"Van Lustbader, Eric - Angel Eyes(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

He smiled when he saw her, embraced her hard in his typical bearlike way. "Hello, Angel." At least he hadn't spoken to her in Russian, as he often did despite Tori's protests-"so you will not forget where your family was born," as he used to say. He smelled of tobacco and cologne, a pleasant mixture that Tori remembered from years past.
Despite the fact that Ellis Nunn tried hard to be very American, he was invariably taken for a native in Europe. He had the kind of Nordic good looks combined with a typical Slavic thickness which marked him as a Russian on the Continent, where such things still mattered.
Tori's father had changed his name before he applied for admission to Stanford. It was not then the power university it eventually would be, but in any event, he received an outstanding education. He became Ellis Nunn not so much because he was ashamed of his real name, but because he loved America so much that he longed for what he thought of as an American name. Tori still did not know what an American name might be.
He was a big man, exceptionally fit despite nearing seventy; he worked out in his pool every day for an hour and a half. his hair was more gray than blond now, but it was just as thick as had been when he was a young man. his vaguely almond-shaped gray eyes were set on a slight slant. his wide mouth could be as expressive as a comedian's. The oddest feature of his face was his nose, which, to Tori's way of thinking, did not fit with the rest of his Russian features. No wonder-Ellis had had it redone in his youth to be the very paradigm of an Anglo-Saxon nose. Again, vanity had little to do with the change; his desire to fit into American society did. Ellis Nunn was a man of light; the man of light, some said. He had taken his father's light bulb manufacturing business and, with the knowledge he absorbed at Stanford, brought it west, in the process turning it into the largest and most innovative creator of film illumination. If you needed low light to film by, dazzling light to illuminate a gigantic set, spectacular lights to augment explosions, lights to simulate night or any time of the day, delicate, fairy-tale twinklings to highlight a love scene, you called Ellis Nunn's This Magic Moment. his companies extended into almost every part of the globe that was a filmmaking center: Italy, France, Spain, even Hong Kong. Today, his computer-generated networks of lights could do literally anything and everything Hollywood could ask of them, especially now that he had the latest laser technology from his own R&D department to draw on.
his work had made him rich in his own right. He was not, and never had been, one of the sad Bel Air bassets, as they were cruelly known: husbands of movie stars who lived off their wives' breathtaking incomes.
As they strolled under the pergola. Tori thought of all the times she had seen her father walking here with Greg, wondering what it was the two men were speaking of, wondering why she had only rarely been granted the privilege of walking and talking like this with her father, and never here beneath the twining wisteria, Ellis Nunn's favorite spot.
They reached a patch of sunlight and Ellis Nunn stopped. As if divining her thoughts, he said, "Do you know why I love it here in my pergola? Because here no one can see me, no one can hear me." He laughed. "There are too many people padding around my house." He shrugged, began to walk again."Well, there's no sense in fighting it. That's how it's always been. Your mother's doing. Personally, I can't abide strangers in the house. Who knows where they are and what they're really up to when they 're out of sight." He grinned at her. "They don't know what I'm up to when I'm here, out of their sight.''
"Does that include Mom?"
"Of course it does," he said. "She's the nosiest of the lot. Trouble with her is she wants to run everything. Can't do it, no one can, but she's never learned. Not surprised. She's never been good with the basics. That's why she needs all these people, really. Her mind's on other, more esoteric matters. Who she'll be today. Flexing those prodigious emotional muscles of hers. Miss Emotional Universe. I used to call her that in the old days. Nothing much has changed since then, I suppose, but us. Well, not your mother. She never changes, not really-I mean, not deep under the surface.''
The patch of sunlight illuminated the stone statue of Diana, a reproduction of the one in Mexico City.
Ellis Nunn pointed at it. "There is your mother: Diana, the Huntress. Did you know that she was born Diana Leeway? No? I'm not surprised. No one does. I can't imagine her telling you. No one left in any of the studios now to recall it, either. I can't remember whose idea the name Laura was. Anyway, the producers liked the sound of Laura Nunn, so that's what she became, in reality as well as on the screen. Well, as much as your mother knows what reality is."
