"Howard Waldrop - Winter Quarters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

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He was thrown out, of course, for violations of the University fire codes and firearms policy, for
causing a riot, and for unauthorized use of Jones Hall. Plus he spent a couple of days in the city jug
before he was expelled.
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About a week before that performance, Arnaud had spoken to me for the first and only time. I was in
the cafeteria (where we all usually were), alone, between classes, drinking the brown stuff they sell
instead of coffee, actually doing some reading in Roman history.
I looked up. Arnaud was standing there, looking like a French foreign-exchange student.
"Ever read any Nigidius Figulus?" he asked.
Taken aback by his speaking, I still wanted to appear cool. "Not lately," I said.
"Should," he said, and walked away.
That night I got out my handbook of Latin literature. Nigidius Figulus was a neo-Pythagorean of
Cicero's time, an astrologer, a grammarian; much concerned with Fate and the will of the gods. In other
words, the usual minor Roman literary jack-of-all-trades the late Republic coughed up as regular as
clepsydra-work.
The next day I spent in the Classics library, reading epitomes of his writings.
Not much there for me.



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We pulled into the parking lot of the exhibition hall where the circus was, and who do we see but Dr.
Fred Luntz getting out of his car with his stepson. Bob called to him. He came over. "Susan call you,
too?" asked Dr. Bob.
"No. Why?" asked Fred.
"Arnaud's in this circus."
"Arnaud? Arnaud. I'll be damned." We went in and sat down on the bleachers.



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As circuses got, it was a small one. It only had two mammoths.
Mammontelephants, actually, but you know what I mean.
They were second-billed in the show, too -- and they didn't come in with the Grand Entry Parade. (Dr.
Bob noticed immediately. "They usually don't get along with other elephants," he said.) Fred's stepson,
about eight, and the product of the previous marriage of his trophy wife, was looking everywhere at