Megrelburg: The Heart of Van Helten [English Version] читать онлайн

It is human nature to want to control everything around us—even that which cannot be controlled. We make plans, draw routes, arrange the future on neat shelves, as if life were a mechanism with understandable gears, where one only needs to twist a single part for everything to go as intended. But life is not a mechanism. It is a river—fast, murky, unpredictable—and any attempt to hold it in our palms always ends the same way: the water seeps through our fingers, leaving behind only a cold dampness and the bitter taste of helplessness.

This was precisely what Howard was thinking as he stood by the window on that raw autumn day. Beyond the glass, Mergelburg seemed like a town forgotten by time and weather alike. The gray facades of the houses, as if faded by endless rain, loomed over the narrow streets, while the wet cobblestones reflected the dim glow of the streetlamps like shards of a broken mirror. The rain did not pour—it slid down the windows in slow, unhurried tears, blurring the outlines of the world into vague silhouettes. The air was heavy, saturated with the smell of dampness, cooling smoke, and something elusively sorrowful—as though the town itself was mourning something long gone.

The room breathed with an era its owners had no wish to chase away with modernity; on the contrary, they preserved it carefully. It was not a museum, nor was it an ordinary home: here, the style of the nineteenth century did not seem deliberate—it was a way of life. High ceilings with molding, heavy curtains of dark green velvet that muffled both street noise and light, and wooden furniture with fine carving, darkened in places by time but polished to a soft gleam—all of it created a sense of reliability, almost eternity. Dark oak bookshelves, filled with leather-bound volumes, covered nearly an entire wall; between them hung old engravings and yellowed maps, as if to remind one that the world was far larger than a single room or a single town. On a massive writing desk with bronze fittings lay an open atlas; beside it stood a copper inkwell and a quill, though no one had written with ink for a long time. In the corner, a grandfather clock ticked quietly; its steady rhythm was not intrusive but soothing, like the pulse of an old house.

The air carried not only the dampness from outside but also something homely: the wax used to polish the floors, old paper, and strong coffee. Howard wrapped his fingers around the hot cup, but the warmth did not reach inside—the cold seemed to have settled somewhere deeper than the skin, in the very chest. He watched the drops slide down the glass and felt a familiar, almost habitual tension rising within him: the desire to fix everything, to foresee everything, to hold on to everything.