"Gene Wolfe - The death of Dr. Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

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GENE WOLFE

The Death
of Doctor Island

"In my picture of the world there is a vast outer realm
and an equally vast inner realm; between these two stands
man, facing now one and now the other . . . ." C. G.
Jung said that, and he might have been describing
Gene Wolfe, who seems frighteningly familiar with
both realms. In this story he will take you by the hand
and lead you from one to the other with such disarm-
ing ease you may never know when the transition oc-
curred. A true Jungian story told in Freudian terms, an
exploration into the inner realm, that is what "The
Death of Doctor Island" is. And if you recognize your
self as a player, or an aspect of one of the players in
that inner realm, don't be surprised. Nothing is accidental.
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

A grain of sand, teetering on the brink of the pit, trembled and fell in; the ant lion at the
bottom angrily flung it out again. For a moment there was quiet. Then the entire pit, and a square
meter of sand around it, shifted drunkenly while two coconut palms bent to watch. The sand rose,
pivoting at one edge, and the scarred head of a boy appeared-a stubble of brown hair threatened to
erase the marks of the sutures; with dilated eyes hypnotically dark he paused, his neck just where
the ant lion's had been; then, as though goaded from below, he vaulted up and onto the beach,
turned, and kicked sand into the dark hatchway from which he had emerged. It slammed shut. The boy
was about fourteen.

For a time he squatted, pushing the sand aside and trying to find the door. A few centimeters
down, his hands met a gritty, solid material which, though neither concrete nor sandstone, shared
the qualities of both sand-filled organic plastic. On it he scraped his fingers raw, but he could
not locate the edges of the hatch.