The Atlas полностью

They came to the Lido now, and at first when he saw the sign he thought: Yes, must be the place because it was about here that that hot low dark disco used to be. But as soon as the motorcycle driver began to slow down he saw a doorway with crimson-carpeted stairs and he knew that it was not the place. He took out the photograph, now somewhat more spotted with rain, and held it out to the woman who stood there, but she brushed it aside impatiently. The next woman took it for a moment and shook her head. — No use, said the driver, who was actually a very good person, but Vanna's husband waited until some more girls came out; they shook their heads and sent him away. It was a mark of their business sense that they did not try to entice him into spending money on a drink or on them, locum tenens; seeing the photograph, they seemed to calculate that he would not be worth their effort to persuade, and they were right. So they sent him on his way. At the Pussy Doll, the Savoy and the Tilden it was the same.

Hee, hee, hee! laughed the cyclo men in raincoats when they heard that he wanted to marry Vanna. One bouncer analyzed his face and pronounced him Japanese. Their opinions of her showed a like sense of the exogamous. They concurred that she was Vietnamese, hence hated, enemy. When he told them that she was Cambodian, they said: Ah, very good! but he could tell they didn't believe him.

Old! Ugly! Vietnamese! the whores laughed over that sad and skinny image of his wife in the straightbacked chair in the hotel that didn't have straightbacked chain anymore. Whaiiiieeeeeee?

Because I love her, he said.

Does you loves her? For all night? Hee, hee, hee!

Seeing the photograph they usually yelled for him to go away. They looked him up and down, peering over each other's shoulders, and laughed, not always derisively. In only one bar did the girls crowd around him, looking into his face with something like hope that if he could fall in love and marry a whore, then maybe somebody might marry them someday, too.

From among the sneering girls came a girl whose name was also Vanna. Snatching up the true Vanna's photograph, she stared at it and then shrieked in disgust.

At the Regent he entered through the gate and then crossed a grand courtyard to the steps which led to this temple of flesh where women stood, and as he ascended in his rolled-up sodden trousers they jeered. The motorcycle driver nudged him; he passed Vanna around. .

Yes, the motorcycle driver said. They have ever seen her. Ever? They have or they haven't? They have all seen her before. When? When?

I don't know. They have never seen her.

At the Martini they all said that they knew her, and two girls in a bar by the Russian market in dresses of netting and sugarcaned starch insisted that she worked at the Lido.

So they went back to the Lido. A woman sat outside looking old. At first he thought her the madam. She was merely another dancer who'd accomplished too many dances. His wife probably looked like that now.

She know her! cried the driver, so happy for him. By the river, in floating restaurant!

You believe her?

She say she know her, said the driver. She have house by the river, but she change her house. Now she work at floating restaurant. Yes. No. She have ever seen her.