"Destroyer - 019 - Holy Terror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"My lawyer's escrow account. If I should die, my family will be provided for. I'd rather not have to repeat myself, if you please, Mr. Snowy."

"Certainly. Certainly. You're a real Christian."

So now he was looking for Mr. Snowy's Joleen, and if it were a good deed, then certainly he should be able to trust in the Lord. If he had faith, both he and Mr. Snowy's daughter would be back in Jason by month's end. He would return Mr. Snowy's money, and perhaps it would give that acquisitive man a chance for the glory of charity. The church sure could use a fine new air conditioning system.

If he had faith. But it was so hard to have faith in the face of death.

The cow looked around condescendingly, then plodded off along the dusty road, following the cart, which, if the cow had been hamburger the day before, would not now be full on its way to the body dumps.

"To Patna. On to Patna," said Reverend Titus Powell of Jason's Mt. Hope Baptist Church.

"I thought you might go back, you know," said the driver in a clipped British accent. "Most do when they see the carts."

"I thought about it."

"I hope you won't think less of India because of it. Really, almost all of them are untouchables and make no real contribution to the true grandeur that is India, don't you think?"

"I see men who died for want of food."

"Patna is a strange place for an African American," said the driver. "Are you going to see a holy man?"

"Perhaps."

"Patna is the home of holy men, ha-ha-ha," said the driver. "They know the government won't touch them there because of the prophecy. They're as important as the sacred cow there."

"What prophecy?" asked Reverend Mr. Powell.

"Oh, it's an old one. We have more prophecies than there is mud in the Ganges. This one, however, is believed by more than would care to admit, ha-ha-ha."

"You were talking about the prophecy."

"Ah, yes. Of course. Indeed. If a holy man, a true holy man, is harmed in Patna, then there will be the rumbling of the ground, and thunder from the east. Even the British believed it. In their reign there was an earthquake in Patna, and they looked high and low for a holy man. But all the wealthy, powerful holy men were well and in fine spirits. Then they found that the lowliest fakir, who lived at the foot of the mountains, had been robbed of one meal. His last meal. And soon after, the Japanese invaded. Then, again, a holy man had been doused in sweet oils and set aflame because the concubine of a maharajah had said he had a beautiful spirit. And the Mongols invaded after that. Ever since, every enterprising holy order has had at least one home in Patna. The government respects them, yes, indeed."

"Do you know anything about the Divine Bliss Mission, Incorporated?"

"Oh, one of those American ones. Yes, very successful."

"Have you heard of the Blissful Master?"

"Blissful Master?"

Reverend Powell pulled Joleen's letter from his jacket. "His Indian name is Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor."

"The Dor lad, of course. Of course. If you can read and write English well, there is always work with him. And if you canЕ" The driver did not finish, and no matter how Powell pressed him, he would not answer what other sort of person could always find employment with the Dor lad.

Patna, like the rest of the famine areas of India, cleared away its dead in carts. An impatient Rolls-Royce dashed by them, and Powell's driver commented that it was a government minister on his way to Calcutta for an important conference on imperialist American atrocities, such as its failure to refinance a liberation library in Berkeley, California.

"It will be a good speech," said the driver. "I read where he is going to label the library closing for what it isЧa genocidal racist repressive atrocity." The 1947 Packard took a little bump, and Reverend Powell's heart sank. The driver had not missed the little brown-skinned baby. Perhaps the child was better off.