"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

The bookshop was on a curving street between the cavalcading statuary of the Daun-Kinsky palace and the Burgtheater.
One entered it by going down three steps, which have since disappeared. There were three arched rooms in a row, each lit by a small window. The man's name was Wagner, he was over sixty years old, and he had spent twenty years working at the Hofburg National Library before going out on his own. Not without reason, since he prided himself on being one of the foremost authorities on rare editions and the incunabula of Vienna.
He did not recognize Reb Michael Klimrod at first.
This was not surprising. More than four years had passed, and so many things had happened since last he had a visit from the child in short pants, with strands of hair hanging down his high forehead. The child came in almost every month, always on a Thursday during the school term. He would look through the shelves silently, examine the glass-fronted bookcases, usually leave without saying a word. Every so often, he would stop before a book, always one recently acquired by Wagner, with an infallibility that, after a time, ceased to amaze the bookseller. Then he would shake his head slowly, as if to say: "We already have it." or he would ask about the origin of the book or manuscript, its date of publication, its price. Always ending with: "I will speak to my father about it. Could you please hold it until next Thursday?" Seven days later, he would return and announce the verdict in his soft, still high, but curiously distant voice, his eyes dreamy: Barrister Klimrod was or was not buying. When necessary, Wagner would call at the house to conclude the transaction with the invalid, whose fabulous library filled him with wonder.
The figure that now appeared before Wagner in no way reminded him of the child from years back. It was almost a foot taller, was wearing a British-looking tweed jacket, rust-colored pants-both slightly too short-magnificent low shoes, the kind you had not been able to find in Vienna for years. Wagner thought it was an Englishman.
At this point, Reb came down the last step and was no longer standing against the light. The eyes suddenly evoked something. Then the way the newcomer began roaming through the books accentuated the feeling of dejр vu.
Wagner asked, in English: "Are you looking for something in particular?"
"My father's books," replied Reb, in German.
At that very moment, he stopped before the thirty-two volumes of Voltaire edited in 1818. Wagner got up suddenly, then stopped, as if he realized he had shown too great a haste in his movement.
"You are young Klimrod," he said after a few seconds of silence. "Caleb Klimrod."
"Reb."
"You have grown incredibly. How old are you now?"
Rob moved away from the Voltaire and continued on his round. A little farther on, he stopped in front of, successively, the blue-leather-bound edition of Castelli's Soldier's Song& Von Alxinger's Doolin of Magenza, Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses; and the very rare Santa Clara's Judas der Erzschelm. On the edge of this last one, a K in fine gold was visible, though only to those who knew where to look or who had a magnifying glass.
He walked away.
"Why would I have any of your father's books?" asked Wagner. "I always sold to him, never bought."
"Recently?"
The question was asked quite naturally.
The bookseller's hesitation was clear, even though it lasted only two or three seconds.
"Not recently. Not at all, actually. Come to think of it, I haven't sold your father anything in three or four years. Almost as long as it's been since your last visit. You were away from Vienna?"
"I was traveling with my mother and my sisters," said Reb. He turned around, smiling. "I am very pleased to see you again, Mr. Wagner. You still have beautiful books. I don't have the time right now, but I would like to come back, to speak with you. This evening perhaps?"
"I close at seven," said Wagner.
It was three in the afternoon.
"I will be here before," said Reb. "Or else tomorrow morning. But rather this evening. However, I wouldn't want to force you to remain open. Do not wait for me, if I'm late, please."
Wagner smiled back at him. "Come whenever you like. This evening will be fine. You never disturb me. And give my best regards to your father."
Reb walked down the street at his even pace. He didn't even have to turn around: reflected in the window of a watchmaker, he could see Wagner's furtive stance, half visible at the foot of the steps, after he came to the door to watch him leave. Rob walked out of sight, then doubled back to the Burgtheater, where he had a direct view of the entrance to the bookshop. He waited, thirty or forty minutes, and finally saw the men arrive. There were three of them, in a black car, totally unknown and not seeming the least bit interested in rare or old books. Besides, Wagner, who must have been watching for them, came out as soon as they appeared, talked with them, made gestures, some of which, even at a distance, were sufficiently explicit: he was describing Rob Klimrod to the men he had alerted by telephone. Two of the men entered the bookshop, the third parked the car and posted himself in the hallway of a building across from the shop. Watching.

