"Gene Wolfe - A Fish Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

A FISH STORY
Gene Wolfe

[21 may 2002--proofed for #bookz]

Once upon a time, the story goes, Gene Wolfe sent an editor a gingerbread house for
Christmas. That editor left the treat beside the coffee machine so the entire department could
enjoy it. For half a day the house sat untouched. Then one brave assistant editor finally broke off
a large piece, and within minutes only a few shreds of gingerbread remained. "I think everyone
was afraid to mess up anything so beautiful," said one witness. "That hardly seems likely--" came
the reply. "These people are editors."
This anecdote has no bearing whatsoever on "A Fish Story," but it's too good to leave untold.
Gene's first F&SF story was "Car Sinister" in the January 1970 issue and we're delighted he took
time out from working on his new novel On Blue's Waters, to tell us a new one...

I am always embarrassed by the truth. For one thing, I am a writer of fiction, and know that coming
from me it will not be believed, nor does it lend itself to neat conclusions in which the hero and heroine
discover the lost silver mine. So bear with me, or read something else. This is true--and because it is, not
quite satisfactory.
We three were on a fishing trip along a certain river in Minnesota. We had put Bruce's boat in the
water that morning and made our way in a most dilatory fashion downstream, stopping for an hour or
two at any spot we thought might have a muskie in it. That night we camped on shore. The next day we
would make our way to the lake, where Bruce's wife and mine would meet us about six. Rab, who had
never married, would ride as far as Madison with my wife and me. We had not caught much, as I
remember, but we had enough to make a decent meal, and were eating it when we saw the UFO.
I do not mean that we saw a saucer-shaped mother ship from a far-off galaxy full of cute green
people with feelers. When I say it was a UFO, I mean merely what those three letters indicate something
in the air (lights, in our case) we could not identify. They hovered over us for a half minute, drifted off to
the northeast, then receded very fast and vanished. That was all there was to it, in my opinion, we had
witnessed a natural phenomenon of some sort, or seen some type of aircraft.
But of course we started talking about them, and Roswell, and all that; and after a while Bruce
suggested we tell ghost stories. "We've all had some supernatural experience," Bruce said.
And Rab said, "No."
"Oh, of course you have." Bruce winked at me.
"I didn't mean that nothing like this has ever happened to me," Rah said, "just that I don't want to
talk about it."
I looked at him then. It was not easy to read his face in the firelight, but I thought he seemed
frightened.
It took about half an hour to get the story out of him. Here it is. I make no comment because I have
none to make; I do not know what it means, if it means anything.
"I've always hated ghosts and all that sort of thing," Rah began, "because I had an aunt who was a
spiritualist. She used to read tea leaves, and bring her Ouija board when she came to dinner, and hold
seances, and so on and so forth. When I was a little boy it scared me silly. I had nightmares, really
terrible nightmares, and used to wake up screaming. All that ended when I was thirteen or fourteen, and
since then I've despised the whole stupid business. Pretty soon one of you is going to ask if I've ever seen
a ghost, so I'll answer that right now. No. Never.
"Well, you don't want my life history. Let's just say that I grew up, and after a while my mother and
father weren't around anymore, or married to each other either. My sister was living in England. She's
moved to Greece, but I still hear from her at Christmas.
"One day I got home from work, and there was a message from Dane County Hospital on my