"Barry N. Malzberg & Kathe Koja - Orleans, Rheims, Friction Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

BARRY N. MALZBERG and KATHE KOJA

ORLEANS, RHEIMS, FRICTION: FIRE

In the cell: And the Dauphin close to her, wet breath, odor of teeth and robes
the odor of death itself: is this what she wanted? France, yes, a kind of
salvation she had called it but was it not extinction in another dress, reek of
loam and excrescence to bury her along with the prayers? and now her death was
the Dauphin, leaning against her, taking her small hand in his fist.

"It is not too late," that breath, those hands. "You must pray, you may find
remission, you must ask by all the tokens of light for the grace of the Saviour
Himself --"

The Saviour himself? and what does this clownish, duped and poisoned man, sunk
into an indifference so profound it masks as faith know of the Saviour? She
herself knows nothing but feels, ah, feels like sun on the skin the search and
bum of those eyes, that dense and bloody forehead: at every step, every station
betrayal seeps through the centuries, death is always death and screams are
screams are the screams of disbelief and hatred as the true Saviour, stripped
now of all radiance, shrieks from the vault of his emptiness Why have you
forsaken me?

It is finished.

Yes, finished: finished for Jeanne too, all these hours in the dark have brought
to her a bleak and blacker light and, preparing to present to the Dauphin that
inextinguishable truth -- that in giving herself to what she thought was France
she has only rehearsed the last, disastrous discovery of Christ, that He had
sacrificed Himself -- oh God forgive but it is so, every instant, every dull
dead beat of her dying heart knows it is so w given Himself to nothing and she
as well: as here in this place, boxed nave become not only her cell but the
shape of her heart she feels the Dauphin's hands upon her, the two of them
grasping, small and rhythmic squeezing and through the establishing rhythm of
that grasp the flutter and beat of his pulse, counterpoint upon her wrist and as
she stares at him then, pale with blasphemy unuttered, she tumbles trapdoor to
another understanding: beyond France, beyond the stations, beyond the bereaved
and apostasaic Jesus Himself she sees the receding glow of what had come upon
her in the fields, small terrible radiance which had seized her just as she
fears in the next reflexive movement of his hands the Dauphin will seize her and
take her station by station past the portals of her own damage, into the lie of
light which had so enpooled her.

"Pray," says the Dauphin to Jeanne, "let us pray."

On the porch, caught not in prayer but some attitude of distant witness, ironic
supplication: on the porch, tilting on the boards, feeling the liquor rise
inside and Joan on this false veranda too high for the house, blurred, drizzling
dark and she alone, all alone in T-shirt and silk skirt blowing white smoke at
the rain. How could she have come here? what did she want? Silver light on the