"Morrow,_James_-_Auspicious_Eggs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

"Saint Patrick's Day is less than a week away."
"Since when is that a time for gifts?"
Instead of answering, she strolls to her side of the room, rummages through her tangled garments, and returns holding a pressed flower sealed in plastic.
"Think of it as a ticket," she whispers, lifting Stephen's shirt from its peg and slipping the blossom inside the pocket.
"To where?"
Valerie holds an erect index finger to her lips. "We'll know when we get there."
Stephen gulps audibly. Sweat collects beneath his sperm counter. Only fools consider fleeing Boston Isle. Only lunatics risk the retributions meted out by the Corps. Displayed every Sunday night on _Keep Those Kiddies Coming,_ the classic images -- men submitting to sperm siphons, women locked in the rapacious embrace of artificial inseminators -- haunt every parishioner's imagination, instilling the same levels of dread as Spinelli's sculpture of the archangel Chamuel strangling David Hume. There were rumors, of course, unconfirmable accounts of parishioners who've outmaneuvered the patrol boats and escaped to Quebec Cay, Seattle Reef, or the Texas Archipelago. But to credit such tales was itself a kind of sin, jeopardizing your slot in Paradise as surely as if you'd denied the unconceived their rights.
"Tell me something, Stephen." Valerie straps herself into her bra. "You're a history teacher. Did Saint Patrick really drive the snakes out of Ireland, or is that just a legend?"
"I'm sure it never happened literally," says Stephen. "I suppose it could be true in some mythic sense."
"It's about penises, isn't it?" says Valerie, dissolving into the darkness. "It's about how our saints have always been hostile to cocks."
* * * *
Although Harbor Authority Tower was designed to house the merchant-shipping aristocracy on whose ambitions the decrepit Boston economy still depended, the building's form, Connie now realizes, perfectly fits its new, supplemental function: sheltering the offices, courts, and archives of the archdiocese. As he lifts his gaze along the soaring facade, Connie thinks of sacred shapes -- of steeples and vaulted windows, of Sinai and Zion, of Jacob's Ladder and hands pressed together in prayer. Perhaps it's all as God wants, he muses, flashing his ecclesiastical pass to the guard. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with commerce and grace being transacted within the same walls.
Connie has seen Archbishop Xallibos in person only once before, five years earlier, when the stately prelate appeared as an "honorary Irishman" in Charlestown Parish's annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade. Standing on the sidewalk, Connie observed Xallibos gliding down Lynde Street atop a huge motorized shamrock. The archbishop looked impressive then, and he looks impressive now -- six foot four at least, Connie calculates, and not an ounce under three hundred pounds. His eyes are as red as a lab rat's.
"Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan," the priest begins, following the custom whereby a visitor to an archbishop's chambers initiates the interview by naming himself.
"Come forward, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan."
Connie starts into the office, boots clacking on the polished bronze floor. Xallibos steps from behind his desk, a glistery cube of black marble.
"Charlestown Parish holds a special place in my affections," says the archbishop. "What brings you to this part of town?"
Connie fidgets, shifting first left, then right, until his face lies mirrored in the hubcap-size Saint Cyril medallion adorning Xallibos's chest. "My soul is in torment, Your Grace."
"'Torment.' Weighty word."
"I can find no other. Last Tuesday I laid a two-week-old infant to rest."
"Terminal baptism?"
Connie ponders his reflection. It is wrinkled and deflated, like a helium balloon purchased at a carnival long gone. "My eighth."
"I know how you feel. After I dispatched my first infertile -- no left testicle, right one shriveled beyond repair -- I got no sleep for a week." Eyes glowing like molten rubies, Xallibos stares directly at Connie. "Where did you attend seminary?"
"Isle of Denver."
"And on the Isle of Denver did they teach you that there are in fact two Churches, one invisible and eternal, the other -- "
"Temporal and finite."
"Then they also taught you that the latter Church is empowered to revise its sacraments according to the imperatives of the age." The archbishop's stare grows brighter, hotter, purer. "Do you doubt that present privations compel us to arrange early immortality for those who cannot secure the rights of the unconceived?"
"The problem is that the infant I immortalized has a twin." Connie swallows nervously. "Her mother stole her away before I could perform the second baptism."
"Stole her away?"
"She fled in the middle of the sacrament."
"And the second child is likewise arid?"
"Left ovary, two hundred ninety primordials. Right ovary, three hundred ten."
"Lord..." A high whistle issues from the archbishop, like water vapor escaping a tea kettle. "Does she intend to quit the island?"
"I certainly hope not, Your Grace," says the priest, wincing at the thought. "She probably has no immediate plans beyond protecting her baby and trying to -- "
Connie cuts himself off, intimidated by the sudden arrival of a roly-poly man in a white hooded robe.
"Friar James Wolfe, M.D.," says the monk.
"Come forward, Friar Doctor James Wolfe," says Xallibos.
"It would be well if you validated this posthaste." James Wolfe draws a parchment sheet from his robe and lays it on the archbishop's desk. Connie steals a glance at the report, hoping to learn the baby's fertility quotient, but the relevant statistics are too faint. "The priest in question, he's celebrating Mass in" -- sliding a loose sleeve upward, James Wolfe consults his wristwatch -- "less than an hour. He's all the way over in Brookline."
Striding back to his desk, the archbishop yanks a silver fountain pen from its holder and decorates the parchment with his famous spidery signature.
"_Dominus vobiscum,_ Friar Doctor Wolfe," he says, handing over the document.
As Wolfe rushes out of the office, Xallibos steps so close to Connie that his nostrils fill with the archbishop's lemon-scented aftershave lotion.
"That man never has any fun," says Xallibos, pointing toward the vanishing friar. "What fun do you have, Father Monaghan?"
"Fun, Your Grace?"
"Do you eat ice cream? Follow the fortunes of the Celtics?" He pronounces "Celtics" with the hard _C_ mandated by the Third Lateran Council.
Connie inhales a hearty quantity of citrus fumes. "I bake."
"Bake? Bake what? Bread?"
"Cookies, Your Grace. Brownies, cheesecake, pies. For the Feast of the Nativity, I make gingerbread magi."
"Wonderful. I like my priests to have fun. Listen, no matter what, the rite must be performed. If Angela Dunfey won't come to you, then you must go to her."
"She'll simply run away again."
"Perhaps so, perhaps not. I have great faith in you, Father Cornelius Dennis Monaghan."