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

The day I left, my father took me aside and said, тАЬDonтАЩt become something separate from the work you
do.тАЭ The advice irritated me. It made no sense. But the truth is I didnтАЩt know what he meant at the time.

His parting hug, her kiss, though, were what sustained me during my first year of medical school, even if I
would never have admitted it at the time.

***

The brittle-boned old man stands at the waterтАЩs edge and stares out to sea. I wonder what heтАЩs looking
at, so distant. The sargassumтАЩs right in front of him, just yards from the shore.

ThatтАЩs where I stare, where I search.

***

As a medical student, I lost myself in the work and its culture, which mainly meant sitting in the taverns
boasting. I had picked up not just a roommate but a friend in Lucius, the son of a wealthy city official.
We roamed the taverns for booze and women, accompanied by his friends. I didnтАЩt have much money,
but I had a quick tongue and was good at cards.

Many long nights those first two years we spent pontificating over the cures we would find, the diseases
we would bring to ground and eradicate, the herbs and mixes that would restore vitality or potency. We
would speak knowingly about matters of demonic anatomy and supposed resurrection, even though as
far as anyone knew, none of it was true. Anymore.

Lucius: They had golems in the old days, didnтАЩt they? Surgeons must have made them. Sorcerers
wouldnтАЩt know a gall bladder from a spoiled wineskin.

Me: Progress has been made. It should be possible to make a person from some twine, an apple, a
bottle of wine, and some cat gut.

Peter (LuciusтАЩ friend): A drunk person, maybe.

Lucius: You are a drunk person. Are you a golem?

Me: HeтАЩs no golem. HeтАЩs just resurrected. Do you remember when he began showing up? Right
after we left the cadaver room.

Lucius: Why, I think youтАЩre right. Peter, are you a dead man?

Peter: Not to my knowledge. Unless you expect me to pay for all this.

Lucius: Why canтАЩt you be a resurrected woman? I have enough dead male friends.

During the daysтАФoh marvel of youth!тАФwe conquered our hangovers with supernatural ease and spent
equal time in the cadaver room cutting up corpses and in classes learning about anatomy and the perilous
weakness of the human body. Our myriad and ancient and invariably male instructors pontificated and
sputtered and pointed their fingers and sometimes even donned the garb and grabbed the knife, but
nothing impressed as much as naked flesh unfolding to show its contents.