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

railed furiously about "the godawful mess we're in now!" "Did you hear that
bitch, talking about American hoaxes?" he demanded of me as I turned the flame
under the saute low and lifted the top on the pasta cooker to check the water.

"No, I didn't catch that one," I said, breaking eggs into my cherished copper
bowl. "My French ear only works when I've got subtitles for confirmation." I
hefted the whisk and bounced it lightly against my fingers. "Anyway, I suspect
that anything so mindlessly derogatory must derive from simple jealousy."

"Jesus! You really didn't get it, did you! Do I have to spell it out?"

I knew I was taking my life into my hands with my answer, but glancing over my
shoulder, I said, "I would have thought you'd be doing dinner with them
tonight.
I mean, it's wonderful, your being here, but maybe you'd have. a chance at
changing their opinions of the PSD if you talked a little with them?" The
voice
in which I said this came out disgustingly timid and innocent. I should have
chided him boldly. After all, he was always on at me about taking every
opportunity to make myself known to those in the field "who count."

He missed the irony, of course. (He always did.) He glared at me. "My
conversational French is terrible. I can ask for the toilet and a room and
archival documents, no sweat. But my accent sucks. And you know the French.
Anyway, they're Barry's colleagues, not mine." He snorted. "Did you see Barry?
He just sat there gaping at the holo-tank, like the proverbial peasant getting
his first glimpse of the city." Teddy sagged against the refrigerator. He
looked
so distraught I stopped beating the eggs and turned and gave him a hug.

"Just remember, you've got Science on your side," I said softly into his ear.
"There's no way they can dismiss the PSD out of hand simply because they don't
like what it's throwing back at us."

Teddy sighed. "You poor, dear, naif." He stroked my face. "What you don't yet
understand -- for all that I've been trying to din it into your head since the
first course you took with me -- is that legitimacy is a consensual
construction. 'Science' is a belief structure. And though the national
security
guys and the physicists may all think mathematical theorems provide the last
word on truth, that's not how it works in the humanities and social sciences
--
which is to say, in the Real World. By itself, the Leonardo thing could be
taken
as a fluke. All right, so we've uncovered one of history's bizarre little
secrets. What we knew about Leonardo meshed with the revelation. So Leonardo
was
female? Aha, everyone says, that explains all those peculiarities of character
that even Freud was driven to try to elucidate. But Thomas Fucking Aquinas?"
Teddy turned away, to resume pacing. Laboriously I rubbed a hunk of Parmesan