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

He tiptoes into the bedroom. His parishioner sleeps soundly, her
terrycloth bathrobe parted down the middle to accommodate her groggy, nursing
infant; milk trickles from her breasts, streaking her belly with white
rivulets. He must move now, quickly and deliberately, so there'll be no
struggle, no melodramatic replay of 1 Kings 3:27, the desperate whore trying
to tear her baby away from Solomon's swordsman.
Inhaling slowly, Connie leans toward the mattress and, with the
dexterity of a weasel extracting the innards from an eggshell, slides the
barren baby free and carries her into the kitchen.
Beside the icebox Valerie sits glowering on a wobbly three-legged
stool.
"Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all humans enter the world in a state of
depravity," Connie whispers, casting a wary eye on Valerie, "and forasmuch as
they cannot know the grace of our Lord except they be born anew of water" --
he lays the infant on the floor near Valerie's feet -- "I beseech you to call
upon God the Father that, through this baptism, Merribell Dunfey may gain the
divine kingdom."
"Don't beseech _me,_" snaps Valerie.
Connie fills the saucepan, dumps the water into the font, and returns
to the sink for another load -- not exactly holy water, he muses, not remotely
chrism, but presumably not typhoidal either, the best the underbudgeted Boston
Water Authority has to offer. He deposits the load, then fetches another.
A wide, milky yawn twists Merribell's face, but she does not cry out.
At last the vessel is ready. "Bless these waters, O Lord, that they
might grant this sinner the gift of life everlasting."
Dropping to his knees, Connie begins removing the infant's diaper. The
first pin comes out easily. As he pops the second, the tip catches the ball of
his thumb. Crown of thorns, he decides, feeling the sting, seeing the blood.
He bears the naked infant to the font. Wetting his punctured thumb, he
touches Merribell's brow and draws the sacred plus sign with a mixture of
blood and water. "We receive this sinner unto the mystical body of Christ, and
do mark her with the Sign of the Cross."
He begins the immersion. Skullcap. Ears. Cheeks. Mouth. Eyes. O Lord,
what a monstrous trust, this power to underwrite a person's soul. "Merribell
Dunfey, I baptize you in the name of the Father..."
****
Now comes the nausea, excavating Stephen's alimentary canal as he
kneels before the porcelain toilet bowl. His guilt pours forth in a searing
flood -- acidic strands of cabbage, caustic lumps of potato, glutinous strings
of bile. Yet these pains are nothing, he knows, compared with what he'll
experience on passing from this world to the next.
Drained, he stumbles toward the bedroom. Somehow Kate has bundled the
older children off to school before collapsing on the floor alongside the
baby. She shivers with remorse. Shrieks and giggles pour from the nursery: the
preschoolers engaged in a raucous game of Blind Man's Bluff.
"Flaying machines," she mutters. Her tone is beaten, bloodless. She
lights a cigarette. "Peeling the damned like..."
Will more rum help, Stephen wonders, or merely make them sicker? He
extends his arm. Passing over the nightstand, his fingers touch a box of
aspirin, brush the preserved _Epigaea repens,_ and curl around the neck of the