Читать книгу Fly Hunter: The Story of an Inquisitor онлайн

And Aman-Jalil piped up:

– Half-baked fool!..

Wazir shook his fists in the air and stormed into the communal kitchen, shouting at Aman-Jalil's grandmother:

– Yes!.. "Half-baked fool"!.. They didn't kill me, despite my pleas. They left me to suffer, left me not to live, but to suffer and remember that road, as dusty and even as this glass, where my Anush fought like a fly, humiliated in front of me. They gutted her with a dagger while I was tied to a pole above her, beaten to make sure I didn't look away, forced to watch, and they laughed, oh how they laughed… Yes, I will never have children… You, old woman, think about whom you are raising, think before it's too late…"

Wazir staggered along the veranda, murmuring, "cruel world, cruel world, trapped in this sticky web, all I see, I crave sunlight, sunlight! And, crucified, I shouted at the sun: 'I hate you!'"

Aman-Jalil's grandmother theatrically twirled her finger by her temple, signaling to Wazir that something was not right with him. Meanwhile, Aman-Jalil, picking his nose, chuckled nastily…

"If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…"

The sun shone brightly. The city lazily scattered houses along the mountain slopes, clumsily stitching crooked streets between them, generously green in the center and bare, dirty on the outskirts. Blatant poverty neighbored ostentatious luxury, palaces encircled the old town where sunlight struggled to pierce the yards and avoided rooms without windows altogether. The scent of dampness hung over everything: sparse furniture, patched clothing, on the bodies of those who lived here, and it seemed, even on their thoughts… And the palaces, in turn, surrounded miserable hovels where five or six people lived in each room, where children, giggling during morning play, shared experiences glimpsed and overheard from parents and older siblings. These homes supplied beautiful bodies of young prostitutes to the palaces and thieves and robbers to prisons, for minds corrupted from childhood were difficult to steer toward good deeds, and the world of thieves, like the world of luxury, was ensnaring. Between the two criminal poles lay the world of toil, the world of hardships and concerns, occasional bright joys, unswerving and mercenary love, friendship and betrayal, business and careers, kindness and envy, hatred and cruelty, loyalty, forgiveness, and revenge. Men went to work in the morning, factories and workshops awaited them, women headed to the market, thin dark-spotted streams of mothers and wives, sisters and brides, carrying fresh greens and fruits, vegetables and dairy products in huge baskets. Poachers entered the yards offering black caviar and red fish, pheasants and small birds, all at such affordable prices that people forced to economize snatched up all the goods brought in within five minutes, though they knew perfectly well they were buying stolen goods. And this duality lay over everything: parents lied to children, children lied to parents, the government to the people, the people to the government, and truth became entangled in this labyrinth of lies and deceit, despairing to see the light of truth. The natural law of survival and selection cast aside the weak, the naive, those suffering, while the kind and compassionate received evil or mockery at best for their kindness, cruelty, using them mercilessly for their own purposes and discarding them like unwanted junk: the peel of a peeled orange, a broken coarse porcelain plate smashed into small pieces… But if an antique porcelain plate broke, it was carefully glued back together and prominently displayed, boasting its imperial crest, as though joining the royal family, feeling exceptional… This feeling was indomitable once it appeared: infected by it, one sought others similarly afflicted… just as addicts recognize each other by the gleam in their eyes, by a particular, uniquely theirs gaze, by chapped lips. The union of the exceptional was ruthless in its invulnerability, and only a similar union of the exceptional could destroy it. The city, like Chronos, devoured its children, yet no Zeus had yet arisen to cast it into Tartarus.