"Jay Lake - Green" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

Green
Jay Lake

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тАЬIdentity and role are so intertwined for human beings, but sometimes those are split
apart, splintered. How anyone finds their way out of the forests of loss and longing
is fascinating. To do that amid high politics and low sexuality can be terrific drama.тАЭ

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THE FIRST THING I can remember in this life is my father driving his white ox,
Endurance, to the sky burial platforms. The oxтАЩs wooden bell clicked in an echo of
the slow clops of his hooves on the dusty track. The sun was warm on my face. My
mother must have carried me, for she was alive then too, but all I remember is the
clicking ox bell and the jangling silver bells of my grandmotherтАЩs shroud. She had
died that morning and now took her last ride astride EnduranceтАЩs back.

The women of our village are given a swath of silk at birth, though mine is
lost. It is usually two arm spans wide, and as long as the family can afford. Wisdom
says that the longer the silk, the longer the life. The first skill a girl-child learns is to
sew a tiny bell to her silk each day so that when she marries she will dance with the
music of five thousand bells. Every day she sews a tiny bell so that when she dies,
her soul will be carried out of this life on the music of twenty thousand bells.

None of this lore is in my memory of course, only the mournful echo of
EnduranceтАЩs heavy wooden bell and the gentle shaking of my grandmotherтАЩs shroud,
like rain on a temple roof to cry her soul away. That and my father flicking his lash
and singing a death song for his mother.

And of course it was hot.

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A bit later in my life, Endurance stood watch over me as my father worked. I
remember hiding in the shade of his belly, staring up at the fringe where the fur of
each side met. The white of his back shaded to gray there, like the line of a storm off
the sea. EnduranceтАЩs great brown eyes watched me unblinking as I ran in the rice
paddies, climbed the swaying palms and bougainvilleas, hunted snakes in the stinking
ditches.

If I strayed too far, his bell clopped as he shook his head and snorted to warn
me back.
 At night I sat before the fire in front of our hut and stitched another tiny bell to
my silk under the watchful eye of my father. My mother was already gone, though I
cannot remember her death. EnduranceтАЩs breath whuffled from the dark of his pen.
If I stared into the shadows, I could see the fireтАЩs fetch dance gleaming in the depths
of his brown eyes.