"Robert F. Young - Tents of Kedar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

I am black, but comely ... as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of SolomonтАФ
Look not upon me because I am blackтАФ
Because the sun has scorched me....

A pebbled path lined with whitewashed stones led up to the door. To all that was left of Anastasia.
He would say to his mother, in the coolness of the stately Eastcliff portico, "Look, I have brought her
back. She did not die after all." To his sister, "Behold! the real Anastasia!" And they would stare down
their broad aristocratic noses, and in the graveyard beyond the garden his father would turn in the black
earth, bare bones groaning, outraged hubris flaming fiercely in the eyeless sockets of his skull. And the
household bush-blacks would peer through the windows in exalted consternation and the bramblevine
would vibrate with the earth-shaking implication of the news.
He turned his back on the hut and retraced his steps to the pier. Aboard the launch again, his
homeward journey resumed, he sat listlessly in his deckchair, staring at the dark brown water. He did not
eat. The day passed swiftly; mists materialized along the ever-receding banks. Night fell, and he went on
sitting there, distinguishable from the darkness only by the glowing ends of the cigarettes he smoked.
He had no son. Soon, his best years would be behind him. Probably there would never be a Ulysses
Eastcliff IV. So be it. No bush-black nigger was going to be the instrument of perpetuating the Eastcliff
name.
Not even the one who had given him his life, who loved him as deeply as he still loved the poor dead
whore whose soul she once had been. The launch slipped smoothly through the blackness of the night;
the river whispered in its wake. Above, the stars shone coldly down.