Tours of the Black Clock (Steve Erickson) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

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AND IN THAT MOMENT I’m blinded by the gray Hungarian moon moving toward me up the Wien-Fluss and I forget everything. I notice I’m sitting there with the lights off, and I think to myself, Why are the lights off? I notice the window that I opened for some air and I think, Who opened the window? I notice the other man in the room who moves from his chair to his coat without saying anything and I think, There’s someone else here?

“I don’t believe you,” I think I finally say to him when he’s in the doorway.

Opening the door he tells me, “But it doesn’t matter, sir. It may be better that you don’t believe me. Let’s say, if you wish, that I haven’t told you anything new at all. Let’s say, if you wish, that nothing I’ve said in these last moments means anything. All that matters is the work, after all. A client is a client.”

He leaves me in the dark, where I thought I was on my own terms.