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

arcade. But the others - all up and down the hall, all up and down the table -
are wearing the dresses I sell here. These dresses." She held one up for
me to see, a beautiful creation of many layers of lace, with buttons of
polished jet. "I know then that I cannot remain; but the king signals to the
others, and they seize me and push me toward the door."
"You are humiliated then?"
"Yes, but the worst thing is that I am aware that he knows that I could
never drive myself to leave, and he wishes to spare me the struggle. But
outside - some terrible beast has entered the garden. I smell it - like the
hyena cage at the Tiergarten - as the door opens. And then I wake up."
 "It is a harrowing dream."
"You have seen the dresses I sell. Would you credit it that for weeks I
slept in one, and then another, and then another of them?"
"You reaped no benefit from that?"
"No. In the dream I was clad as now. For a time I wore the dresses
always - even here to the stall, and when I bought food at the market. But it
did no good."
"Have you tried sleeping somewhere else?"
"With my cousin who lives on the other side of the city. That made no
difference, I am certain that this man I see is a real man. He is in my dream,
and the cause of it; but he is not sleeping."
"Yet you have never seen him when you are awake?"
She paused, and I saw her bite at her full lower lip. "I am certain I have."
"Ah!"
"But I cannot remember when. Yet I am sure I have seen him - that I have
passed him in the street."
"Think! Does his face associate itself in your mind with some particular
section of the city?"
She shook her head.
When I left her at last, it was with a description of the Dream-Master less
precise than I had hoped, though still detailed. It tallied in almost all
respects with the one given me by Baron H____; but that proved nothing,
since the baron's description might have been based largely on Fraфulein
A____'s.

The bank of Herr R____ was a private one, as all the greatest banks in
Europe are. It was located in what had once been the town house of some
noble family (their arms, overgrown now with ivy, were still visible above the
door) and bore no identification other than a small brass plate engraved
with the names of Herr R____ and his partners. Within, the atmosphere
was more dignified - even if, perhaps, less tasteful -than it could possibly
have been in the noble family's time. Dark pictures in gilded frames lined
the walls, and the clerks sat at inlaid tables upon chairs upholstered in
tapestry. When I asked for Herr R____, I was told that it would be
impossible to see him that afternoon; I sent in a note with a sidelong
allusion to "unquiet dreams," and within five minutes I was ushered into a
luxurious office that must once have been the bedroom of the head of the
household.
Herr R____ was a large man - tall, and heavier (I thought) than his
physician was likely to have approved. He appeared to be about fifty; there