The Drowned World - Ballard James Graham - Страница 17

"Alan, I'm not sure whether I shall be leaving."

Without replying, Bodkin took out his cigarettes. He lit one carefully, then sat back smoking it calmly. "Do you know where we are?" he asked after a pause. "The name of this city?" When Kerans shook his head he said: "Part of it used to be called London, not that it matters. Curiously enough, though, I was born here. yesterday I rowed over to the old University quarter, a mass of little creeks, actually found the laboratory where my father used to teach. We left here when I was six, but I can just remember being taken to meet him one day. A few hundred yards away there was a planetarium, I saw a performance once-that was before they bad to re-align the projector. The big dome is still there, about twenty feet below water. It looks like an enormous shell, fucus growing all over it, straight out of 'The Water Babies'. Curiously, looking down at the dome seemed to bring my childhood much nearer. To tell the truth I'd more or less forgotten it-at my age all you have are the memories of memories. After we left here our existence became completely nomadic, and in a sense this city is the only home I've ever known-" He broke off abruptly, his face suddenly tired.

"Go on," Kerans said evenly.