"Ian Watson - Stalin's Teardrops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

Interrupted Mollweide.
The would-be artist had mutated into an assistant in this subdivided
suite of rooms where false maps were concocted.
"My dreams have decayed," he confided to friend Goldman in the
restaurant one lunchtime.
Around them, officers from the directorates of cryptography,
surveillance, or the border guards ate lustily under rows of fat white
light-globes. Each globe wore a hat-like shade. Fifty featureless white
heads hung from the ceiling, brooking no shadows below, keeping
watch blindly. A couple of baggy babushkas wheeled trolleys stacked
with dirty dishes around the hall. Those old women seemed bent on
achieving some quota of soiled crockery rather than on delivering the
same speedily to the nearest sink.
Goldman speared a slice of roast tongue. "Oh I don't know. Where
else, um, can we eat, um, as finely as this?"
Dark, curly-haired, pretty-faced Goldman was developing a hint of a
pot-belly. Only a proto-pot as yet, though definitely a protuberance in
the making. Peterkin eyed his neighbour's midriff.
Goldman sighed. "Ah, it's the sedentary life! I freely admit it. All day
long spent sharpening quills for pens, pens, pensтАж No sooner do I
empty one basket of wing feathers than that wretched hunchback
porter delivers another. Small wonder he's a hunchback! I really
ought to be out in the woods or the marshes shooting geese and teal
and woodcock. That's what I wanted to be, you know? A hunter out
in the open air."
"So you've told me." Peterkin was lunching on broiled hazel-hen with
jam. However, each eveningтАФrain, snow, or shineтАФhe made sure to
take a five-kilometre constitutional walk, armed with a sketchbook as
witness to his former hopes; rather as a mother chimp might tote her

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Stalin's Teardrops


dead baby around until it started to stink.
Peterkin was handsome where his friend was pretty. Slim, blond,
steely-eyed, and with noble features. Yet all for what? Here in the
secret police building he mostly met frumps or frigid functionaries.
The foxy females were bait for foreign diplomats and businessmen.
Out on the streets, whores were garishly painted in a do-it-yourself
style: Slash lips, cheeks rouged like stop-lights, bruised eyes. Under
the evening street lamps those ladies of the night looked so lurid to
Peterkin.
Excellent food a-plenty was on offer to the secret servants of the
State such as he. Goose with apples, breaded mutton chops, shashlik
on skewers, steamed sturgeon. Yet whereabouts in his life were the
soubrettes and odalisques and gorgeous inamoratas? Without whom,
how could he really sate himself?
"So how are the, um, projections?" Goldman asked idly.
"Usual thing, old son. I'm busy using Cassini's method. Distances