"Utley, Steven - The Despoblado" - читать интересную книгу автора (Utley Steven)

They rounded the bend, and Walton brought the barge in close to the bank. The radio station consisted of a shed fashioned of corrugated metal sheets, dominated by a dish antennae. A smaller shed with one open side housed the generator. The three people on the water waited. Nothing moved on the land.

"What do we do," Michelle said, "just toss everything onto the shore like before and leave?"

Walton shook his head. "I always like to see him. They always ask me when I get back, 'How'd he look?' And I have to tell 'em. He'll show himself. He knows I won't leave until he does."

"How does he look, usually?"

"Like a Neanderthal who's down on his luck."

Wicket ran out the gangplank, took up a gigantic armload of cartons, and went ashore. Walton followed, carrying a carton under each arm. After a moment's hesitation, Michelle picked up a carton and followed as well.

Walton glared back at her, "Asked you to stay on the barge."

"I think your hermit's off hiding someplace."

Wicket deposited his armload of cartons by the door to the shed and immediately turned back toward the barge. The door was ajar. Michelle set the carton on the ground, then, overcome with curiosity and helpless to do otherwise, stepped to the doorway and peered within. Her nose was crinkled in anticipation of squalor served up, perhaps, with the thick, sickening smell of dirty socks and foodstuffs gone bad; instead she found only an inconsistent sort of untidinessЧa cluttered table, a disheveled cot, and radio equipment that looked well-maintained and clean. A rude shelf mounted at eye level on the near wall contained not tapes or chips but old-fashioned books. She was not certain what she would have expected to find in the cabin of a hermitЧRobinson Crusoe, perhaps, or Heart of DarknessЧbut it disappointed her that the only titles she could read were those of electronics maintenance manuals.

She suddenly sensed someone behind her and turned.

The old man of the mountain wore cutoff jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball capЧall frayed and rather dirtyЧand a pair of sandals that appeared to have been repaired with insulated electrical wire. His long, matted hair covered his head like the hood of a parka, and his beard grew up his face almost to the lower eyelids, yet the face in the midst of this unkempt hyperpilosity was that of a man in his mid-thirties. His eyes, clear blue, alert, nervous, never quite met hers. He gave the impression of an animal that found itself cut off from its burrow.

Walton hove into view behind and to one side of the man and said, "Hello." The hermit shot him a startled glance, and Michelle took the opportunity to step aside, out of the doorway. She made an apologetic sound as the man pushed by, trailing a sour smell. He stopped just inside the door, turned, stood there blinking and fidgeting as Walton continued speaking. "You remember Wicket, don't you?" he said, gesturing over his shoulder at the big man standing stock still on the path. "Of course you do. This"Чindicating MichelleЧ"is our new friend, Miz Kelly. Say hello."

"Hello," said Michelle.

The man looked as though he were about to speak but settled for nodding.

"We've put everything here by the door for you," Walton said.

"Good. Good. That's good." The man spoke as though it amazed him to discover that he still possessed a voice, and he seemed to repeat words as though to make certain they sounded right when he spoke them. "Thank you. That's good. Good."

"We'll be going now. Till next time. Michelle."

Michelle hurried to rejoin Walton, and then the hermit practically herded them back to the boat and watched until Walton had backed the barge away from the bank, brought it about, pointed its blunt bow downriver. Then he disappeared into his shed and did not show himself again. She imagined a couple of times that she glimpsed his face at the window, but could not be certain of it. The boat followed the bend of the river, and the radio station passed from view.




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For some time after they had left the hermit's camp, Walton, in his pilot house with the windows opened to create the impression of a breeze moving through the confined space, watched Michelle as she moved restlessly about the deck. Occasionally she paused at the rail to peer at something unapparent to him. Finally, though, heat and glare drove her into such shade as the superstructure had to offer. He heard her back thump against the pilot house as she sat down by it, but he saw and heard nothing more of her for several minutes. Then, above the rhythm of the diesels, there came music. He recognized it after a moment as the emotive second movement of Bach's Violin Concerto in A Minor. It was followed in short order by "Pas d'action," from Swan Lake. Ah, Christ, he thought unhappily, we're going to be awash with melancholy all the way back downriver. She surprised him, however, by next playing the "Dance of the Swans," and Walton could not help smiling, could not resist picturing for a moment a row of sprightly tutu-clad young women prancing and whirling along the stony bank.
After dinner, they sat looking up at the dark purple sky. Walton stretched, crossed his arms tightly across his chest, and made a contented sound. She looked around at him and said, "How'd he get past screening? The old man of the mountain."

Walton shrugged. "I guess he was well enough to get through screening. Living in the Paleozoic brought out the craziness in him. It's some kind of progressive disorder."

"What happens to him if everybody else here just folds up and goes home?"