"James Morrow - Auspicious Eggs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

Wrestling the resin baptismal font from the trunk of his car, Connie
ponders the vessel's resemblance to a birdbath -- a place, he muses, for pious
sparrows to accomplish their avian ablutions. As he sets the vessel on his
shoulder and starts away, its edges digging into his flesh, a different
metaphor suggests itself. But if the font is Connie's Cross, and Constitution
Road his Via Dolorosa, where does that leave his upcoming mission to Angela
Dunfey? Is he about to perform some mysterious act of vicarious atonement?
"Morning, Father."
He slips the font from his shoulder, standing it upright beside a fire
hydrant. His parishioner Valerie Gallogher weaves amid the mob, dressed in a
threadbare woolen parka.
"Far to go?" she asks brightly.
"End of the block."
"Want help?"
"I need the exercise."
Valerie extends her arm and they shake hands, mitten clinging to
mitten. "Made any special plans for Saint Patrick's Day?"
"I'm going to bake shamrock cookies."
"Green?"
"Can't afford food coloring."
"I think I've got some green -- you're welcome to it. Who's at the end
of the block?"
"Angela Dunfey."
A shadow flits across Valerie's face. "And her daughter?"
"Yes," moans Connie. His throat constricts. "Her daughter."
Valerie lays a sympathetic hand on his arm. "If I don't have green, we
can probably fake it."
"Oh, Valerie, Valerie -- I wish I'd never taken Holy Orders."
"We'll mix yellow with orange. I'm sorry, Father."
"I wish this cup would pass."
"I mean yellow with blue."
Connie loops his arms around the font, embracing it as he might a
frightened child. "Stay with me."
Together they walk through the serrated March air and, reaching the
Warren Avenue intersection, enter the tumble-down pile of bricks labeled No.
47. The foyer is as dim as a crypt. Switching on his penlight, Connie holds it
aloft until he discerns the label _A. Dunfey_ glued to a dented mailbox. He
begins the climb to apartment 8-C, his parishioner right behind. On the third
landing, Connie stops to catch his breath. On the sixth, he sets down the
font. Valerie wipes his brow with her parka sleeve. She takes up the font, and
the two of them resume their ascent.
Angela Dunfey's door is wormy, cracked, and hanging by one hinge. The
mere act of knocking swings it open.
They find themselves in the kitchen -- a small musty space that would
have felt claustrophobic were it not so sparely furnished. A saucepan hangs
over the stove; a frying pan sits atop the icebox; the floor is a mottle of
splinters, tar paper, and leprous shards of linoleum. Valerie places the font
next to the sink. The basin in which Angela Dunfey washes her dishes, Connie
notes, is actually smaller than the one in which the Church of the Immediate
Conception immortalizes infertiles.