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

illegible hand of Archbishop Xallibos. Below lie the bold loops and assured
serifs of a Friar James Wolfe, M.D., doubtless the man who drew the blood.
_Madelaine Dunfey,_ Connie reads. _Left ovary: 315 primordial
follicles. Right ovary: 340 primordial follicles._ A spasm of despair passes
through the priest. The egg-cell count for each organ should be 180,000 at
least. It's a verdict of infertility, no possible appeal, no imaginable
reprieve.
With an efficiency bordering on effrontery, Henry Shaw offers Connie a
second parchment sheet.
_Merribell Dunfey. Left ovary: 290 primordial follicles. Right ovary:
310 primordial follicles._ The priest is not surprised. What sense would there
be in God's withholding the power of procreation from one twin but not the
other? Connie now needs only to receive these barren sisters, apply the sacred
rites, and furtively pray that the Fourth Lateran Council was indeed guided by
the Holy Spirit when it undertook to bring the baptismal process into the age
of testable destinies and ovarian surveillance.
He holds out his hands, withered palms up, a posture he maintains as
Angela surrenders Madelaine, reaches under the baby's christening gown, and
unhooks both diaper pins. The mossy odor of fresh urine wafts into the Church
of the Immediate Conception. Sighing profoundly, Angela hands the sopping
diaper to her cousin.
"Bless these waters, O Lord," says Connie, spotting his ancient face in
the baptismal fluid, "that they might grant these sinners the gift of life
everlasting." Turning from the font, he presents Madelaine to his ragged
flock, over three hundred natural-born Catholics -- sixth-generation Irish,
mostly, plus a smattering of Portuguese, Italians, and Croats -- interspersed
with two dozen recent converts of Korean and Vietnamese extraction: a
congregation bound together, he'll admit, less by religious conviction than by
shared destitution. "Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all humans enter the world
in a state of depravity, and forasmuch as they cannot know the grace of our
Lord except they be born anew of water, I beseech you to call upon God the
Father that, through these baptisms, Madelaine and Merribell Dunfey may gain
the divine kingdom." Connie faces his trembling parishioner. "Angela Dunfey,
do you believe, by God's word, that children who are baptized, dying before
they commit any actual evil, will be saved?"
Her "Yes" is begrudging and clipped.
Like a scrivener replenishing his pen at an inkwell, Connie dips his
thumb into the font. "Angela Dunfey, name this child of yours."
"M-M-Madelaine Eileen Dunfey."
"We welcome this sinner, Madelaine Eileen Dunfey, into the mystical
body of Christ" -- with his wet thumb Connie traces a plus sign on the
infant's forehead -- "and do mark her with the Sign of the Cross."
Unraveling Madelaine from her christening gown, Connie fixes on the
waters. They are preternaturally still -- as calm and quiet as the Sea of
Galilee after the Savior rebuked the winds. For many years the priest wondered
why Christ hadn't returned on the eve of the Greenhouse Deluge, dispersing the
hydrocarbon vapors with a wave of his hand, ending global warming with a
Heavenward wink, but recently Connie has come to feel that divine intervention
entails protocols past human ken.
He contemplates his reflected countenance. Nothing about it -- not the