

"But until you believe me, Mrs. Marx, weтАЩll never get anywhere."

To my surprise I found myself longing to agree with him.

When I looked up he was gone. I saw that carefully, methodically, I had been shredding his file with
my fingernails. Hating the sunlight, I found myself walking through the schoolyard, wishing it would
snow.

I live in a luxury condominium тАФ there are dozens such in our town тАФ where children cannot
come. There the old people hide. There I am protected from the nightmares that I must face every
day.