"How did you put up with her all these years?" Tori asked. "You not only survived, but thrived."
"Well, I don't know about thriving," he said, "but as for surviving . . ." He put his forefinger against his lips, thought a moment. "Do you know the story of the Zen Policeman? No? Odd, with all that time spent in Japan."
"Dad-"
"My God, Tori, look at you." He only called her by her Christian name when he was angry with her. "You're a grown woman of thirty-six, and what do you have to show for it? No discernible job, let alone a career. And as for starting your own family- well, that's something of a joke, isn't it? Face it, Tori, you've made a mess of everything, and here you are standing in front of me, while Greg-" For a moment he could not go on. He looked apoplectic. Then he seemed to gain hold of himself. "You're the one who has studied Oriental philosophy. Tell me, why is it that Greg, who had everything going for him, who had his whole life laid out as clearly as a road map, a career distinguished by-Jesus God, he was going to become one of the first two men to live in space, and then to land on Mars . . . Have you any conception of what that means?" He passed a hand over his face.''Why did it happen. Tori? Why is he gone?''
Tori said nothing. What was there to say?
"Greg was destined for great things, I knew it the moment he was born.'' Ellis Nunn seemed drained of the spasm of anger that had gripped him. He seemed genuinely confused. "Why was he taken from us? Your mother says it's God's will. Well, if that's so, then God's an unforgivably cruel and capricious creature."
Now Tori felt the words coming; she could not help herself. "So that is what you think I've done with my life: nothing. Well, I'm not what you wanted me to be, an astronaut, stretching the envelope of space. I'm not like Greg. You trained him; he wanted to be just what you wanted him to be. It was the perfect union of generations. You were so proud of him. You understood what motivated him; Greg was like an open book to you. But you couldn't fathom why on earth I would want to go to Japan to study. Of course you couldn't. You've spent all your adult life here in L.A., in many ways as far from global politics and economics as Fiji. This is the original land of Nod, and you built yourself Diana's Garden, a dream within the dreamland of L.A. Is it any wonder that yon have no conception of what makes me tick? 'Japan,' I remember you saying. 'What the hell could be so damn important in Japan?' You never understood. You never wanted to." She shook her head. "I must be such a disappointment to you."
Her father was studying the last of the sunlight as it slid down the folds of Diana's stone robe. He had that faraway look on his face he sometimes had during long meetings at the office, as if he were there only in body, not in spirit. It was a sad look, as well, so similar to the one she had caught in the corners of Greg's face now and again when he was sure no one was watching him.
Tori put her head down. Too late she remembered her promise to her mother not to start a fight with her father. What did it matter? she thought. This isn't about me or my father-it never was. It's about Greg. It's always been about Greg, and there's nothing I can say or do that will ever change it. As she let the silence of the encroaching evening steal up on them, she was aware of a great sadness welling up inside her. She recognized that she was angry at her father, but also at herself for letting him get to her again and again.
She said, after a time,''Are you going to tell me the story of the Zen Policeman?''
Ellis Nunn nodded, but whether it was in simple assent or in acceptance of the fragility of their relationship, she could not tell.
"Many centuries ago," he began, "there was a young Buddhist priest who traveled to Tibet in order to further his understanding of religion and philosophy.
"He possessed the proper credentials as well as a letter of introduction from his superior at his temple in central China. When, at length, he came upon the monastery he was searching for, he had climbed so high he felt as if he had breached the very vault of heaven, and it took him some time before he was able to adapt his breathing to this dizzying height.
"In due course he was accepted into the monastery, but it was some days before he was summoned to the presence of the high lama. The old, wizened man looked three hundred years old.
" 'I understand that though you are a priest you do not believe that your spiritual education is complete.'
" 'That is correct, sir,' the young priest said in a somewhat overawed voice.
" 'What is it you seek to learn here?' the old lama asked.
" 'Why, all there is to learn,' the young priest said immediately.
"The old lama looked at him and smiled. 'We shall see,' he said. 'In the meantime, we require you to remain awake and on guard during the night.'
"The young priest looked confused. 'It took me two months to reach here. I know how remote this monastery is. How could you have enemies here?'
" 'The monk who brought you to this chamber will tell you where you must sit tonight,' the lama said.
