"Himes, Chester - Blind Man With A Pistol" - читать интересную книгу автора (Himes Chester)
"Not them fifty little pickaninnies, according to you," the cop said.
"I am merely God's instrument."
Suddenly the first cop remembered why they had stopped in the first place. "You got a sign in the window, uncle, advertising for fertile women. Ain't you got enough women?"
"I now have only eleven. I must have twelve. One died and she must be replaced."
"Which reminds me, you got another sign in your window saying 'funerals performed'."
The old man looked as near to being surprised as was possible. "Yes, I performed her funeral."
"But that sign's been there for years. I've seen it myself."
"Of course," the old man said. "We all must die."
The cop took off his cap and scratched his blond head. He looked at his partner for advice.
His partner said: "We better wait for the sergeant."
The reinforcements from the Harlem precinct station, headed by a sergeant of detectives, found the remainder of the house in much the same repair as the kitchen. Potbellied coalburning stoves on rusted sheets of metal in the hallways on each floor supplied heat. Light was supplied by homemade lamps without shades made from whiskey bottles. The wives slept on homemade individual pallets, six to a room, on the top floor, while Reverend had his own private room adjoining furnished with a double bed and a chamber pot and little else. There was a large front room on the second floor with all of its windows papered shut where the children slept on loose dirty cotton, evidently the contents of numerous mattresses, which covered the floor from wall to wall about a foot thick.
At the time of their arrival the children were having their lunch, which consisted of the stewed pigsfeet and chitterlings which Bubber, the cretin, had been cooking in the washing pot. It had been divided equally and poured into three rows of troughs in the middle room on the first floor. The naked children were lined up, side by side, on hands and knees, swilling it like pigs.
The detectives counted fifty children, all under the age of ten, and all seemingly healthy. They looked fat enough, with their naked bellies poking out, but several of their burred heads were spotted with tetter, and most of the boys had elongated penises for children so young.
The nuns were gathered about a large bare table in the front room, all busily counting their cheap wooden rosaries, and chanting verses in musical voices which produced a singularly enchanting harmony, but with such indistinct pronunciation that no one could make out the words.
The cretin lay flat on his back on the splintery kitchen floor, his head wrapped in a dirty white bandage stained with mercurochrome, sleeping soundly to the accompaniment of snores that sounded like loud desperate shouts coming from under water. Numerous flies and gnats of all descriptions were feeding on the flow of spittle that drooled from the corners of his harelipped mouth, in preference, seemingly, to the remains of stew in the pot.
In a small room across the hall from where the nuns were sitting, which Reverend Sam called his study, he was being questioned sharply by all twelve cops. Reverend Sam answered their questions politely, looking unperturbed. Yes, he was an ordained minister. Ordained by who? Ordained by God, who else. Yes, the nuns were all his wives. How did he account for that, nuns had made sacred vows to lives of chastity? Yes, there were white nuns and black nuns. What difference did that make? The church provided shelter and food for the white nuns, his black nuns had to hustle for themselves. But religious vows forbid nuns to marry or to participate in any form of carnality. Yes, yes, rightfully speaking, his nuns were virgins. But how could that be when they were his wives and had given birth to, er, fifty children by him? Yes, but being as they were police officers in a sinful world they might not understand; every morning when his wives arose they were virgin nuns, it was only at night, in the dark, that they performed the functions for which God had made their bodies. You mean they were virgins in the morning, nuns during the day, and wives at night? Yes, if you wish to state it in such manner, but you must not overlook the fact that every living person has two beings, the physical and the spiritual, and neither has ascendancy over the other; they could, at best, and with rigid discipline, be carefully separated -- which was what he had succeeded doing with his wives. All right, all right, but why didn't his children wear clothes? Why, it was more comfortable without them, and clothes cost money. And eat at tables, like human beings, with knives and forks? Knives and forks cost money, and troughs were more expedient; surely, as white gentlemen and officers of the law, they should understand just what he meant.
