Шкловский Лев Переводчик
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Шкловский Лев Переводчик
Размещен: 28/12/2025, изменен: 28/12/2025. 32k.
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PLOT FOR THE FOURTH REICH
147
and settled back against her heels. "I know there is
much that you do not understand. I know because I
have explained it many times before to the men who
came from the lowlands to take photographs of my
people. Only Tucana, the cacique of this village, can
speak more Spanish than I, and he is old and sick now.
So I will tell you."
The Kogi, it turned out, had been retreating steadily
up the sparse mountain slopes ever since the first Spani-
ards came to their territory in 1541. They'd retreated
because they rejected all the so-called wonders of civili-
zation the white man brought with him; in the process
they were dying off, because they knew they were de-
feated. There were about two thousand of them
scattered in a handful of nearby villages, still clinging
with fierce pride to their ancestors' way of life. In an-
other few years, nothing.
But until then they had a reason for living—just one.
The abundant coca leaf provided them with a narcotic
to dull the hurt of slow extinction, and they had made it
the center of their religion and their everyday life.
There -was nothing else. Cocaine in the morning,
cocaine in the evening, cocaine at suppertime—for the
men. Women were not allowed to take it. It was their
whole life, the life of the tribe. They had nothing else.
The hierarchy of mamas, the high priests, strictly en-
forced the discipline that went with it.
I remembered that when Pizarro and his gang of cut-
throats landed in Peru, they had found the natives using
cocaine—actually chewing the dried, cured coca leaves,
which is a slightly different thing—to blunt the pangs of
hunger and provide them with superhuman powers of
endurance and fortitude. Inca couriers jogged like a
human pony express up and down the Andes, going for
days without rest or food. The Spaniards tried to stamp
it out at first but then realized it was an excellent way
of getting more work out of their slaves for less food.
For the Kogi, this was important, but more important
still was the euphoria they got from chewing. This was
a vital way of keeping in close communion with the
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NICK CARTER: KILT-MASTER
spirits of their ancestors who were supposed to dwell on
the mountaintops, ruled over by a kind of mother
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NICK CARTER: KILT-MASTER
spirits of their ancestors who were supposed to dwell on
the mountaintops, ruled over by a kind of mother
goddess called Nabulwé. The mountaintops were the
land of the dead. I thought of Carla and Felipe on the
ledge. Very apt. No one was supposed to return fro
there, I understood now.
I asked Isabel if I had offended her by what I said.
"You say what you say," she answered flatly. "0th
ers have been here. Inglés like you. They said they had
been to the top of the big mountain at the other end o
the valley, La Reina." She shrugged again.
No sense getting into murky theological argument'
over whether I was technically alive or dead. If anyone
asked again what I was doing here, I'd just tell them I
had dropped in for a visit. That was close enough to the
truth.
It was getting dark outside. "The men will go up to
that place on the mountain where you were, very soon,'
Isabel said. "They spend the night there singing and r
citing, taking coca. With the spirits."
"And you?"
"I stay here. No woman goes up there to do that
thing. Only the men. I will find you something, and we
will eat."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it. "Maybe I didn't
say it before, but I am really very grateful. It's a lot of
trouble for you, I know."
But then I caught the grim, enigmatic smile on her
face as she stepped out into the faint light of dusk, and
I knew there was a catch to this somewhere.
==========================
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nerves. Along with a conscience and emotions, give or
take one or two of the most essential ones, they're not
supposed to be a part of your typical AXE man's psy-
chological kit bag. But waiting around and doing noth-
ing is the one thing that sets mine twanging. I wanted
to get out of the sun. I wanted to get away from these
mountains. Most of all, I wanted to get my hands on a
man named Johann Ludwig Steyer and see to it that his
file was removed to the permanently "Inactive" data
bank without any further monkeying around.
A tiny spurt of dust visible a couple of miles down
the straight ribbon of highway told me the bus was
coming at last. It was the first vehicle I'd seen in nearly
two hours of waiting on the shoulder of the modern
two-way causeway that cut kitty-cornered across the
arid desolation of the Guajira peninsula.
An hcur before dawn, I had left the shabby mestizo
settlement of San Juan de Blanqucrna at the foot of the
Sierra, hitching a ride on the back of a skinny old ox
that was being taken down to the salt flats. It cost me
thirty American dollars for the three-hour journey. The
moral is: Never try to bargain for transportation when
it's obvious you've got a badly injured leg. I gave the
driver another twenty to see to it that a jerrican of
home-brewed rum was sent up to the Kogi village as a
final thank you to Isabel.
