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

distant corner, street light and inside the party reeling on, stupid
role-playing party, stupid game: L' Histoire Concrete or who am I? Perhaps the
real question ought to be Who was I? but not here, not now because the game must
be played: ask of others the questions, find out who you are and each guest
assigned their little roles, a piece of paper slapped on her back as she walked
in the door: gotcha, gotcha now. She had cheated, calmly cheated in front of
everyone and not for the first time: JEANNE D'ARC plucked from behind to stare
and then replace and the man in the black jacket, put on a collar and he could
have been a priest, smirking and defrocked and asking archly "Don't you believe
in fair play?"

Foreplay, did you say? smartass Joan in her school play might have asked but
that was a long time ago, she did not say things like that now, said nothing at
all because anyone could see he meant to pick her up, would more than likely
make his move as soon as he knew for certain she was here alone but soon is as
good as never because St. Joan of the Flowers, St. Joan of Chavez Ravine is not
going to let him do it, is not in fact even listening to his pitch. What can he
say -- even given a collar --worth the time it takes to hear it? Despite the
stupid jacket (and maybe he meant it to be stupid, maybe he's smarter than he
looks, than she thinks) he could almost be attractive but not to her, not
tonight, not ever; she is not going to fuck him or anybody, not up or down, not
in or out: tonight she is definitely going home alone.

Nothing like an ashtray on the porch, fenced by walls from the house but part of
the screen curls outward, faint mesh unglued from its nails, hanging in the
drizzle and she bends to stuff the cigarette butt through that hole, send it
falling into the wet black below, no sound, no hiss, no nothing but the dark and
she is tired, tired and chilled from that rain and the dark, barely midnight but
the thought of going home exhausts as surely as the thought of going back in.
True name: why bother? Jeanne d'Arc had visions but this Joan of Chavez Ravine
has only glimmerings, snapshots of embarrassment or anguish; this Joan has no
terror of blasphemy because this Joan knows she has been fucked good and proper
forever and long ago and so in defeat, in silence she lights another cigarette,
procession of tapers leading her toward her indistinguishable night and she
smokes and thinks of nothing, of everything: of the stretch and curl of time
escaped, chronology sprinkled like stars through her memory, l'histoire concrete
as concrete as an animal's gaze, a broken body, the drip and slip and slither of
water down a warped and broken screen to pool like blood in her own empty
abscess of memory and of loss.

The walls of the prison are always wet here, wet like the fields in stricken
autumn, ribbons and droplets, prisoners' tears. Witch's sweat, says the old
warder, a pious man unable to look her clearly in the eye: he wears his keys
like a churchman wears a cross and "See?" he says, gesturing to the water, "see
how it shines? It shines like blood, like your tears, like your stinking heart,
witch, soon enough." And then into his prayers, all night she can hear him
chanting, sometimes affixing broken pieces of the Mass to his misquotation and
in the pater noster of his murmurs she can hear the ripe curses of Orleans. Her
soul will burn as brightly within his piety as it will in the center of the
Dauphin's disbelief, her soul will bum everywhere, all the flames and fires of