"Bernard Wolfe - Limbo '90" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Bernard)

Ships could carry planes. It was possible these days for strangers to come by air as well as by sea. Dr
Martine had come by air.
Was that a vessel he saw, that speck on the horizon beyond which lay Mauritius and Reunion and
Madagascar (places he had glimpsed only from thirty thousand feet up, on scavenging trips in Martine's
plane)? Out there in the direction of the forgotten trade routes which had once slashed this untonused old
ocean? Way off to the west there, where if you travelled long enough you came at last to Africa, whose
toppled cities were filled with fabulous paisley scarves and tennis caps, cummerbunds and opera hats and
cricket sneakers, even crates of penicillin and electroencephalographs, and no people? The speck
seemed to be moving, he could not be sure.

'No,' the old man said. 'Otherwise, Doctor, prognosis not favourable.'

His features settled in a deeper frown, it felt like a hand grabbing his face. He re-entered the jungle to
begin the descent on the far side of the summit, a galago dashed hysterically across the path.

In a few moments he reached the landmark, a tall column of scaly rock almost entirely overrun with
creepers and ferns. Squatting in the thicket, he called out as loudly as he could, 'Peace to all! Peace and
long life. Open up, here is Ubu.' It was not English he spoke now but the throaty, resonant, richly
vowelled tongue of the Mandunji.

Facing him was a boulder which bulged out from the base of the rock, hidden from sight by a tangle of
briers. It swung inward, briers and all. Stooping, Ubu stepped into the cavern.

'Peace to all,' he repeated. His hands went up in the ceremonial greeting, fingers extended and palms up
as though a tray were resting on them, to indicate that their owner came without weapons and therefore
in friendship and good will.

'Peace, Ubu,' the tall teak-complexioned young man at the gate answered sleepily. He yawned, a cosmic
gape. Then he remembered the rest of the salutation and awkwardly stuck his hands out in turn. They
were not empty; in one. was a brush dripping red berry juice and in the other a sheet of pounded bark
partially covered with rows of painted mynah birds and manioc plants. Apparently he had been working
on this decorative drawing when Ubu arrived.

'I... do not mean... to offend,' he said slowly, searching for the words. It was dawning on him, Ubu could
see, that he had committed a serious breach of etiquette by not emptying his hands before holding them
out. 'My thought is far away... I was making a design and...'

Ubu smiled and patted him on the shoulder. At the same time he leaned forward to examine the scar on
the young man's shaved head, a ribbon of pink tissue which ran in an unwavering line from the forehead
past both ears to the nape of the neck. It was the welt that was always made when the dome of a
troubled one's skull was sliced off with a Mandunga saw and then neatly pasted back in place.

'It heals nicely,' Ubu said, pointing to the scar.

'It has stopped itching,' the boy said.

'No more trouble there?'

The boy looked puzzled. 'I do not remember the trouble people speak of,' he said. 'Dr Martine says I
used to fight much... and there was much tonus in my muscles... I do not remember. Mostly I like to sit