The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss
Читать онлайн книгу.
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