"Gene Wolfe - Castaway" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"She used to show me birds, too. Wonderful birds. Some
that could sleep while they flew. Some that sang and
flew at the same time. All kinds of colors and all kinds of
shapes. You know what a bird is?"

Naturally I said I didn't.

"It's a kind of flying animal. Some of them made music.
A lot of the little ones did. Singing, you know, only they
sounded more like flutes. It was beautiful!"

I said, did they know "Going to Bunk with You Tonight,"
because that's my favorite song. He said they didn't play
our music, they played their own, and he sang some of it
for me, looking like he was going to kiss somebody. I
didn't like it much, but I pretended I did. I wanted to
know how she had showed him all this and made him
hear it, because I think it would be really nice if I could
do that, and useful, too. He said he didn't know, and
after that he was pretty quiet `til I'd finished my caff.

Then he said, "You know how a man puts part of himself
into a woman?"

I said sure.

"It's like that, only in the brain. She puts part of herself
into your brain."

Naturally I laughed, and I said was it as good for you as it
was for her, and did you feel the ship jump?

And he said, "It wasn't good for her at all, but it was
wonderful for me, even the time I watched the last bird
die."

There was a lot of other stuff, too, some of it happy and
some really, really sad. I will remember it, but I don't
think you would want to hear about all of it. Finally he
told me how sick she had been, and how he had sat
beside her night after night. He would pick up her hand
and hold it, and try to think of something he could say
that would make her feel better, only he could never
think of anything and every time he tried it was just so
dumb he made himself shut up. He would hold her hand,
like I said up there, and sort of stroke it, and after a while
it would melt away and he would have to look for it and
pick it up all over. I didn't understand that at all. I still
don't.