"Gene Wolfe - The Arimaspian Legacy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

The Arimaspian Legacy

by Gene Wolfe


It is among the Issedonians themselves that the strange tales of the distant north
originate -- tales of the one-eyed men and the griffins that guard gold; and the
Scythians have passed them on to the rest of us...
-- Herodotus, The Histories



Each year at about this time, I make the same resolution; but for you to understand, I
must first tell you of my old friend David. I intend to employ that first name since it
was his -- there are so many Davids that no ill-intentioned person is apt to guess the
David I mean. Certain members of David's family are yet living however (an uncle,
an aunt, and several cousins, I believe), so I shall assign to him the surname of
Arimaspian. Its signification will become clear to you.

David and I were (as I have said) old friends. I might as truthfully have called us
boyhood friends, even though I lived on the southern edge of the city and David on
the eastern. We were of an age. We were alike in being bookish but unstudious, and
in being without sister or brother. We met at a chess club for boys in the YMCA, and
though we both soon abandoned chess, we never quite abandoned each other.

The truth is that each of us found the other useful. It was the custom in those days to
require a boy to name his best friend. And then, cruelly, to investigate the matter
with the boy named. Thus I specified David Arimaspian, and he me; and neither of
us lost face.

In part in support of our own testimony, we met regularly once or twice a month to
talk, to trifle with chess or Monopoly or some other game, and to read in each other's
company. For the city was not so large in those days that a determined boy could not
ride his bicycle twice across it in a single evening, and the distance between our
homes was considerably less than the full diameter. Soon, indeed, I boasted a motor
scooter in place of my bike; and in what now seems a short time, we both owned
cars.

I said we met to talk, but I might better have said we met to boast. David began it, I
believe. He was always exceedingly proud of whatever he possessed: his geese were
every one a swan, as the saying goes. You will protest that if his boasting were
objectionable to me, I might have mentioned the matter to him or even ceased to visit
him; and you will be correct. The fact was that I did not find it objectionable, though
possibly I should have. His latest possessions were often of interest -- for he was
something of a collector even then -- and he took so much innocent pleasure in
producing each and recounting to me the way in which it had come into his hands
that I enjoyed his crowing nearly as much as he did himself. How well I recall the
dubiously ivory chess set -- the magnifying glass whose ebony handle bore M.H. in
faded gilt, whose chipped and foggy lens David employed to burn his own D.A. into
the birch grip of an old Finnish knife!