"Elmore Leonard - pagan babies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leonard Elmore)

bodies turned to leather and stains had been lying on the concrete
floor the past five years, though not lying where they had been shot
with Kalashnikovs or hacked to death with machetes. The benches
had been removed and the bodies reassembled: men, women and
small children laid in rows of skulls and spines, femurs, fragments of
cloth stuck to mummified remains, many of the adults missing feet,
all missing bones that had been carried off by scavenging dogs.


Since the living would no longer enter the church, Fr. Terry Dunn
heard confessions in the yard of the rectory, in the shade of old pines
and silver eucalyptus trees.

"Bless me, Fatha, for I have sin. It has been two months from the


last time I come to Confession. Since then I am fornicating with a
woman from Gisenyi three times only and this is all I have done."

They would seem to fill their mouths with the English words,
pro-nounc-ing each one carefully, with an accent Terry believed was
heard only in Africa. He gave fornicators ten Our Fathers and ten
Hail Marys, murmured what passed for an absolution while the penitent
said the Act of Contrition, and dismissed them with a reminder
to love God and sin no more.

"Bless me, Fatha, for I have sin. Is a long time since I come here
but is not my fault, you don't have Confession always when you say.
The sin I did, I stole a goat from close by Nyundo for my family to
eat. My wife cook it en brochette and also in a stew with potatoes and
peppers."

"Last night at supper," Terry said, "I told my housekeeper I'd enjoy
goat stew a lot more if it wasn't so goddamn bony."

The goat thief said, "Excuse me, Fatha?"

"Those little sharp bones you get in your mouth," Terry said, and
gave the man ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. He gave just about

everyone ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys to say as their penance.
Some came seeking advice.

"Bless me, Fatha, I have not sin yet but I think of it. I see one of
the men kill my family has come back. One of the Hutu Interahamwe
militia, he come back from the Goma refugee camp and I like to kill
him, but I don't want to go to prison and I don't want to go to Hell.
Can you have God forgive me before I kill him?"

Terry said, "I don't think He'll go for it. The best you can do, report