"Kress, Nancy - Philippa's Hands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

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Philippa's Hands
by Nancy Kress
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Copyright (c)1988 Nancy Kress
First published in Full Spectrum, ed. Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy, 1988

Fictionwise Contemporary
Fantasy


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"It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger."
-- David Hume
They came again at dawn, like last time, distilling out of the washed-out gloom under the bedroom window. Or perhaps they came through the window, floating through the chilly glass and worn flowered curtains -- how could you tell? They were crying again. They were always crying. Philippa thought, through her sleepy dread, _I could see if the curtains are damp. Then I could tell._
The bandage still covered her right middle finger from last time.
They stood grouped at the foot of her bed, three rosy transparent hideous shapes that might haye been old women. Or might not. Pinkish areas would swell into sketchy pseudopods suggesting a bent arm, a shawl draped over a head, a hunched back. Then the swellings would shift before she could be sure. Only the tears were constant, great rosy globes of sorrow welling and falling in arcs so beautiful that Philippa had to look away. In the morning, when it was all over, the carpet would still be soaked clear through.
_no no no no no no no no no_ went the part of her that never understood, the most part, and her left hand clutched at the edge of the quilt. The central blue vein sprung out sharply. on the back of her hand two liver spots, for some reason clear in the gloom, echoed brown stains on the quilt that not even her diluted bleach on a clean rag had been able to touch.
One of them stepped forward. This time it was the one on the left. Philippa never knew. Their hierarchy, if they had one, was a mystery to her. If they were angels they should have a hierarchy, shouldn't they? It was one of the reasons she had given up on the idea that they were angels.
Philippa let go the quilt and clasped her hands together to pray, but of course she couldn't do it. She never could while they were in the room. It wasn't only that fear kept her from concentrating properly. It was that she forgot what prayers were for, who they were addressed to, what the whole thing was supposed to accomplish. There was no room in this for prayer, a thing which left the edges of hope intact and a little fuzzy. You never really knew if prayers were answered or not. Here you always knew, in concrete terms: this for that. It was a bargain, a contract, a hard Yankee deal.
She reached over to switch on the bedside lamp. The first time, she had actually thought that would them vanish. Things that go bump in the night, begone the light. She hadn't known. She hadn't known anything. She had burned with terror, smoked black at the edges with it, ignited with the fear that either she was going or she wasn't. She hadn't known anything. And 416 people had died.
At the click of the lamp switch, the three glowing nebulous old women drew closer together. They always did that. They also cried harder, the rosy tears silent welling, coursing a short way down the glow, tremble minute like perfect-cut rubies come alive to breathe sorrow, breathe out pain. Then they fell.
Philippa waited.
The one who had stepped forward -- although now the light was on and they had moved into a bright an huddle it was even more difficult to see where one left off and the next began -- reverently laid the clipping on foot of the bed. Against the faded chintz of the quilt, inherited from Philippa's mother, the newsprint looked almost white. The rosy huddle stepped back. Tears flowed.
"Who are you?" Philippa said to the old women, but not because she expected an answer. Just for something to say. In the still room her voice sounded rusty. Well, it was rusty. You don't speak when there's nobody to speak to.
The second and third times, Philippa bad torn apart the library in Carter Falls, looking for those clippings. She had read every newspaper the library carried, and then the ones you had to use the microfiche machine for, sticking her head into the strange contraption and trying to at least match the typeface to the pieces of paper in her hand. She had even thought of driving into the college library in Plattsburgh, but it had been hard enough to get into Jim's car for the first time in the eight months since the funeral and drive just to Carter Falls. The thought of the trucks on Route 3 undid her. She had no driver's license, no need to go to Carter Falls, and no answer. The clipping was nowhere. It was never anywhere. This new one wouldn't be, either, until the grocery boy delivered next week's _Time_.
About four inches square, the clipping on the bed was paper-cut sharp on two joining edges, furred on the other two, as if it had been torn from the bottom right corner of a page. But then there should he a date or page number or part of the paper's name, shouldn't there? Philippa could see without moving that there wasn't. The clipping was uncreased, unyellowed, crisp. But that made sense, since it hadn't appeared yet.
Made sense. 0 my god.
She could curse but not pray.
Another thing she knew she couldn't do, not until it was all over, was look at the crucifix on the wall. Just flat couldn't swivel her head that way. The whole wall -- faded green-stripe wallpaper, her grandmother's bureau with the chipped green paint and newel-post mirror and hand-tatted dresser scarf, Douay Bible on the scarf beside the cut-glass bowl holding hairpins and rubber bands -- was off limits, until this was over. The first time, she had even thought this made a terrible sense. If the three weird women came from the Anti-Christ, the Evil One, then of course she would be barred from looking at the crucifix while they were there . . . she had been so stupid. And so afraid.
The clipping bore only one small headline. With type that small, and coming from the bottom of a page, it must not be too important. That was a good sign. "An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."
Now how had _that_ bit of catechism gotten through? Startled, Philippa tried again to clasp her hands for prayer. Her left ring finger, where once Jim's band had gone and where she would have worn the silver band making her a Bride of Christ, looked to her bonier and whiter than the rest. But that was just trashy fancy. It was important to keep clear what was fancy, what was not.
Philippa slid out of bed. That too was necessary; the clipping couldn't be reached otherwise, no matter how far forward she leaned. Her long flannel nightdress, the nap worn off at the elbows, wound itself around her hips. She jerked it down with a quick glance at the sobbing women, who only went on sobbing in their eerie silence.
Impatience stabbed Philippa. They weren't the ones going to do it. Some people just liked carrying on. Some like that from the parish had tried to visit her after Jim, clutching her hand and sniffing enough to turn your stomach, when they had never come near Jim during his illness. One visit was all she let them try.
She picked up the news clipping. The paper felt heavier than the ones the grocery boy delivered once a week. The type was smaller, too: serious type, and brief:

MARRAKESH -- An earthquake here earlier today killed at least 34 people, including 22 children. Although officials at the Seismographic institute in Rabat say the quake measured no more than 5.8 on the Richter scale, structures it toppled include a government-sponsored orphanage which stood near its epicenter. The orphanage housed 60 children and 17 adults. Rescue crews working around the clock have PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 4A

Philippa closed her eyes. She couldn't picture the orphanage, the quake, any of it. She didn't know where Marrakesh was, although she vaguely remembered a song about it when she had been in high school, the kind of song Johnny Matthis had never sung. Was it in Asia? Africa?
Had the orphanage been white-washed, with a dome? But it was only their pretty heathen churches that had domes, wasn't it?
Twenty-two dead children.
Philippa opened her eyes at looked at the ghostly wailing women. Suddenly they reminded her of the black-clad old ladies attending 6:00 a.m. Mass at St. Stanislawls, every single morning of her childhood. Every single morning. Shuffling up the steps in heavy, black-laced shoes, dipping holy water with two gnarled fingers from the font by the carved wooden door, lighting endless candles for the dead. What had there been in those pious figures to fill a child with such horror?
"All right, then," Philippa said, "I'm ready. Tell me."
The figure on the right raised her sketchy arm. A line of rosy light stretched from its end to Philippa's left hand, ending at the first joint of her index finger. A faint tingle, and the glowing line vanished. The knife appeared on the quilt: the same ordinary, murderously sharp hunting knife as always, the same one Philippa could have bought at Wayne Clarke's in Carter Falls. The old women wailed without comfort, their rosy tears cascading to the floor, pooling on the carpet, pristine in falling and sodden when done. Philippa looked at the whole spectacle with sudden distaste.
"Oh, stop that racket!"