Vienna in 1945 was no longer the Vienna of Johann Strauss, of the pleasure gardens of Grinzing; the famous Viennese golden heart no longer beat to the rhythm of a waltz. The town was half-dead, half-ruined, and, even under the June sun, gloomy. The Prater park was in the Russian zone, and the destroyed tanks there were just beginning to rust, slowly digested by the grass. Only a few blackened shells of buildings remained on Kartnerstrasse, which had been the equivalent of the Rue de la Paix or Fifth Avenue, and where effotts to rebuild the upper floors were barely starting. Few people were
where they had been; they were scattered throughout Europe, prisoners when they weren't dead, wounded, or on their slow way home.
Returning to the Klimrod house, finding it still standing but requisitioned by a British general, Reb Klimrod had not found any of the former servants. As a boy not yet thirteen, the age he was when he left for Lvov in 1941, he knew of most of them only that they lived on the top floor, knew of them what a child his age would know of his parents' employees.
He didn't go to the Austrian police, and certainly not to the occupying authorities. He had no identification papers, though that would not have been a major obstacle, even though he had committed a theft by stealing some of the British general's civilian clothing. Perhaps he thought that among the police he might find other Wagners.
David Settiniaz is convinced that Reb Klimrod knew right away that his father was dead and knew intuitively of the role played by Erich Steyr in his death. In June of 1945, Steyr was probably in Vienna, like so many war criminals who, when the war was officially over, simply went home; some, such as the notorious Mengele, reopened their medical offices from before the war. For Scttiniaz, Reb's visit to Wagner was a revelation:
the fact that the boy had chosen Wagner, and no one else, because of an old association he knew of between Steyr and Wagner. The result confirmed Reb's conviction; he saw in the appearance of the three thugs at the bookshop an attempt on Steyr's part to capture him and make him disappear.
But his main objective was to find a trace of Johann Klimrod. Rob spent two or three days in Vienna, hiding somewhere, in his former house or in a ruined building. On June 23, he found the woman from Reichenau .
who led him to the photographer from Salzburg . and to the horror.

6

At Payerbach, he got off the wagon, which was drawn by a single horse. The peasant wasn't going any farther. Reb nodded his head, smiling.
"Thank you so much. And I hope your grandson will return home soon. I am sure that he will come home."
"May God hear you, my boy," answered the old man.
Reb went along the winding road. Straight ahead of him and to his right were peaks more than sixty-five hundred feet high. He was no longer wearing the clothes and shoes of the British general; he had sold them and, in exchange, besides a little money, had obtained a blue shirt and pants that almost fit him, as did the heavy, laced-up walking boots, one of which, the right one, was ripped several inches above the toe.
He arrived in Reichenau in the late morning of June 23. In Vienna, at dawn, he had been able to get a ride in a Jeep, which had left him on the square by the cathedral of Wiener Neustadt, where the war had left impressive traces. The peasant with the wagon had picked him up two and a half miles outside Neunkirchen, while he was walking along on bloodied feet.
Reichenau was only a village. At the first house, he was told where he might find Emma Donin. Having crossed a small mountain pasture, he came to a log house, raised by a stone subfoundation. Apparently it was large enough to sleep several people: three children, about two to six years old, with blond hair and blue eyes, were sitting side by side on the edge of a stone trough, strangely quiet and immobile, with their hands resting next to their naked knees, all three repulsively dirty. In the air, besides the smell of the humid spring earth, there was the smell of smoke. Reb smiled and spoke to the children, who
didn't answer him, looking at him with the same frightened look.
He walked around the farmhouse and finally discovered the woman, who was very fat and massive, with powerful hands showing thick blue veins. She didn't react in any way when he told her who he was, Reb Michael Klimrod, of Vienna, the son of Johann Klimrod, the lawyer. Her thick, spatulate fingers continued husking corn, the grains falling into a cauldron already filled with water, a few potatoes, and some turnips. Standing in front of her, Reb could see the top of her half-bald head, where some sparse strands of yellowish-gray hair stuck with perspiration.
"You used to work in my father's house," said Reb. "I would like to know what became of him."
She asked why it was she he came to see. He explained that a wood seller from the street behind the Bohemian Chancellery had given him her name. She digested this information for the time it took her to finish stripping two ears, grasp the cauldron
-refusing any help from Reb-take it inside the house, and place it over the fire. Finally she said:
"I never worked for a Mr. Klimrod."
"But in his house, yes. As of September 1941."