"Jeff VanderMeer & Cat Rambo - The Surgeon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

different pedigrees. The sea grasses lent the water there, under the salt, the faint scent of glossy limes.
Near the wrecks of iron-bound ships from bygone eras, where the octopi made their lairs, the water
tasted of weak red wine.

тАЬTaste this,тАЭ my mother would say, standing in the kitchen in one of my fatherтАЩs shirts over rolled up
pants and suspenders. Acid blotches spotted her hands.

I could never tell if there was mischief in her eye or just delight. Because some of it, even after I became
used to the salt, tasted horrible.

I would grimace and my father would laugh and say, тАЬSourpuss! Learn to take the bitter with the sweet.тАЭ

My parents sold the essence of what the sea gave them: powders and granules and mixtures of spices. In
the front room, display cases stood filled with little pewter bowls glittering in so many colors that at times
the walls seemed to glow with the residue of some mad sunrise.

This was the craft of magic in our age: pinches and flakes. Magic had given way to Science because
Science was more reliable, but you could still find Magic in nooks and crannies, hidden away. For what
my parents did, I realized later, could not have derived from the natural world alone.

People came from everywhere to buy these preservations. Some you rubbed on your skin for health.
Some preserved fruit, others meat. And sometimes, yes, the medical school sent a person to our cottage,
usually when they needed something special that their own ghastly concoctions could not preserve or
illuminate.

My dad called the man they sent тАЬStinkerтАЭ behind his back. His hands were stained brown from handling
chemicals and the reek of formaldehyde was even in his breath. My mother hated him.

I suppose that is one reason I went to medical schoolтАФbecause my parents did not like Stinker. Does
youth need a better excuse?

As a teenager, I became contemptuous of the kind, decent folk who had raised me. I contracted a kind
of headstrong cabin fever, too, for we were on the outskirts of the city. I hated the enclosing walls of the
cottage. I hated my fatherтАЩs boat. I even hated their happiness with each other, for it seemed designed to
keep me out. When I came back from my studies at the tiny school created for the children of fishermen
and sailors, the smell of preservatives became the smell of something small and unambitious. Even though
poor, the parents of my schoolmates often went on long journeys into the world, had adventures beyond
my ken. A few even worked for the old men who ran the medical school and the faltering magesтАЩ college.
I found that their stories made me more and more restless.

When the time came, I applied to the medical school. They accepted me, much to the delight of my
parents, who still did not understand my motivation. I would have to work for my tuition, my books, but
that seemed a small price.

I remember a sense of relief at having escaped a trap. It is a feeling I do not understand now, as if my
younger self and my adult selves were two entirely different people. But back then I could think only of
the fact that I would be in the cityтАЩs center, in the center of civilization. I would matter to more than just
some farmers, cooks, fisherfolk, and the like. I would be saving lives from death, not just preserving dead
things from decay.