"Gene Wolfe - Endangered Species" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

The same authorities who insist upon beginnings, middles,
and ends, declare that Great Literature (by which they mean
the stories they have been taught to admire) is about love
and death, while mere popular fiction like this is about sex
and violence. One reader's sex, alas, is another's love; and
one's violence, another's death. I cannot tell you whether you
will find love or sex in "The Nebraskan and the Nereid,"
death or violence in "Silhouette"; or as I hoped when I,wrote
it, new life (for there is more to life than sex), and a fresh
beginning.



***
5
A Cabin on the Coast

"A Cabin on the Coast" copyright 1981 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared
in Zu den Stemen, edited by Peter Wilfert (Goldmann Verlag, Munich).
***



IT might have been a. child's drawing of a ship. He blinked,
and blinked again. There were masts and sails, surely. One
stack, perhaps another. If the ship were really there at all.
He went back to his father's beach cottage, climbed the five
wooden steps, wiped his feet on the coco mat.

Lissy was still in bed, but awake, sitting up now. It must
have been the squeaking of the steps, he thought. Aloud he
said, "Sleep good?"

He crossed the room and kissed her. She caressed him and
said, "You shouldn't go swimming without a suit, dear won-
derful swimmer. How was the Pacific?"

"Peaceful. Cold. It's too early for people to be up, and
there's nobody within a mile of here anyway."

"Get into bed then. How about the fish?"

"Salt water makes the sheets sticky. The fish have seen them
before." He went to the corner, where a showerhead poked
from the wall. The beach cottage-Lissy called it a cabin-
had running water of the sometimes and rusty variety.

"They might bite 'em off. Sharks, you know. Little ones."