"Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

"Mr Million, it's not fair to let him call me names in a debate. Tell him that's not
debating, it's fighting, isn't it?"
Mr Million says, "No personalities, David." (David is already peeking at
Polyphemus the Cyclops and Odysseus, hoping I'll go on for a long time. I feel
challenged and decide to do so.)
I begin, "The argument which holds descent from Terrestrial stock pivotal is
neither valid nor conclusive. Not conclusive because it is distinctly possible that the
aborigines of Sainte Anne were descendants of some earlier wave of human
expansion--one, perhaps, even predating The Homeric Greeks."
Mr Million says mildly, "I would confine myself to arguments of higher
probability if I were you."
I nevertheless gloss upon the Etruscans, Atlantis, and the tenacity and
expansionist tendencies of a hypothetical technolological culture occupying
Gondwanaland. When I have finished Mr Million says, "Now reverse. David,
affirmative without repeating."
My brother, of course, has been looking at his book instead of listening, and I
kick him with enthusiasm, expecting him to be stuck; but he says, "The abos are
human because they're all dead."
"Explain."
"If they were alive it would be dangerous to let them be human because they'd
ask for things, but with them dead it makes it more interesting if they were, and the
settlers killed them all."
And so it goes. The spot of sunlight travels across the black-streaked red of the
tabletop--traveled across it a hundred times. We would leave through one of the side
doors and walk through a neglected areaway between two wings. There would be
empty bottles there and wind-scattered papers of all kinds, and once a dead man in
bright rags over whose legs we boys skipped while Mr Million rolled silently around
him. As we left the areaway for a narrow street, the bugles of the garrison at the
citadel (sounding so far away) would call the troopers to their evening mess. In the
Rue d'Asticot the lamplighter would be at work, and the shops shut behind their iron
grilles. The sidewalks magically clear of old furniture would seem broad and bare.
Our own Saltimbanque Street would be very different, with the first revelers
arriving. White-haired, hearty men guiding very young men and boys, men and boys
handsome and muscular but a shade overfed; young men who made diffident jokes
and smiled with excellent teeth at them. These were always the early ones, and when I
was a little older I sometimes wondered if they were early only because the white-
haired men wished to have their pleasure and yet a good night's sleep as well, or if it
were because they knew the young men they were introducing to my father's
establishment would be drowsy and irritable after midnight, like children who have
been kept up too late.
Because Mr Million did not want us to use the alleys after dark we came in the
front entrance with the white-haired men and their nephews and sons. There was a
garden there, not much bigger than a small room and recessed into the windowless
front of the house. In it were beds of ferns the size of graves; a little fountain whose
water fell upon rods of glass to make a continual tinkling, and which had to be
protected from the street boys; and, with his feet firmly planted, indeed almost buried
in moss, an iron statue of a dog with three heads.
It was this statue, I suppose, that gave our house its popular name of Maison du
Chien, though there may have been a reference to our surname as well. The three
heads were sleekly powerful with pointed muzzles and ears. One was snarling and