Russell Hoban - Kleinzeit
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- Название:Kleinzeit
- Автор:
- Издательство:Bloomsbury
- Жанр:
- Год:2002
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:4 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Kleinzeit: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Kleinzeit»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.
The Peloponnesian War
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If it is I wish you’d stop playing it, said God. Kleinzeit still didn’t hear him.
Memories are bad enough, said Kleinzeit. I also have insurance policies, a lease, birth, marriage, and divorce certificates, a will, passport, driver’s license, cheque account and savings account, bills paid and unpaid, letters unanswered, books, records, tables, chairs, paperclips, desk, typewriter, aquarium, shaving cream, toothpaste, soap, tape recorder, clocks, razor, gramophone, clothes, shoe polish. I have neckties I’ll never wear again.
Excuse me, said God. I’ve got the whole wide world in my hand and I’d like to put it down for a while.
The telephone rang. Kleinzeit answered.
‘Kleinzeit?’ said a voice.
‘Yes,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Krishna. Are you hiding out?’
‘I don’t know. I’m thinking things over.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you. Any message for Sister?’
‘No, I was calling you. Cheerio.’ Krishna rang off.
Why should he call me just to say good luck? thought Kleinzeit. He looked at Shiva Nataraja. Two right hands, two left. The upper right hand held an hourglass-shaped drum, the upper left held a flame. The other right and left hands made gestures. Shiva was dancing on a prostrate little crushed-looking demon. Kleinzeit consulted a book on Indian sculpture that lay nearby, found a picture of a Shiva like the one before him. ‘The lower right hand is in the Abhaya position, signifying “Fear not.” ’ said the book. Very good, said Kleinzeit. Fear not. What about it? he said to Shiva.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, said Shiva.
Right, said Kleinzeit. Nothing’s what I am afraid of, and there’s more nothing every day.
Whatever is form, that is emptiness, said Shiva. Whatever is emptiness, that is form.
Don’t come the heavy Indian mystic with me, said Kleinzeit. ‘Creation arises from the drum,’ he read. Or glockenspiel, I would have thought, he said. ‘From the fire proceeds destruction.’ Well, there you are: smoking. ‘From the planted foot illusion; the upraised foot bestows salvation.’ Ah, said Kleinzeit, how to get both feet off the ground, eh?
Try it with one for a starter, said Shiva. The whole thing is to feel the dance going through you, let it get moving, you know. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail!
Quite, said Kleinzeit. He tried to get into the position Shiva was in. His legs felt weak.
Look here, said God, are you mucking about with strange gods? For the first time Kleinzeit heard him.
Make me a better offer, said Kleinzeit.
I’ll think about it, said God.
You know about the Shackleton-Planck results? said Kleinzeit.
Tell me, said God.
Kleinzeit told him.
Right, said God. Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you later.
You know where to reach me? said Kleinzeit.
I have your number, said God, and rang off.
Sister would be gone until morning. Kleinzeit looked at the trouser-suit hanging over a chair, picked up the trousers, kissed them, went out.
He went into the Underground, took a train to a bridge, walked across it, saw a little old ferret-faced man playing a mouth organ, gave him 10p. ‘God bless you, guv,’ said the little old man.
Kleinzeit turned around, walked back. The little old man thrust his cap towards him again.
‘I gave,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’m the same man who just passed you going the other way.’
The little old man shook his head, scowled.
‘All right,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Maybe it never happened.’ He gave him another 10p.
‘God bless you again, guv,’ said the little old man.
Kleinzeit went into the Underground again, rode to the station where he had last seen Redbeard. He walked back and forth through the corridors for a long time without seeing him, looked for new messages on the tiled walls, read ALL THINGS NO GOOD, thought about it, read elsewhere: EUROPE NO GOOD ONLY TOP ¼ OF FINLAND AND TOP HALF SEA COAST NORWAY, thought about it. On a film poster a famous prime minister, shown as a youthful army officer, pistol in hand, glared about him, said in handwriting, I must kill someone, even British workers will do. KILL WOG SHIT, answered the wall. Kleinzeit finally found Redbeard sitting on a bench on the northbound platform with his bedroll and carrier-bags, sat down beside him.
‘What do you think about the top quarter of Finland?’ said Kleinzeit.
Redbeard shook his head. ‘I don’t care about current events, I don’t read the papers or anything.’ He held up a key. ‘They changed the lock.’
‘Who?’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What lock?’
‘STAFF ONLY,’ said Redbeard. ‘I’ve been dossing there all year. Now it’s locked. I can’t open the door.’
Kleinzeit shook his head.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ said Redbeard. ‘As long as I kept doing what the yellow paper wanted I could unlock that door. I had a place to lay my head, make a cup of tea. No more yellow paper, no more door.’
‘Where’d you get the key?’ said Kleinzeit.
‘From the last yellow-paper man.’
‘What do you mean, “the last yellow-paper man”?’
‘Thin bloke, looked as if he might go up in flames at any moment. Don’t know what his name was. Used to go busking with a zither. Yellow paper got to be too much for him, same as it did for me. Don’t know what’s happened to him since.’
‘What was he doing with the yellow paper? What were you doing with it?’
‘Curiosity’ll kill you.’
‘If not that, something else,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What were you doing?’
Redbeard looked cold, shaky, scared, hugged himself. ‘Well, it wants something, doesn’t it. I mean yellow paper isn’t like trees or stones, minding its own business, is it. It’s active, eh? It wants something.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Kleinzeit, feeling cold and shaky, feeling the deep chill and the silence, the cold paws against his feet.
Redbeard looked at him, eyes blue and blank like the eyes of a lost doll’s head rotting on a beach. The rails cried out wincing, stinging, a train roared up, opened its doors, shut its doors, pulled out. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Rubbish. Wasn’t it you that told me it made you write a barrow full of rocks and you got sacked?’
‘All right then, what does it want?’ said Kleinzeit with fear in his bowels. What was there, for heaven’s sake, to be afraid of.
Nothing at all, said a black hairy voice from somewhere. Hoo hoo. The pain opened in Kleinzeit like wondrous carven doors. Lovely, he thought, looked beyond the doors. Nothing.
‘It wants something,’ said Redbeard. ‘You write a word on it, two words, a line, two, three lines. Where are you. The words aren’t …’ He trailed off.
‘Aren’t what?’
‘What’s wanted. Aren’t bloody what’s wanted.’
Like lightning Kleinzeit thought, Maybe not your words. Maybe somebody else’s.
‘What is there to do with paper?’ said Redbeard. ‘Write, draw, wipe your ass, wrap a parcel, tear it up. I tried drawing, that wasn’t it. Right, I said to the paper, I’ll let you find the words, let you get out in the world a bit, see what you come back with. So I started dropping it around. Surprising how few people step on a sheet of paper that’s lying on the ground. Mostly they’ll walk around it, sometimes they’ll pick it up. The paper began to talk to me a little, rubbish as far as I could make out, nasty little short sentences I wrote down. Then it tried to kill me but it was low tide and I bloody wasn’t going to walk half a mile through mud to drown myself.’ He laughed feebly, not much more than a wheeze.
‘Where’d the other yellow-paper man get the key he gave you?’ said Kleinzeit.
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