"Jeff VanderMeer - Three Days in a Border Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vandermeer Jeff)

had lunged through a portal into a different place. The desert is done with. You are no longer alone.

Although you might as well be. As you walk farther into the town, no one acknowledges you. These are
short, dark-skinned people who wear brown or gray robes, some with a bracelet or necklace that
reveals a sudden splash of color, some without. Their eyes are large and either brown or black. Small
noses and thin lips or wide noses and thick lips. Some of them have skin so black it's almost looks blue.
They speak to each other in the border town patois that has become the norm, but you catch a hint of
other languages as well. A smell of spice encircles them. It prickles your nostrils, but not in the same way
as a hint of lime. Lime would indicate the presence of the City.

For a moment, you think that perhaps your solitude has entered the town with you. That somehow you
really have become a wisp of smoke. You are invisible and impervious, as unnoticeable as a speck of
dust. You walk the streets watching others ignore you.

Soon, a procession dawdles down the street, slower then faster, to the beat of metal drums. You stand
to one side as it approaches. Twenty men and women, some with drums, some shouting, and in the
middle four men holding a box that can only be a coffin. The coffin is as plain as the buildings in this
place. The procession travels past you. Passersby do not acknowledge it. They keep walking. You
cannot help feeling the oddness of this place. To ignore a stranger is one thing. To ignore twenty men and
women banging on drums while shouting is another. Even the sea gulls rise at its approach, the chickens
scattering to the side.

When the procession is thirty feet past you, an odd thing happens. The coffin opens and a man jumps
out. He's naked, penis dangling like a shriveled pendulum, face painted white. He has a gray beard and
wrinkled skin. He shouts once, then runs down the street, soon out of sight.

As he does so, the passersby stop and clap. Then they continue walking. The members of the procession
recede into the side alleys. The empty coffin remains in the middle of the street.

What does it mean? Is it something you need to write down in your book? You ponder that for a
moment, but then decide this is not about the City. There is nothing about what you saw that involves the
city.

Then dogs begin to gather at the coffin. This startles you. When they bark, you are alarmed. In The Book
of the City it is written:
Dogs will not be fooled. They will not live silent in the presence of the City -- they will bark, they will
whine, they will be ill-at-ease. And the closer the City approaches, the more these symptoms will
manifest themselves.
Was a piece of the City nearby? An inkling of it? Your heart beats faster. Not the source, but a tributary.
Otherwise, your head would be aching, trying to break apart.

But no: as they nose the coffin lid open, you see the red moistness of meat. There is raw meat inside the
coffin for some reason. The dogs feast. You move on.

Above you, the silver dome seems even more enigmatic than before.



His name was Delorn. You were married in the summer, under the heat of the scorching sun, in front of
your friends and family. You lived in a small town, centered around a true oasis and water hole. For this,