The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Brian Aldiss
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Классическая проза
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008148973
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leap up his retaining wall and with a lesser scream now our valleys fall echoing before them now in our shattered towns the smoke clings still as the ulcerated countryside rumpled outwards at predatomi speed to her fluttering chimera she did the sleight-of-hand and dodged him as he once more sprang and pushed clutching at his ancient blue coat of Inner Relief but now no Christmas innocence. Slipping he fell and at the rickety platform edge hung down to see bloodied cobbles under surflare. With instinct she on top of him flung her bony trunk loading him back and cosseted him and goosed and mewed and sat him up and like a mother made all kindliness but milk there though the sun novaed.

      Half-stunned he sighed, ‘You are my all-ternatives,’ and she half-wept upon him at such grudged sign.

      Their hair singed and Buddy Docre came in an illusory moment with Ruby who fancied her and Bill and Greta yelling murder. They together all but not in unison climbed tumbled down the foul inner chimney stair and ran among the Sailing lava of another Eurape to the battered cavalcade jarring to take off in another street with the nervewrecked bangwaggon.

      ‘Boreas!’ cast the whiteface Master. ‘We must save Boreas!’

      And she glowed him amazed still in his headwound he had some human part that plugged for the schillerskulled director. But she was learning now and now stayed silent at his murderous feast with inward tremor knowing she would not break a single crust if Boreas loafed or died as maybe the Master minded: a gulf of more than language lay between them.

      Vanquished she tottered against Ruby his face moonstrous in the setglow and he grasped to the smouldering pompous columns gasping ‘Change gear Ange your way doesn’t have to be his or my car in the Chartercade you know that you know how I skid for you even since before Phil’s day two rotten no good bums –’

      But he gave up as through her frantic goosetears she began on tearawy note that she was not good enough for him was no good to any man deserved to die or could render to no man the true grips of loves clutchment till the others turned back calling and Charteris took her failing wrist abraptly.

      For him the self was once again in its throne called back from the purged night’s exile and he commanded no more as he faced the lack of his own divinity in all its anarchic alternative. His pyre grew behind him as they barged off across the ruby pavements for as Buddy passed a reefer he flipped the photograph that he had godded himself because they had to crown some earthly king then had forgotten that he was their moulding not his make so tunnelling upwards through the sparce countryside the mole-truth set up its tiny hill that all was counterfate in a counterfeit kingdoom.

      He had cried for Boreas because that artifacer could help blow blazes from his parky wavering nature with the bellows of his counterfaking craft

      Before real miracles he had to dislocate the miraculous in himself. New dogs shagged along alleyways with ties of flame. A man ran blazing down a side street. Dischorded impages of choleranis sang along the bars of his perplextives. All were infected from him and in that pandemetic lay his power to make or sicken till nature itself couched underground.

      A smoke pall canopiled overhead the new angrimals swimming powerfully in it or hopping along the crestfallen buildings. Shops stood plagened open entrailed on the echoing gravements as men noised abroad and struck at each other with fansticks more than one fire was buckling up its lootage as they acidheaded out towards the oceanic piracy of their motorways.

       Famine Starting At The Head

      She clad herself in nylon

      Walked the flagstones by my side

      The feathered eagle

      To the skies

      No more uprises

      Instead a palm of dust grows

      You know that earthly tree now bears no bread

      A hand outstretched is trembling

      The flagstaff has an ensign

      Only madmen see

      With famine starting at the head

      Some judy delivers a punchline

      In the breadbasket today

      No fond embraces

      Are afoot

      Death puts a boot

      Where the bounce was once

      In among the listening lilies a silent tread

      Bite the fruit to taste the stone

      Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

      The rain to stalk

      Famine starting at the head

      He only has to say one word

      Roses grow from an empty bowl

      In our shuttered streets

      The cars roam

      Don’t need a home

      Or volume control

      Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

      We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

      On the Golden Coast the cymbals

      Start to sound

      Salvation starting at the head

       Tortures

      There’s no answer from the old exchange

      I want to push inside you

      The sensations you find in yourself

      May just be within my range

      Grimly sitting round a table

      Fifteen men with life at stake

      They may torture themselves but those tortures

      Will not make them awake

      The cards were somehow different

      The board I had not seen before

      Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex

      Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

      Last year they stopped their playing

      Phone just ceased to buzz

      But if you find them there tomorrow

      Better start in there praying

      Reincarnation where the cobwebs

      Are comes daily from your keep

      We may torture ourselves but those tortures

      Cannot break our sleep

       Poor A!

      (Gurdjieff’s Mocking Song)

      Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

      He only wants to talk and he is happy!

      I could have pulled his trousers off

      Un-noticed, silly chappie!

      Poor A! Poor A! What sort of man is it

      Who only wants to talk and he’s okay?

      I tell you everyone’s like that –

      They fill the world today.

      I might say poor old A is rather better

      Then some wild talkniks I have met, a

      Chap who in his way knows what is what –

      On military onions he knows quite a lot.

      In a superficial public way he tries to find out Why:

      And he’d hate to think he ever told a lie.

      Poor A! Poor A! He is no longer young!

      He said so much I think and was uncouth

      To guard against an awful chance

      To