" 'But I am a priest, not a guard,' the young man protested. 'Besides, I am a Buddhist. I have pledged never to harm a single creature. I cannot even till the earth for fear of killing a worm or an insect.'
" 'You do not yet know who or what you are,' the old lama said. 'That is why you are here.'
"That night, the young priest was shown to the spot in the exact center of the monastery where he must keep watch. A pillow was placed for him to sit. It was a crossing of the four main corridors of the stone structure, and from his vantage point he could see most, if not all, the monks' tiny sleeping cells.
"The hours of the night crept by with agonizing slowness. Nothing happened. The silence became a weight on the young priest's eyelids, so that once or twice he found himself drifting off into a light slumber before starting awake. He yawned and stretched to keep himself alert. He began to wonder why he had come here, or if he had come to the right place at all.
"Then, all at once, he stood up. He looked from corridor to corridor, sure that he had heard a sound. But there was only the heavy awful silence, claustrophobic as the inside of a tomb. Then he became aware that the 'sound' was an ethereal stirring, as if in his own mind, and he whirled around.
"He was not alone. Something was in the west corridor. It came toward him but, in the flickering light of the reed torches, he could not make out what it was.
"Suddenly, it burst out of the corridor, coming upon him like a whirlwind, and he felt a chill race down his spine. It was as translucent as the wings of an insect; he could clearly see the corridor behind it, through it.
"The wraith brushed past him, careening down another corridor. Soon the intersection where the young priest now stood was thick with these wraiths. Sometimes it seemed to him that they had faces, bodies, hands and feet. At other times they were nothing more than pure energy.
"The young priest felt a fright welling up inside of him. What were these forms? Were they the enemies of the Tibetan monks? If so, how was he to combat them, when violence was anathema to him? These questions and ten thousand others crowded his mind in the same way the wraiths crowded the corridors of the monastery. The terrible fear built inside him, until he contemplated abandoning his post, turning tail, and putting this mad place behind him forever. But, as if in a dream, he felt rooted to the spot. He did not know whether to fear for the loss of his mind or his life.
"Then he noticed a curious thing. The fear was coming from inside him. When he concentrated his spiritual powers, he realized that the wraiths, whatever or whoever they might be, posed no threat to him or to the people of the monastery. The chaos of their rushing to and fro was, in a way, self-contained.
"And then he set about trying to turn the chaos into order. He found that, with continued concentration, he could move closer to these darting wraiths, could feel where they wanted to go and, eventually, guide them on their way.
"It was at that moment that he recognized one of the wraiths as the monk who had led him to the lama's sanctuary, and to this crossroads. And then the young priest understood everything.
"These wraiths were the spirits of the monks. Unleashed as they slept, freed from the bonds of their daytime work, these spirits were prone to the chaos that lurked within the innermost recesses of even the most disciplined mind. They lacked but a single soul-a kind of Zen policeman-to see them on their proper paths, to keep them from the dangers inherent in chaos.''
Tori and her father had come to the far end of the pergola. He turned around, took one last look at the statue of Diana, cloaked now in the robes of twilight. He said, after a long silence,''Does that answer your question as to how I have survived in Diana's Garden? I learned that I had to change in order to survive the demons peculiar to your mother's genius.''
Tori thought for a long time. It was an amazing story, and even more amazing that it had come from her father. She simply had not thought he had such subtlety in him. The story also explained many things about her parents' relationship. But it also brought into focus some of her own childhood concerns. She said carefully, "I worry sometimes that I... Well, I still sort of lose myself when Mom's around. There's so much of her-her personality, her aura, her wa, as the Japanese would say-that there often seems no space left over for me."
Her father said, "You should try to understand your mother more. If you did, I'm sure you'd find it worth your while."
"I'm not sure you heard what I said.'' Tori was struggling to find a basis for communicating with him, but either he was misunderstanding her or being willful. Still, she pressed on. "I often end up not knowing how I feel about her." She looked at him, at that noble, almost primitive profile. "Do you love Mom?"
Ellis Nunn turned to his daughter. "I understand her. Tori. I think, in your mother's case, that's the same as loving her."