"Gene Wolfe - Detective of dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

THE DETECTIVE OF DREAMS
Gene Wolfe


I was writing in my office in the rue Madeleine when Andrщe, my
secretary, announced the arrival of Herr D____. I rose, put away my
correspondence, and offered him my hand. He was, I should say, just short
of fifty, had the high, clear complexion characteristic of those who in youth
(now unhappily past for both of us) have found more pleasure in the
company of horses and dogs and the excitement of the chase than in the
bottles and bordels of city life, and wore a beard and mustache of the style
popularized by the late emperor. Accepting my invitation to a chair, he
showed me his papers.
"You see," he said, "I am accustomed to acting as the representative of
my government. In this matter I hold no such position, and it is possible that
I feel a trifle lost."
"Many people who come here feel lost," I said. "But it is my boast that I
find most of them again. Your problem, I take it, is purely a private matter?"
"Not at all. It is a public matter in the truest sense of the words."
"Yet none of the documents before me - admirably stamped, sealed, and
beribboned though they are - indicates that you are other than a private
gentleman traveling abroad. And you say you do not represent your
government. What am I to think? What is this matter?"
"I act in the public interest," Herr D____ told me. "My fortune is not great,
but I can assure you that in the event of your success you will be well
recompensed; although you are to take it that I alone am your principal, yet
there are substantial resources available to me."
"Perhaps it would be best if you described the problem to me?"
"You are not averse to travel?"
"No."
"Very well then," he said, and so saying launched into one of the most
astonishing relations - no, the most astonishing relation - I have ever been
privileged to hear. Even I, who had at first hand the account of the man who
found Paulette Renan with the quince seed still lodged in her throat; who
had received Captain Brotte's testimony concerning his finds amid the
antarctic ice; who had heard the history of the woman called Joan O'Neil,
who lived for two years behind a painting of herself in the Louvre, from her
own lips - even I sat like a child while this man spoke.
When he fell silent, I said, "Herr D____, after all you have told me, I
would accept this mission though there were not a sou to be made from it.
Perhaps once in a lifetime one comes across a case that must be pursued
for its own sake; I think I have found mine.
He leaned forward and grasped my hand with a warmth of feeling that
was, I believe, very foreign to his usual nature. "Find and destroy the
Dream-Master," he said, "and you shall sit upon a chair of gold, if that is
your wish, and eat from a table of gold as well. When will you come to our
country?"
"Tomorrow morning," I said. "There are one or two arangements I must
make here before I go."
"I am returning tonight. You may call upon me at any time, and I will