The Church of Saint Satan and Pandaemons

Начало книги

Have you seen this, Englebert?” asked Judge Baltazaro Gumperts, tapping the newspaper— one of a dozen or two provided daily by the thoughtful proprietors of the Crown’s-head Coffee House.

“What is that—the Gazette?- haven’t seen it today.”

The jurist, with a sound half-snort and half-chuckle, said, “Did you know there is a woman newpaper editor in the American province of Far-vest?”

“I did not know, and am not surprised.”

“Incredible province.”

The judge sucked in coffee, shook his head.

“What about it?—and her?”

Judge Gumperts smacked the newspaper, perhaps as much to reprove it as to straighten it out for easier reading. “She says that the farmers there should raise less corn and more Hell; fact: just what it says: ‘Raise less corn and more Hell’—what do you think it means?''

Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy watched the waiter pour boiling milk

into his cup from one vessel and hot coffee into it from another, with simultaneous dexterity: half and half. “Why. ... I suspect that it is an invitation to the always-embattled farmers of America to devote fewer energies to the cultivation of maize in order that more emergies may be devoted politico-economic agitations.” He observed the milk forming a skin, nodded his satsifaction. The waiter withdrew. Ezsterhazy raised the glass, held it a moment as he followed a thought. “Something to do with railroad rates, I seem to recall. Our railroads are owned by The Crown, but as there is no Crown in America, the railroads there are owned by what are called investors. He bent his head and sipped.

Читать дальше →