Читать книгу The Favourite Game - Leonard Cohen - Страница 9

Breavman’s young mother hunted wrinkles with two hands and a magnifying mirror.

When she found one she consulted a fortress of oils and creams arrayed on a glass tray and she sighed. Without faith the wrinkle was anointed.

‘This isn’t my face, not my real face.’

‘Where is your real face, Mother?’

‘Look at me. Is this what I look like?’

‘Where is it, where’s your real face?’

‘I don’t know, in Russia, when I was a girl.’

He pulled the huge atlas out of the shelf and fell with it. He sifted pages like a goldminer until he found it, the whole of Russia, pale and vast. He kneeled over the distances until his eyes blurred and he made the lakes and rivers and names become an incredible face, dim and beautiful and easily lost.

The maid had to drag him to supper. A lady’s face floated over the silver and the food.