"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

"Is not consciousness the thing that divides man from the animals?"
he asked. "But consciousness is a double thing, a seeing one's self; not
only a knowing, but a knowing that one knows. So the human person is of its
essence double. How this is commonly worked out in practice, I don't
understand. Our present states are surely not the common thing."
"My own consciousness isn't intensified since my person is doubled,"
Clem said. "It's all the other way. My consciousness is weakened. I've
become a creature of my own unconscious. There's something about you that I
don't like, man."
"The animal is simple and single," the young-old man said "It lacks
true reflexive consciousness. But man is dual (though I don't understand the
full meaning of it here) and he has at least intimations of true
consciousness And what is the next step?"
I fathom you now," Clem said. "My father would have called you a
Judas Priest."
I don't quite call myself that. But what follows the singularity of
the animal and duality of man? You recall the startling line of Chesterton?
-- 'we trinitarians have known it is not good for God to be alone.' But was
His case the same as ours? Did He do a violent double take, or triple take,
when He discovered one day that there were Three of Him? Has He ever
adjusted to it? Is it possible that He can?"
"Aye, you're a Judas Priest. I hate the species."
But I am not, Mr. Clendenning. I don't understand this sundering any
more than you do. It happens only one time in a million, but it has happened
to us. Perhaps it would happen to God but one time in a billion billion, hut
it has happened. The God who is may be much rarer than any you can imagine.
"Let me explain: my other person is a very good man, much better
than when we were conjoined. He's a dean already, and he'll be a bishop
within five years. Whatever of doubt and skepticism that was in me
originally is still in the me here present, and it is somehow intensified. I
do not want to be dour or doubting. I do not want to speak mockingly of the
great things. But the bothering things are all in the me here. The other me
is freed of them.
"Do you think that there might have a been a sundered-off Napoleon
who was a bumbler at strategy and who was a nervous little coward? Did there
remain in backwoods Kentucky for many years a sundered-off Lincoln who gave
full rein to his inborn delight in the dirty story, the dirty deal, the
barefoot life, the loutishness growing? Was there a sundered-off Augustine
who turned ever more Manichean, who refined more and more his arts of false
logic and fornication, who howled against reason, who joined the cultishness
of the crowd? Is there an anti-Christ -- the man who fled naked from the
garden at dusk leaving his garment behind? We know that both do not keep the
garment at the moment of sundering."
"Damned if I know, Judas Priest. Your own father-name abomination,
was there another of him? Was he better or worse? I leave you."

"She is in town and is going to meet you tonight," Joe Zabotsky told
Clem at their next monthly meeting. "We've got it all set up."
"No, no, not Veronica!" Clem was startled. "I'm not ready for it."
"She is. She's a strong-minded woman, and she knows what she wants."