"Thomas M. Disch - The Priest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

died in 1951. She could be pretty sure that ruled out Alphonse Burdett.
And look, right here on the next stone, CECILIA BURDETT, BELOVED WIFE,
1904--85. She felt almost as though Cecilia had caught her flirting with
Alphonse at one of those awful senior socials with Kool-Aid and Oreos. She
could remember things like that, general things, but not particulars, the
names and faces of people who assumed she remembered them and when she
couldn't then assumed she was an imbecile. But there were places she could
remember with the clarity of a slide being flashed on a screen. Living rooms
with all their furniture, backyards, the enormous produce department of a
supennarket somewhere, a room in a basement with just one tiny window near the
ceiling and large rhubarb leaves screening the window. She only had to close
her eyes and they were there for the summoning.
It was like a detective story, in a way. If this is the bedroom I
remember, with this wallpaper with a tangle of pastel blue and pink roses, and
this maple chest of drawers, and this crucifix with a frond of dried palm bent
double and attached to it with a rubber band, and this rug that's faded to
match the greenish tan of the chenille bedspread-- then who am I, the person
who can remember it all so clearly? Was it my bedroom? For that matter, is it
still?
She sat down on Cecilia Burdett's headstone with a sigh of gratitude and
looked at her poor tired feet and marveled at her shoes. A woman of her age
wearing tennis shoes. Though if she'd had to walk about all over this grass in
a proper pair of shoes it would not have been easy. The sunshine was nice. She
could feel it right through the sleeves of her sweater. A cloudless blue sky,
a friendly sun, the lawn yielding with each footstep, what could be nicer.
It occurred to her to wonder, what if she were Cecilia Burdett? How
could she be sure she wasn't? What if this was heaven? With the beautiful
weather and no one around, it was peaceful enough to qualify, and four
headstones off was a bouquet of her favorite flowers, daffodils. It might not
be the heaven she'd been led to expect, but probably no one really knew what
heaven would be like, or God for that matter. Once, perhaps, she'd had clearer
ideas on the subject, the way she'd known whom to vote for, once, or how to
sight-read a piece of music, but all those clear things had gone blurry.
Usually that blurriness didn't bother her. It could even be pleasant. She
could settle for a heaven without trumpets and angels and everyone speaking in
Latin, a heaven that was just an increasing, agreeable blurriness with
everything slowly darkening until the stars began to be visible.
But what presumption. To suppose she was in heaven, without so much as a
stopover in purgatory, not to mention the worst and likeliest possibility. She
might not be able to remember her name but she could remember her sins well
enough, and all the confessions that had been lies, because she _knew_ she'd
go right back to the same sin, like a Weight Watcher returning to sticky buns.
Even now, if she went to confession, could she make a sincere act of
contrition? Once the temptation was gone, could you claim any credit for
resisting it? Assuming it was gone. At least of the birth control that was a
safe assumption. But of him? When she reached for a memory of him it was
always of some cheap motel room or the backseat of a car. Or a booth in a bar
with neon beer signs and his long white fingers playing with a cardboard
coaster advertising Hamm's. She could remember the fingers but not the face.
She could remember the guilt but not the love that had made the guilt worth