Читать книгу The Village on Horseback - Jesse Ball - Страница 27

A man may have been in the business of burying the dead, and he may have buried them, day in, day out, for decades, such decades beginning sometimes in the gray of dusk, and ending, too often, in the early murmur of dawn’s foundering cascade. He may have kept his shovel close by the bed, or propped safe against a near wall, cleaned it gently at nightfall with a wet rag, oiled it in off moments, laid by. He may have spoken in this life more often to an object than to a person, more often with question than with conviction. He may have stood for hours on a rain-swept slope, admiring neat rows of stone markers, absent of mourners. And he may have begun a long tale, a new part of which he would invent each night as he sat alone at table.

The facts are uncertain. We have only the book with which to decipher the life, however fictional. He certainly lived, and certainly, quite certainly, he died. That lamp which stands between ourselves and a brighter lamp often seems less like a lamp and more like a hooded man. Thus we inquire of him, from where have you come? Thus we throw wide our doors and set out all that is left in the pantry. Do so with an eking touch, and sparingly, for in the book of names, all names are not entered. Our lies are precautions. Our sentinels are doubts that dredge a living sea.