"Barry N. Malzberg - Understanding Entropy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

and out back and forth, the pounding on the chest has loosened the phlegm, the
morphine has momentarily quelled the cough, he thinks that he can think,
although this is not necessarily the issue, and he thinks, of course, that I
am a hallucination. Hallucination is common in this late-life condition,
although the dementia has not affected him as fully as it might in a few more
hours or (if he lasts that long, he probably will not) days. I don't know, he
says. His eyes are strangely lustrous, the only motion, the only thing in his
face not quiescent, the rest is dead, bland, sunken, a canvas upon which has
been embedded the full and perfect features of the dead, the valley of the
dead, the shades and valleys and small tablelands upon which the dead walk
until at last they sleep. Yes, Martin Donner says, yes I do know. I can answer
that. He thrashes weakly, the ganglia in his shattered nerves trying to pull
into alignment. I wouldn't have done it he said. I would not have died this
way. It is not worth it. I thought it was worth it, that it was worth any
price to be what you are, to live expressly and fully but it is not. This is
unbearable, I am sinking, I am sinking in disgrace, I wet myself, I humiliate
myself, I see the with visions and dream of such inextinguishable horror...
no, he says, no, and his voice is momentarily stronger, he screams in the
room, no, he says, I would not have left them, I would have stayed there and I
would have died, I would have died in a thousand ways but it is the difference
between metaphor and truth, they are not the same, once I thought they were
but no, no, no, no, no, no, he says uncontrollably, the word ratched
uncontrollably, and he sinks into the steaming sheets, his eyes fluttering,
closed and the coughing, the moaning, the turgid phlegm passes again through
his desiccated and shattered cavities. No, he says, and no, I drink, his
answer is no and momentarily there is a kind of settling; I can feel my own
realignment and a sense of history colliding with imminence merging with the
steaming and impenetrable future, but of course this fusion cannot last and I
am in Martin Donner's bedroom 15 years earlier, the bedroom on the second
floor of the suburban colonial in one of the nicest areas of a nicer suburb in
the sets of anterooms to the city, and I have put the question again. I have
put it to him calmly and without sinister intent and then have used my powers
-- the powers granted me by the old and terrible antagonist who nonetheless,
and this is undeniable, always plays fair, as fairly as Martin did not with
his wife and daughters and friends and family through all of the years up to
this point. I show him the bottles, the tubing, the arc and density of the
room, the harsh and desperate light and it is uncommonly vivid, I have placed
all my powers in the service of this adtunbration. Oh yes, Martin says, seeing
it all, oh yes, I see now. Yes, he says, it is worth it. I would do this. I
would not be deterred. It is worth it. It is worth anything to expressly enact
what you are, what you must be, the full and alarming necessities of the soul.
So I do not care, he says. I am going, I am going to leave, if this is my
destiny. So be it. His features congeal with conviction, unlike his face in
the room of his death, they recede and pulsate, project and flutter with light
there is light all through him. Worth it he says, worth it to be what one is.
How many years until this happens? he says. Not that it matters. But I want to
know.
Seventeen, I say. Seventeen years and not all of them will be happy.
Your daughters will weep and one of them will hate you, there will be many
betrayals, also other illnesses, earlier illnesses, small and larger