"Stanislaw Lem - His Masters Voice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

tranquillity, of strength, of a composure almost sovereign, lay in a lingering
agony, an agony prolonged by the doctors. I, at her side in the darkened
bedroom filled with the stink of medicine, still kept a grip on myself; but
when I left her, as soon as I had shut the door behind me and found myself
alone, I stuck out my tongue joyfully in the direction of her bed, and, that
being insufficient, ran to my room and breathlessly jumped up and down in
front of the mirror, fists clenched, making faces and giggling with delight.
With delight? I understood perfectly that my mother was dying; since that
morning I had fallen into despair, and the despair was as real as my stifled
giggling. I remember how the giggling frightened me, yet at the same time it
took me beyond everything I had known, and in that transgression there was a
dazzling revelation.
That night, lying alone, I tried to comprehend what had taken place;
unable to do this, I worked up a befitting pity for myself and my mother, and
tears flowed until I fell asleep. I considered these tears to be an expiation;
but then, later, the whole thing repeated itself, when I overheard the doctors
conveying worse and worse news to my father. I dared not go up to my room;
deliberately I sought the company of others. Thus the first person I ever
shrank from was myself.
After my mother's death I gave myself up to a child's despair that was
untroubled by any qualms. The fascination ended with her last breath. With her
died my anxiety. This incident is so confusing that I can only offer a
hypothesis. I had witnessed the fall of the Absolute -- it had been shown to
be an illusion -- and witnessed a shameful, obscene struggle, because in it
Perfection had come apart like the most miserable rag. This was the trampling
of life's Order, and although people above me supplied the repertoire of that
Order with special evasions even for so dismal an occasion, these additions
failed to fit what had happened. One cannot, with dignity, with grace, howl in
pain -- any more than one can in ecstasy. In the messiness of loss I sensed a
truth. Perhaps I saw, in that which disrupted, the stronger side, and so sided
with that side, because it had the upper hand.
My hidden laughter had no connection with the actual suffering of my
mother. I only feared that suffering; it was the unavoidable concomitant of
the expiring that I could understand, and I would have delivered her from the
pain had I been able. I desired neither her suffering nor her death. At a real
murderer I would have thrown myself with tears and pleas, like any child, but
since there was none, I could only absorb the cruel treachery of the blow. Her
body, bloated, turned into a monstrous, mocking caricature of itself, and it
writhed in that mockery. I had only one choice: either to be destroyed with
her or to jeer at her. As a coward, then, I chose the laughter of betrayal.
I cannot say whether it really was this way. The first paroxysm of
giggling seized me at the sight of the destruction; perhaps the experience
would have skipped me had my mother met her end in a fashion more aesthetic,
like quietly falling asleep, a form that is much favored by people. It was not
like that, however, and, forced to believe my own eyes, I proved defenseless.
In earlier times a chorus of hired mourners, brought in quickly, would have
drowned out the groans of my mother. But the decline of tradition has reduced
magical measures to the level of hairdressing, because the undertaker -- and I
overheard this -- suggested to my father the various facial expressions into
which her frozen grimace could be reworked. My father left the room then, and