The twelve cops reddened to a man. The sergeant, doing most of the questioning, took another tack. What did you want another wife for? Reverend Sam looked up in amazement from beneath his old drooping lids. What a curious question, sir. Shall I answer it? Again the sergeant reddened. Listen, uncle, we're not playing. Neither am I, I assure you, sir. Well, then, what happened to the last one? What last one, sir? The one who died. She died, sir. How, Goddammit? Dead, sir. For what reason? The Lord willed it, sir. Now, listen here, uncle, you're just making it hard on yourself; what was her disease, er, ailment, er, the cause of her death? Childbirth. How old did you say you were? About a hundred, as far as I can determine. All right, you're a hundred; now what did you do with her? We buried her. Where? In the ground. Now listen here, uncle, there are laws about burials; did you have a permit? There are laws for white folks and laws for black folks, sir. All right, all right, but these laws come from God. Which God? There's a white God and there's a black God.
By then, the sergeant had lost his patience. The police continued their investigation without Reverend Sam's assistance. In due course they learned that the household was supported by the wives walking the streets of Harlem, dressed as nuns, begging alms. They also discovered three suspicious-looking mounds in the dirt cellar, which, upon being opened, revealed the remains of three female bodies.
2
It was 2 a.m. in Harlem and it was hot. Even if you couldn't feel it, you could tell it by the movement of the people. Everybody was limbered up, glands lubricated, brains ticking over like a Singer sewing-machine. Everybody was ahead of the play. There wasn't but one square in sight. He was a white man.
He stood well back in the recessed doorway of the United Tobacco store at the northwest corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, watching the sissies frolic about the lunch counter in the Theresa building on the opposite corner. The glass doors had been folded back and the counter was open to the sidewalk.
The white man watched them enviously. His body twitched as though he were standing in a hill of ants. His muscles jerked in the strangest places, one side of his face twitched, he had cramps in the right foot, his pants cut his crotch, he bit his tongue, one eye popped out from its socket. One could tell his blood was stirring, but one couldn't tell which way. He couldn't control himself. He stepped out from his hiding place.
At first no one noticed him. He was an ordinary-looking light-haired white man dressed in light gray trousers and a white sport shirt. One could find white men on that corner on any hot night. There was a bright street lamp on each of the four corners of the intersection and cops were always in calling distance. White men were as safe at that intersection as in Times Square. Furthermore they were more welcome.
But the white man couldn't help acting guilty and frightened. He slithered across the street like a moth to the flame. He walked in a one-sided crablike motion, as though submitting only the edge of his body to his inflamed passion. He was watching the frolicsome sissies with such intentness a fast-moving taxi coming east almost ran him down. There was a sudden shriek of brakes, and the loud angry shout of the black driver, "Mother-raper! Ain't you never seen sissies?"
He leapt for the curb, his face burning. All the naked mascaraed eyes about the lunch counter turned on him.
"Ooooo!" a falsetto voice cried delightedly. "A lollipop!"
He drew back to the edge of the sidewalk, face flaming as though he were about to run or cry.
"Don't run, mother," someone said.
White teeth gleamed between thick tan lips. The white man lowered his eyes and followed the edge of the sidewalk around the corner from 125th Street down Seventh Avenue.
"Look, she's blushing," another voice said, setting off a giggle.
The white man looked straight ahead as though ignoring them but when he came to the end of the counter and would have continued past, a heavyset serious man who had been sitting between two empty seats at the end got up to leave, and taking advantage of the distraction the white man slipped into the seat he had vacated.
"Coffee," he ordered in a loud constricted voice. He wanted it to be known that coffee was all he wanted.
The waiter gave him a knowing look. "I know what you want."
The white man forced himself to meet the waiter's naked eyes. "Coffee is all."
The waiter's lips twisted in a derisive grin. The white man noticed they were painted too. He stole a look at the other beauties at the counter. Their huge tan glistening lips looked extraordinarily seductive.
To get his attention the waiter had to speak again."Chops!" he whispered in a hoarse suggestive voice.
The white man started like a horse shying. "I don't want anything to eat."
"I know."
"Coffee."
"Chops."
"Black."
"Black chops. All you white mothers are just alike."
The white man decided to play ignorant. He acted as though he didn't know what the waiter was talking about. "Are you discriminating against me?"
"Lord, no. Black chops -- coffee, I mean -- coming right up."
A sissie moved into the seat beside the white man, and put his hand on his leg. "Come with me, mother."
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