"Thomas M. Disch - On Wings Of Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

ON WINGS OF
SONG
by Thomas M. Disch




Profiscicere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo.
 For Charles Naylor




PART ONE


1

When he was five Daniel WeinrebтАЩs mother disappeared.
Though, like his father, he chose to regard this as a personal
affront, he soon came to prefer the life they led without her. SheтАЩd
been a weepy sort of girl, given to long disconnected speeches and
spells of stifled hatred for DanielтАЩs father, some of which always
spilled over onto Daniel. She was sixteen when sheтАЩd married,
twenty-one when she vanished with her two suitcases, the sound
system, and the silver flatware in a service for eight that had been
their wedding present from her husbandтАЩs grandmother, Adah
Weinreb.
 After the bankruptcy proceedings were overтАФtheyтАЩd been
going on for a good while even before thisтАФDanielтАЩs father,
Abraham Weinreb, D.D.S., took him a thousand miles away to live
in the town of Amesville, Iowa, which needed a dentist because
their last one had died. They lived in an apartment over the clinic,
where Daniel had his own room, not just a couch that made up
into a bed. There were backyards and streets to play in, trees to
climb, and mountains of snow all winter long. Children seemed
more important in Amesville, and there were more of them. Except
for breakfast, he ate most of his meals in a big cafeteria downtown,
and they were much better than his mother had cooked. In almost
every way it was a better life.
Nevertheless when he was cross or bored or sick in bed with a
cold he told himself that he missed her. It seemed monstrous that
he, who was such a success ingratiating himself with the mothers
of his friends, should not have a mother of his own. He felt set
apart. But even this had its positive side: apart might be above. At
times it seemed so. For his motherтАЩs absence was not the
matter-of-fact missingness of death, but a mystery that Daniel was
always pondering. There was an undeniable prestige in being the
son of a mystery and associated with such high drama. The absent
Milly Weinreb became DanielтАЩs symbol of all the wider possibilities