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

reasonsтАФand other people's reasons too. I dismissed the speculation
that she was another "eye of Mirov." Mirov had practically
dissociated himself from Grusha. She had been set upon me by the
new breed, the reformers, so-called. Evidently I spelled a special
danger to them. How could they create a new country while I held the
key to the old one in my keeping?
I had not intended a confrontation quite so soon; but she was
provoking it. So let her find out! I hurried up this prospekt, down that
boulevard, through the alley, over the square. Workers hurried by
wearing stiff caps. Fat old ladies bustled with bundles. I ducked
down a narrow street, through a lane, to another street. Did Grusha
realize that her gait was springier? Perhaps not. She had not lost her
youthful figure.
At last, rounding a certain corner, I sprinted ahead and darted behind
a shuttered kiosk. Waiting, I heard her break into a canter because
she feared she had lost me. By now no one else was about. Leaping
out, I caught her wrist. She shrieked, afraid of rape or a mugging by a
hooligan.

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Stalin's Teardrops


"Who are you?" she gasped. "What do you want?"
"Look at me, Grusha. I'm Valentin. Don't you recognize me?"
'You must beтАж his son!"
"Oh no."
The distortions wrought by age, the wrinkles, liver spots, crow's feet
and pot belly: all these had dropped away from me, just as they
always did whenever I took my special route. I had cast off decades.
How else could I enjoy and satisfy a mistress such as Koshka?
Grusha had also shed years, becoming a gawky, callow girlтАФwho
now clutched my arm now in awkward terror, for I had released her
wrist.
"What has happened, Colonel?"
"I can't still be a Colonel, can I? Maybe a simple Captain or
Lieutenant."
"You're young!"
"You're very young indeed, a mere fledgling."
"Was it all done by make-upтАФI mean, your appearance, back at the
Centre? In that case how can the career recordsтАж ?"
"Ah, so you saw mine?" Despite the failing light I could have sworn
that she blushed. "Make-up, you say? Yes, made up! My country is
made up, invented by us map makers. We are the makers of false
maps, dear girl; and our national consciousness is honed by this as a
pencil is brought to a needle-point against a sand-paper block, as the
blade of a mapping pen is sharpened on an oil stone. Dead ground
occurs."
"I know what 'dead ground' means. That merely refers to areas you
can't see on a relief map from a particular viewpoint."