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

Stalin's Teardrops


round and round."
"We'll see!" Hitching herself, she marched off.
I headed to Koshka's flat, where pickles and black caviar sandwiches,
cold cuts and mushroom and spirit were waiting; and Koshka herself,
and her warm sheets.
Towards midnight, in the stillness I heard faint footsteps outside so I
rose and looked down from her window. A slim shadowy form paced
wearily along the pavement below, moving out of sight. After a while
the figure returned along the opposite pavement, helplessly retracing
the same route.
"What is it, Valentin?" came my mistress's voice. "Why don't you
come back to bed?"
"It's nothing important, my love," I said. "Just a street walker, all
alone."


Part II: Into the Other Country

When Peterkin was a lad, the possibilities for joy seemed limitless.
He would become a famous artist. He dreamed of sensual canvases
shamelessly ablush with pink flesh, peaches, orchid blooms.
Voluptuous models would disrobe for him and sprawl upon a velvet
divan. Each would be an appetizing banquet, a feast for the eyes, as
teasing to his palate as stimulating of his palette.
Why did he associate naked ladies with platters of gourmet cuisine?
Was it because those ladies were spread for consumption? How he
had lusted for decent food when he was young. And how he had
hungered for the flesh. Here, no doubt, was the origin of the equation
between feasting and love.
Peterkin felt no desire to eat human flesh. He never even nibbled his
own fingers. The prospect of tooth marks indenting a human body
nauseated him. Love-bites were abhorrent. No, he yearnedтАФas it
wereтАФto absorb a woman's body. Libido, appetite, and art were one.
Alas for his ambitions, the requirements of the Party had cemented
him into a career niche in the secret police building in Dzerzhinsky

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Stalin's Teardrops


Square; on the eighth floor, to be precise, in the cartography
department.
Not for him a paint brush but all those damnable map projections.
Cylindrical, conical, azimuthal. Orthographic, gnomonic. Sinusoidal,
polyconic.
Not Matisse, but Mercator.
Not Gauguin but Gall's Stereographic. Not Modigliani but