"James Morrow - Towing Jehovah" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

Part
One

Angel
THE IRREDUCIBLE STRANGENESS of the universe was first made
manifest to Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday, when a
despondent angel named Raphael, a being with luminous white wings and
a halo that blinked on and off like a neon quoit, appeared and told him of
the days to come.
That year, 1992, Anthony's Sundays were always the same. At four P.M.
he would descend into the New York subway system, take the A-train
north to 190th Street, hike across the rocky hills of Fort Tryon Park, and,
after melding with the tourists, enter the simulated European monastery
known as the Cloisters and slip behind the altar in the Fuentiduena
Chapel. There he would wait, holding his breath and enduring his
migraine, until the crowd went home.
The lead-off watchman, a rangy Jamaican with a limp, always made his
rounds faithfully, but at midnight a new guard normally came on duty, an
emaciated N.Y.U. student who made no rounds but instead entered the
Unicorn Tapestries Room bearing an aquamarine nylon backpack
jammed with textbooks. After seating himself on the cold stone floor, the
student would switch on his flashlight and begin poring over his Gray's
Anatomy, endlessly rehearsing the parts of the human body. "Gluteus
medius, gluteus medius, gluteus medius," he would chant into the sacred
precincts. "Rectus femoris, rectus femoris, rectus femoris."
That particular midnight, Anthony followed his usual custom. He stole
out from behind the Fuentiduena altar, checked on the student (hard at
work, drilling himself in the fissures and sulci of the left cerebral
hemisphere), then proceeded along an arcade of Romanesque columns
capped by snarling gargoyles and down a flagstone path to the gushing
marble fountain that dominated the open-air Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa
Cloister. Reaching into his freshly washed chinos, Anthony removed a
translucent plastic box and set it on the ground. He climbed out of his
pants, then pulled off his white cotton jersey, immaculate undershirt,
spotless Jockey shorts, polished shoes, and clean socks. At last he stood
naked in the hot night, his skin burnished by an orange moon drifting
across the sky like a huge orbiting pumpkin.
"Sulcus frontalis superior, sulcus frontalis superior, sulcus frontalis
superior," said the student.
Anthony picked up the plastic box, popped the lid, and removed the
egg-shaped cake. Pressing the soap against his chest, he leaned into the
Cuxa fountain. In the golden pool he saw himselfтАФthe broken nose, the
weary eyes sinking into bogs of flesh, the high forehead eroded by sea
spray and baked hard by equatorial sun, the tangled gray beard spreading
across a lantern jaw. He lathered up, letting the cake slide down his arms
and chest like a tiny toboggan, catching it before it hit the flagstones.
"Sulcus praecentralis, sulcus praecentralis, sulcus praecentralis . . ."