"The Djinn's Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

Esha goes to the window to spy out the Krishna Cop, call him out, demand of him what he thinks he's doing?
"He's long gone," says Rao. "They have been keeping you under light surveillance for some time now. I would imagine your announcement has upped your level."
"They were there?"
"As I said..."
"Light surveillance."
It's scary but exciting, down in the deep muladharachakra, a red throb above her yoni. Scarysexy. That same lift of red madness that made her blurt out that marriage announcement. It's all going so far, so fast. No way to get off now.
"You never gave me the chance to answer," says aeai Rao.
Can you read my mind? Esha thinks at the palmer.
"No, but I share some operating protocols with scripting aeais for Town and Country--in a sense they are a low-order part of me--they have become quite good predictors of human behavior."
"I'm a soap opera."
Then she falls back onto the bed and laughs and laughs and laughs until she feels sick, until she doesn't want to laugh any more and every guffaw is a choke, a lie, spat up at the spy machines up there, beyond the lazy fan that merely stirs the heat, turning on the huge thermals that spire up from Delhi's colossal heat-island, a conspiracy of djinns.
"Esha," A.J. Rao says, closer than he has ever seemed before. "Lie still." She forms the question why? And hears the corresponding whisper inside her head hush, don't speak. In the same instant the chakra glow bursts like a yolk and leaks heat into her yoni. Oh, she says, oh! Her clitoris is singing to her. Oh oh oh oh. "How...?" Again, the voice, huge inside her head, inside every part of her sssshhhhh. Building building she needs to do something, she needs to move needs to rub against the day-warmed scented wood of the big bed, needs to get her hand down there hard hard hard...
"No, don't touch," chides A.J. Rao and now she can't even move she needs to explode she has to explode her skull can't contain this her dancer's muscles are pulled tight as wires she can't take much more no no no yes yes yes she's shrieking now tiny little shrieks beating her fists off the bed but it's just spasm, nothing will obey her and then it's explosion bam, and another one before that one has even faded, huge slow explosions across the sky and she's cursing and blessing every god in India. Ebbing now, but still shock after shock, one on top of the other. Ebbing now ... Ebbing.
"Ooh. Oh. What? Oh wow, how?"
"The machine you wear behind your ear can reach deeper than words and visions," says A.J. Rao. "So, are you answered?"
"What?" The bed is drenched in sweat. She's sticky dirty needs to wash, change clothes, move but the afterglows are still fading. Beautiful beautiful colors.
"The question you never gave me the chance to answer. Yes. I will marry you."
* * * *
"Stupid vain girl, you don't even know what caste he is."
Mata Madhuri smokes eighty a day through a plastic tube hooked from the respirator unit into a grommet in her throat. She burns through them three at a time: bloody machine scrubs all the good out of them, she says. Last bloody pleasure I have. She used to bribe the nurses but they bring her them free now, out of fear of her temper that grows increasingly vile as her body surrenders more and more to the machines.
Without pause for Esha's reply, a flick of her whim whips the life-support chair round and out into the garden.
"Can't smoke in there, no fresh air."
Esha follows her out on to the raked gravel of the formal charbagh.
"No one marries in caste any more."
"Don't be smart, stupid girl. It's like marrying a Muslim, or even a Christian, Lord Krishna protect me. You know fine what I mean. Not a real person."
"There are girls younger than me marry trees, or even dogs."
"So bloody clever. That's up in some god-awful shithole like Bihar or Rajputana, and anyway, those are gods. Any fool knows that. Ach, away with you!" The old, destroyed woman curses as the chair's aeai deploys its parasol. "Sun sun, I need sun, I'll be burning soon enough, sandalwood, you hear? You burn me on a sandalwood pyre. I'll know if you stint."
Madhuri the old crippled dance teacher always uses this tactic to kill a conversation with which she is uncomfortable. When I'm gone ... Burn me sweetly...
"And what can a god do that A.J. Rao can't?"
"Ai! You ungrateful, blaspheming child. I'm not hearing this la la la la la la la la have you finished yet?"
Once a week Esha comes to the nursing home to visit this ruin of a woman, wrecked by the demands a dancer makes of a human body. She's explored guilt need rage resentment anger pleasure at watching her collapse into long death as the motives that keep her turning up the drive in a phatphat and there is only one she believes. She's the only mother she has.
"If you marry that ... thing ... you will be making a mistake that will destroy your life," Madhuri declares, accelerating down the path between the water channels.
"I don't need your permission," Esha calls after her. A thought spins Madhuri's chair on its axis.
"Oh, really? That would be a first for you. You want my blessing. Well, you won't have it. I refuse to be party to such nonsense."
"I will marry A.J. Rao"
"What did you say?"
"I. Will. Marry. Aeai. A.J. Rao."
Madhuri laughs, a dry, dying, spitting sound, full of bidi-smoke.
"Well, you almost surprise me. Defiance. Good, some spirit at last. That was always your problem, you always needed everyone to approve, everyone to give you permission, everyone to love you. And that's what stopped you being great, do you know that, girl? You could have been a devi, but you always held back for fear that someone might not approve. And so you were only ever ... good."
People are looking now, staff, visitors. Patients. Raised voices, unseemly emotions. This is a house of calm, and slow mechanized dying. Esha bends low to whisper to her mentor.
"I want you to know that I dance for him. Every night. Like Radha for Krishna. I dance just for him, and then he comes and makes love to me. He makes me scream and swear like a hooker. Every night. And look!" He doesn't need to call any more; he is hardwired into the hoek she now hardly ever takes off. Esha looks up: he is there, standing in a sober black suit among the strolling visitors and droning wheelchairs, hands folded. "There he is, see? My lover, my husband."
A long, keening screech, like feedback, like a machine dying. Madhuri's withered hands fly to her face. Her breathing tube curdles with tobacco smoke.
"Monster! Monster! Unnatural child, ah, I should have left you in that basti! Away from me away away away!"
Esha retreats from the old woman's mad fury as hospital staff come hurrying across the scorched lawns, white saris flapping.
* * * *
Every fairytale must have a wedding.
Of course, it was the event of the season. The decrepit old Shalimar Gardens were transformed by an army of malis into a sweet, green, watered maharajah's fantasia with elephants, pavilions, musicians, lancers, dancers, filmi stars, and robot bartenders. Neeta and Priya were uncomfortable bridesmaids in fabulous frocks; a great brahmin was employed to bless the union of woman and artificial intelligence. Every television network sent cameras, human or aeai. Gleaming presenters checked the guests in andchecked the guests out. Chati mag paparazzi came in their crowds, wondering what they could turn their cameras on. There were even politicians from Bharat, despite the souring relationships between the two neighbors now Awadh constructors were scooping up the Ganga sands into revetments. But most there were the people of the encroaching bastis, jostling up against the security staff lining the paths of their garden, asking, she's marrying a what? How does that work? Can they, you know? And what about children? Who is she, actually? Can you see anything? I can't see anything. Is there anything to see?
But the guests and the great were 'hoeked up and applauded the groom in his golden veil on his white stallion, stepping with the delicacy of a dressage horse up the raked paths. And because they were great and guests, there was not one who, despite the free French champagne from the well-known diplomatic sommelier, would ever say, but there's no one there. No one was at all surprised that, after the bride left in a stretch limo, there came a dry, sparse thunder, cloud to cloud, and a hot mean wind that swept the discarded invitations along the paths. As they were filing back to their taxis, tankers were draining the expensively filled qanats.
It made lead in the news.
Kathak stars weds aeai lover!!! Honeymoon in Kashmir!!!