I have to admit that our parting hadn't been on the
best of all possible terms. As a matter of fact, she
kicked me out. I had been right in suspecting an ul-
terior motive to her hospitality. It turned out that her
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NICK CARTER:
idea was to feed me, patch me up, then get me quic
in the sack.
This time I couldn't blame it on my ineffable masc
line charm guaranteed to wilt female hearts and inflami
female undergarments. Not this time. Isabel had beei
wanting a man for a long time. I just happened to b
there.
The rule of Kogi life, I learned, is for the male of th'
tribe to zonk his head with as many coca leaves as pos
sible-—and eat nothing more—and to abstain total!
from sexual intercourse. He must sing, talk, and recit
to his ancestors and eventually return to them in th
womb of the great mother Nabulwé.
Of course, to do any of these things totally is impo
sible, but every devout Kogi male tries to come as closc
to it as he can. The alkaloids in the coca leaf do prett±
much kill all sense of hunger, as I knew, but I wasn
aware of any side effects that wipe out the sex driv
Maybe it wasn't in the coca but was merely a part
their collective death wish—to stop producing childret
and slowly fade out of existence.
Isabel was a misfit. All the Kogi women must b
with that kind of life facing them, but for once, she ha
a chance to do something about it.
And I had to tell her no.
Understand, she wasn't a bad-looking girl. T was sure
prised when she told me she was only twenty—sh
looked older—but still, not bad. Curiously enough, th
men looked much better on the whole; with
noble, ascetic copper faces, sort of like the
Indians used to have, before the white man bullied i
out of them. Possibly another side effect of the coc
leaves. The women were left with all the drudge
while their husbands got high around the clock.
But much as I understood her predicament, r wasn'$
about to allow myself to be dragged off to the nearest
esparto mat without a protest. I told her that m}
people don't do things like that until certain formalitiQ
are completed. She laughed a bitter little laugh and
said, "I have seen what the colonos do. Do not tell mg
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stories for children." All outsiders were lumped to-
gether in her mind.
"If •that's true," I countered, "then you shouldn't
have any problem getting what you want."
"No. Not that way. If my husband found out, he
would kill me, I could never return to my people."
Crazy or not, they were her people. I don't actually
know how much serious consideration I gave her offer.
While I searched my mind for another excuse to beg
off-—-she had already helpfully suggested a gymnastic
variation to get around the problem of my wounded
leg—she settled the matter by saying, very matter-of-
factly, "And after we are finished, there are the others.
Four women. I have already spoken with them. They
will wait."
Four of them! Little Isabel had scheduled a
gangbang, with me as the guest of honor.
I told her firmly, with barely concealed exasperation,
that it was out of the question. It developed into quite
a heated argument, and her four friends, who had
been waiting outside the hut all this time, came storm-
ing in as reinforcements, clawing, scratching, and
pummeling me. It was time for a strategic retreat. I
called out, "Thanks for everything," shook them off,
and got out of the hut as fast I could. The moon was
out, making it easy to find the mule path leading down
from the village....
I hoped the rum would make up for some of the
bruised feelings I had caused her. From the way Isabel
had spoken about it, I gathered that firewater was
making destructive inroads on the Kogi way of life.
Even though it was strictly forbidden by the mamas,
the more radical elements of the tribe were turning
more and more to booze as an escape from reality. The
code of the coca eaters was too hard to live up to. The
results were bound to be the same as with the Ameri-
can Indian---catastrophic. I felt slightlv guilty about
helping the process along. But only slightly.
The bus was in sight now. I started waving to give
the driver a chance to to slow down.
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NICK CARTER: KILLMASTER
The driver was a mestizo like the ones I had left in
their village at the foot of the mountain, and he wasn't
very happy that I didn't have any Colombian pesos on
me. I pulled out a dog-eared American twenty from
my wallet. He grunted and put it in his pocket.
The bus was about half-full—of people. I didn't
count the crates of stinking, squawking chickens I had
to step over to get down the aisle. And it was infernally
hot, I took a window seat and started loosening my
collar. The windows were the kind that don't open.
I was heading south along the coast to the city of