Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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I shrugged, feeling stupid. Of course I had heard of these things. It was just that in Les Laveuses things were different. We’d all read about Nazi death camps, but in my mind they had got somehow tangled with the death ray from The War of the Worlds. Hitler had been muddled with the pictures of Charlie Chaplin from Reinette’s film magazines, fact fusing with folklore, rumor, fiction, newsreel broadcast melting into serial-story star-fighters from beyond the planet Mars and night fighters across the Rhine, gunslingers and firing squad, U-Boots and the Nautilus twenty thousand leagues under.

“Blackmail?” I repeated blankly.

“Business,” corrected Cassis in a sharp voice. “Do you think it’s fair that some people have chocolate-and coffee, and proper shoes, and magazines, and books-while others have to do without? Don’t you think they should pay for those privileges? Share a little of what they’ve got? And hypocrites-like Monsieur Toubon-and liars? Don’t you think they should pay too? It’s not as if they can’t afford it. It’s not as if anyone gets hurt.”