"Ian Watson - My Soul Swims in a Goldfish Bowl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

Work.
Home.
MaryтАЩs hair is exquisite, if over-precise. I smell the tarragon in the Breton sauce prepared for the artichoke
leaves, and hurry to the drinks cabinet, heart thumping, absurdly fearful that my living soul is chopped into the
sauce with the tarragon leaves. So vulnerable I feel with my soul detached from me; yet at the same time
curiously I feel very little about itтАж But no. My soul still circles slowly there, aloofly. I prod it. It ducks, bobs
up again, like jelly.
Tony and Wanda arrive. I pour gins and whiskeys.
тАЬWhateverтАЩs that?тАЭ asks Wanda, pointing.
Mary smiles brightly. тАЬOh, thatтАЩs TomтАЩs soul.тАЭ
Everyone giggles, even me.
We sit down. We eat, we drink. Conversation does its glassy best to glitter. Smoke fills the air. Mary places
the bowl with my soul in it on the dining table as we drink coffee and some odd beetroot liqueur from
Rumania. My soul circulates. Tony offers it a stuffed olive on a skewer, the olive being the same size as it is.
It butts against it, declines the offering; how could it nibble it? When Tony withdraws the olive I look twice to
ensure that he has not exchanged my soul on a skewer for an olive bobbing in the bowl. But all is well.
тАЬIt really is his soul, you know,тАЭ says Mary. тАЬBut donтАЩt imagine it feeds or thinks or does very much! ItтАЩs just
something that is.тАЭ
тАЬAn essence. How existential,тАЭ nods Tony. After a while my soul is relegated to the top of the cabinet again.
Where it rotates, quite slowly, mutely in its bowl.
After a while longer its presence seems to overcast the evening; Tony and Wanda leave rather early,
murmuring excuses. ItтАЩs disconcerting to see someoneтАЩs soul, looking just like that and no more. If only it
was radiant, with wings! A hummingbird. A butterflyтАж But it isnтАЩt, alas. This miracle, this atrocity, this terrible
event is too small and simply protoplasmic, too tadpolelike. Where is the amazement? Where is the awful
revelation of loss? And this is why I know now, with absolute certainty, that my soul does indeed swim there
in the bowl. Lost to me utterly; so utterly that not even a thread of awe or a spiderтАЩs strand of sickness unto
death can connect me to it.
Such is the nature of real loss, irreparable total loss; no possible attachment remains. So it is true that I am
soulless; for there it is. Just that and no more.
While Mary rinses the plates, I sit patiently watching it as it turns, and turns, limbless, eyeless, brainless,
mouthless, turning nevertheless, occasionally ducking and bobbing in its tepid water in the bowl.
My soul, oh my soul.