"Jeff VanderMeer - Flight Is For Those Who Have Not Yet Crossed Over (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

D'Souza loses his balance, slides slowly down the bars, into the darkness
of the floor.
"Take a message to my wife or do not take a message to my wife..."
And then, in a self-mocking tone: "It truly does not matter. I have
dreamed of flying to her myself, you know. Flying over this country of El
Toreador. My arms are like wings and I can feel the wind cool against my
face. All the stars are out and there are no clouds. Such a clear, clean
darkness. It seems almost a miracle, such clarity...Below me I can make
out the shapes of banana plantations and textile factories. I can tell the
green of the rainforest from that of the pampas. I see the ruins of the
Maya and the shapes of mountains, distant...and yet when I wake I am still
here, in my cell, and I know I am lost."
D'Souza looks up at Gabriel, the whites of his eyes gleaming through the
broken mask of his face and says, "My wife's name is Maria D'Souza. When I
have died, you must tell her so she can come for my body."

By the time Gabriel has stumbled back along the third floor catwalk,
ducking the swinging light bulbs, and down to the second floor and finally
the first; by the time he has passed through the endless security
checkpoints in the first floor administrative offices where the secret
police lounge, still wearing sunglasses; by the time he has lit a
cigarette and limped through the rain-slicked parking lot to his beat-up
VW, he has managed to distance himself from D'Souza and think of other
things. The car, for instance, which is a present from Pedro, now a used
car salesman in Mexico City, perhaps not where he wanted to be at fifty,
but happy. It is like the shedding of some insidious skin, this thinking
of other things.
The car crankily shifts into gear and Gabriel turns on the headlights. He
backs out under the glare of the moth-smothered lamp post and drives past
the outer ring of guard stations, waving at his friend Alberto, who is
good for a game of pool or poker on the weekends.
The road is bumpy and ill-marked, but as Gabriel speeds down it he reaches
an exhausted calm; his shoulders untense and he slides back in the seat,
slouching but comfortable. Mottled shadows broken by glints of water
reflect the stars. There is no traffic at this hour, the bright murals and
billboards depicting El Toreador muted, rendered indistinct by a night
littered with broken street lamps.
Magnified by the hush of surrounding trees, the silence is unbroken,
except for the chugging huff of Gabriel's VW, the even sound of which
reminds him of an old Mickey Mouse alarm clock; the ticking had more than
once lulled him to sleep, wedged between three brothers on a small bed.
His father had been alive then, and they had been poor, although well-off
compared to some families, until he'd been caught selling drugs to
supplement their income. A thin, short man in a shabby black blazer and
gray trousers too baggy for his legs; eyes that had once reflected
laughter become as flat and gray as slate; shoeless feet a flurry of scars
from working hard labor in the quarries. Mother had had to find work in a
clothes factory, making bright cotton designer shirts that would be
shipped off to the United States, to be sold in shopping malls with names
like "Oaks" and "Shady Brook."