"L. Timmel Duchamp - De Secretis Mulierum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duchamp L Timmel)

Our attention riveted on the stage, we saw the mass through. If old Thomas A.
had a vision or a breakdown, it was not apparent to us. Of course we had known
before we started that the date might not be right. One can expect medieval
dating to be off sometimes by a year (meaning modem calendars don't always
match
the old ones), and though we had a specific date, we had no way of knowing
whether it might not be our December 6th or 8th. Time used to get all jumbled
up
back then, and every now and then a few days would be tacked on here and
there,
or erased, to make the mess right.

Marissa suddenly approached and, bending over Teddy, said very quietly: "Do
you
want us to keep tracking him?"

"Sure, why not," Teddy said. "Might as well get a look at how the Dominicans
lived." His tone was so casual I shot a look of incredulity at him. But when I
saw he was grinning, my breath whooshed out in an explosion that nearly ended
in
the giggles. And so for the next few hours we watched Thomas pray, eat, think
and write. The cameras rolled the entire time. Eventually we wearied of
sitting
for so long and began taking short breaks (for coffee, food, the toilet) --
excepting Teddy, who could not bring himself to leave the room for even five
minutes.

The moment of revelation occurred about five hours into the scan. Thomas
lumbered into a stone cell bare of all but a pallet on the floor, a crude
table
consisting of a pile of rocks topped by a thick, unsanded slab of wood, a
crucifix on the wall, a sconce holding a torch, and a prie-dieu in the comer.
Two young boys followed, bearing on their shoulders a pole from which hung two
huge steaming buckets. These the boys left in the cell. Thomas then not only
shut the door behind them, but also drew a bolt.

"My god!" Teddy said. Like me, he was taken aback at the very idea of a bolt
on
a monk's cell. Others exclaimed, too, and soon we were all up there (in
violation of the rule), circling the stage. Teddy leaned sideways, so that his
mouth was near my ear, giving me a whiff of his personal (to me sexy) smell.
"Private quarters for VIPs of Thomas's stature is consistent for the
Dominicans,
but a bolt! Still, I suppose a towering intellect like Thomas attracted his
confreres sexually like a magnet attracts iron, and so perhaps it was
necessary." Trust Teddy to cite Warner's Law #3: Genius is power of the
intellect, and is therefore an aphrodisiac. "At the limit," he would often
lecture, "consider how Gertrude Stein, an old, fat, ugly dyke, had young
soldiers panting after her. Don't let anybody kid you: Essex was after more
than