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

"That young woman at Mass this morning, the one who ran away...."
"She went crazy because it was twins." Kate slurps down her remaining
rum. The ice fragments clink against each other. "If it'd been just the one,
she probably could've coped."
"Well, yes, of course," says Stephen, gesturing toward Baby Malcolm.
"But suppose one of _your_ newborns..."
"Heaven is forever, Stephen," says Kate, filling her mouth with ice,
"and Hell is just as long." She chews, her molars grinding the ice. Dribbles
of rum-tinted water spill from her lips. "You'd better get to church."
"Farewell, friends," says Xallibos as the theme music swells. He
dandles a Korean three-year-old on his knee. "And keep those kiddies coming!"
The path to the front door takes Stephen through the cramped and fetid
living room -- functionally the nursery. All is quiet, all is well. The
fourteen children, one for every other year of Kate's post-menarche, sleep
soundly. Nine-year-old Roger is quite likely his, product of the time Stephen
and Kate got their cycles in synch; the boy boasts Stephen's curly blond hair
and riveting green eyes. Difficult as it is, Stephen refuses to accord Roger
any special treatment -- no private trips to the frog pond, no second candy
cane at Christmas. A good stepfather didn't indulge in favoritism.
Stephen pulls on his mended galoshes, fingerless gloves, and torn pea
jacket. Ambling out of the apartment, he joins the knot of morose pedestrians
as they shuffle along Winthrop Street. A fog descends, a steady rain falls:
reverberations from the Deluge. Pushed by expectant mothers, dozens of shabby,
black-hooded baby buggies squeak mournfully down the asphalt. The sidewalks
belong to adolescent girls, gang after gang, gossiping among themselves and
stomping on puddles as they show off their pregnancies like Olympic medals.
Besmirched by two decades of wind and drizzle, a limestone Madonna
stands outside the Church of the Immediate Conception. Her expression lies
somewhere between a smile and a smirk. Stephen climbs the steps, enters the
narthex, removes his gloves, and, dipping his fingertips into the nearest
font, decorates the air with the Sign of the Cross.
Every city, Stephen teaches his students at Cardinal Dougherty High
School, boasts its own personality. Extroverted Rio, pessimistic Prague,
paranoid New York. And Boston Isle? What sort of psyche inhabits the Hub and
its surrounding reefs? Schizoid, Stephen tells them. Split. The Boston that
battled slavery and stoked the fires beneath the American melting pot was the
same Boston that massacred the Pequots and sent witchfinders to Salem. But
here, now, which side of the city is emergent? The bright one, Stephen
decides, picturing the hundreds of Heaven-bound souls who each day exit
Boston's innumerable wombs, flowing forth like the bubbles that so recently
streamed from Madelaine Dunfey's lips.
Blessing the Virgin's name, he descends the concrete stairs to the
copulatorium. A hundred votive candles pierce the darkness. The briny scent of
incipient immortality suffuses the air. In the far corner, a CD player
screeches out the Apostolic Succession doing their famous rendition of "Ave
Maria."
The Sacrament of Extramarital Intercourse has always reminded Stephen
of a junior high prom. Girls strung along one side of the room, boys along the
other, gyrating couples in the center. He takes his place in the line of
males, removes his jacket, shirt, trousers, and underclothes, and hangs them