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

Ariel said something but, in the din, she could not hear what it was. She shrugged at him, pointing to her ear, and shook her head.
He put his lips against her ear, said, "Let's go somewhere else."
Ten minutes later they were entering the Recoleta cemetery where the esteemed ancestors of the alta sociedad lay interred beneath flower-strewn earth and ornately carved marble. This was a city of the dead, a baroque necropolis from which many of the myths of the portenos were born. From death to life: there was a certain poetry to the notion, at least from an Argentine point of view.
The jacarandas dripped moisture, but rain was on the way. A low rumble filled the air, its echoes reluctant to fade away.
Ariel led the way as if he were a frequent visitor here. The oppressive darkness of marble and stone ornately carved in the French and Italian Renaissance styles gave way to a soft glow, increasing as they went forward.
Soon they had come upon a crypt. Around it were laid out wreaths woven of flowers, bouquets, bunches of wildflowers. Under the trees where the rain could not penetrate, the flames of perhaps a hundred candles flickered. Into the crypt's face was carved, simply, Eva duarte.
"Here is myth," Ariel said, pointing to the last resting place of Eva Peron. "More has been written-quite erroneously- about her than anyone in this country. Was she saint or demon?''
"Perhaps she was neither," Tori said. "Perhaps she was just a woman."
"Well, don't let the descamisados, the shiftless ones, hear you say that.'' He was speaking of the workers who had slavishly followed their hope, the Perons. "It would not be enough for them." Ariel turned to look at her. It had begun to rain, a fine pattering through the trees that made Tori think of airports and farewells. "You think it is not understandable? Everything else has been taken from them."
"Even their children," Tori said. "Their future."
"In a very real sense, yes. Those that disappeared in the night during Argentina's reign of terror will never be heard from again. The disappeared are now only mute witnesses to this country's savage history. Oppression stilled their voices forever." Ariel looked out across the sea of baroque headstones and crypts. "It's quite sad."
Stone angels surrounded Tori and Ariel, their tiny carved wings encrusted with the soot of the city. Rain rolled down their cheeks like tears as they remembered the dead. The polished marble of the necropolis was milky, eerily luminous in the aqueous light from the massed candles.
"Does this display mean that after all this time Peronism still lives?"
"Only in a sense," Ariel said. "It is like a dream, you see. The descamisados continue to hope, but now the new leaders of Peronism veer from one political platform to another instead of facing the truth: that the true essence of Peronism is today an anachronism."
Tori stared into the candles' flames. "Here the children paid for the sins of their fathers." She turned to look into his face. ''Where is the justice in that?''
"We are in Argentina," Ariel said. "A place where justice is, at best, misunderstood."
The rain drowned the candles' flames, and darkness once again enwrapped the city of the dead. Tori had the abrupt feeling that she and Ariel both knew what the worst was: justice used as a weapon to destroy, and as a shield behind which to obscure culpability.
Ariel shivered as if the night had suddenly turned cold or a spirit had touched the back of his neck. "Perhaps it was a mistake to come here tonight," he said.
* 'Do you mean Estilo's party or the Recoleta cemetery?'' Tori asked.
Ariel smiled, and Tori realized that she liked his face. In repose it was a formidable visage: stern, strong-willed, with an almost defiant edge-seemingly far from the bored businessman he claimed to be. But when Ariel laughed, the forbidding cast disintegrated into a kind of boyish charm she found irresistible.
She felt this last odd and a bit discomfiting. It had been a long time since she had found anyone irresistible.
Ariel looked at her. "I believe you have the most extraordinary eyes I've ever seen," he said. "This afternoon they were turquoise, green, I thought. Now they are the color of cobalt."
Tori laughed. "My father used to call me Angel Eyes. My brother and I had the same eyes."
"Had?" Ariel had caught a tone as well as a tense.
Tori put her head down into darkness. "My brother's dead."
"I'm sorry."
Tori took a deep breath. "Well. He was a wonderful man. And he was blessed. Before he died, he flew like an angel. And like an angel, he saw the whole planet spread out before him." Ariel looked at her quizzically, and she smiled sadly. "My brother was an astronaut."
Ariel snapped his fingers.''Nunn. Wait a minute. Greg Nunn? The American who died in that joint mission to Mars with the Russians? What was that, last year?"
"Eighteen months."
"Greg Nunn was your brother?"
"Yes."
It was just a whisper, but it told the discerning listener volumes. Ariel wisely decided to change the subject. "Estilo mentioned that you are retired," he said. "From what?"
What to tell him? "Family business," Tori said. Not exactly a lie, but not the truth, either.
He grunted. "Me, too. Only I'm still in it." They began to walk. ''It used to be fun when my father ran it. I could do pretty much what I wanted. I never realized how boring the meat business was until my father died and I was obliged to take it over. Responsibility seemed to drain all the fun out of the work.''
They were at the cemetery's gate, and passing through into me street. Tori had the feeling that an oppressive weight had lifted from her. In there, it had seemed as if the very air she had been breathing was humid with the spirits of the dead. She took one last look at the sad-faced stone angels, as though she could hear their wings rustling in the windswept night.
"So running the business isn't enough," Tori said, giving him an opening to perhaps talk about why, as Estilo had said, he was really in Buenos Aires.
"I don't believe I'm in the mood to go back to Estilo's," Ariel said, as if he hadn't heard her question. "It's raining, and the climate is not conducive to a party.''
Tori wondered whether by the climate he meant the weather or his state of mind. Either way, it was all right; she had no desire to wedge herself back into Estilo's ultratrendy crowd.
He took her to Cafe Tortoni, a well-known jazz bar on the Avenida de Mayo.
"Are you often up late at night?"
"Only when I'm traveling," Ariel said. He shrugged. "I don't know what it is, but all my business associates seem to be aficionados of la vida nocturna- night life."
Tori had been in love with the night life; twice. As an underage teenager she had used her beauty to hang out in Los Angeles' most dangerous night spots. Years later the clandestine late-night clubs of Tokyo, so far away from her native L.A., had held another form of danger. But by that time she was an entirely different person, wasn't she?
They drank cane brandy while a black saxophonist made noises in concert with a West Indian snare drummer and a blond, slick-fingered bassist. It didn't sound much like music, but everyone seemed content to listen to it.
When the set was through, Ariel looked at his watch. "It's after midnight. Are you tired?"
Tori shook her head.
"Good." He paid the check, then led her out of the restaurant. They picked up a taxi on the avenue, and Ariel told the driver, "La Manzana de las Luces." The driver shrugged, headed south into the downtown district.
The Square of Enlightenment, between Peru and Bolivar at the intersection of the Avenida Julio Roca, was a treasure trove of historical landmarks. But the only one Tori could remember offhand was the offices of La Prensa, Argentina's most famous newspaper.
The taxi let them off on Peru, and Ariel stopped in front of number 222. It had an Italian-designed facade typical of the mid-1880s, though Ariel informed her the building itself was more than a hundred years older than that.
"This place has belonged variously to two newspapers and the University of Buenos Aires," Ariel said. "But by far its most interesting tenant was the General Attorney of the Jesuits, for whom, apparently, it was built. King Charles the Third of Spain kicked the order out in 1767. But before then some fascinating goings-on occurred here."
"Like what?"