"Laura Resnick - Confessional" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

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Confessional
by Laura Resnick
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Copyright (c)1994 Laura Resnick
First published in Deals With the Devil, DAW, October 1994

Fictionwise Contemporary
Fantasy


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I do not recall the moment in which I knew I would sell my soul to have
him, nor even the first time his smile brought a flush of mingled shame and
desire to my skin. But I will never forget the very first time I heard the
voice, the one which answered my prayers and damned me for all eternity.
The soldiers came with the summer that year, chasing out the Nazis and
the Fascists as the hot winds from Africa blew fine red dust from the Sahara
across the rocky hills and ancient towns of Sicily. After nearly eight years
of sleeping alone, I had thought myself accustomed to barren nights, joyless
mornings, the cold, empty space beside me, and the undisturbed purity of my
virgin white sheets. My husband had disappeared into the belly of the war in
Ethiopia in 1935, and I had been unable to learn his fate ever since. I prayed
for him three times daily, left weekly offerings on the shrine of Santa
Rosalia in the Via dei Miracoli, and begged the Blessed Madonna to care for
him tenderly if he were already in heaven. To Saint Monica, patron saint of
wives, I prayed that he still lived, that I was not yet a widow, that some
word would come soon. Monica, too, had lost a husband in North Africa, and I
had believed for so long that she would show me mercy; but now I began to
wonder bitterly if I should instead be praying to Saint Paula, she who watches
over widows.
All my piety, of course, was as nothing compared to the fervent
devotion shown by my husband's mother. Widowed long ago, she now slept in a
narrow bed in a small room above me, the room which had been my husband's in
childhood. Of her four children, only my husband and one sister -- now living
in America with her husband and children -- had survived infancy, and now it
fell to me to be the old woman's daughter. But the value of a daughter is
negligible compared to the worth of a son, and the old woman's life was now
spent praying for my husband and seeking comfort from the Jesuits at Casa
Professa, who repeated to her Saint Augustine's assurance that it was not