"Sheri S. Tepper - Beauty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

Grandfather's first wife had no sons and two daughters. They are eldest of my aunts, Aunt Sister
Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Sister Mary George, who are nuns at the Monastery of St. Perpituus in
Alderbury. The sisters do not visit us often. I believe they took holy orders simply to escape being called
Tansy and Comfrey, though it is possible they were summoned by God. Sister Mary Elizabeth was rather
infirm when I last saw her, though it is likely Sister Mary George will go on forever, getting a little leaner
and drier with every passing year.
Grandfather's second wife had no sons and five daughters. Aunt Lavvy, at fifty-eight, is the youngest
of them. Aunt Love is sixty. Aunt Terror is sixty-two. Aunts Bas and Marj are twins of sixty-five. I am
almost sixteen, and the difference in our ages (as well as their reticence about things I want to know)
seems an impenetrable barrier between us. They often fail to perceive the things I perceive, and this
makes communication between us exceedingly difficult. I cannot say that there is more than a superficial
affection on either side of our relationship. Father Raymond talks about filial duty, but it seems to me
there should be something more in a family than that.
Grandfather's third wife, my father's mother, died soon after Grandfather vanished, of grief it is said,
though in my opinion she died of simple exasperation. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be
wife to a man and mother to a son who are always off on pilgrimage, as well as being stepmother to
seven daughters, all of them considerably older than I. I would die of it, I think, just as Grandmama did.
She was only fifteen when she married Grandfather, after all, and about thirty-five when he was killed.
What had she to look forward to but decades more of the herbal sisters, all of them dedicated to
eccentric celibacy? Buried among all those stepdaughters, Grandmama would have been unlikely to find
a second husband, especially since there was nothing left of either her dowry or her dower. Grandpapa
used everything rebuilding Westfaire: all the dowries of his three wives, all his own money, and all the
considerable fortune he had somehow obtained in the Holy Land, about which people say very little,
making me believe Grandfather may not have been quite ethical in amassing the treasure. Grandmama
was left with nothing to attract suitors, and death might have seemed a blessed release. At least, so I
think.
I spend a lot of time thinking about people. If one leaves out religion, there is very little to think about
except people. People and books are just about all there is. I don't have anyone much to talk with and
only Grumpkin to play with, so ... so I spend a lot of time thinking. It comes out in words. I can't help
that.
I do read everything I can get hold of. Books and my own writings are a comfort to me in the late
hours of the night when all in Westfaire are asleep but me, and I am awake for no reason that I know of
except that my legs hurt (Aunt Terror says it is growing pains) or the owls are making a noise in the trees,
or my head is full of things I have do not have enough words for yetтАФthere must be such things!тАФor my
chest burns as it sometimes does, as though I had swallowed a little star. It burns and burns, just behind
my collar bone, as though it were trying to hollow me out to make a place for itself. I do not know what it
is, but it has always been there.
So, I sit up in my bed with the bed curtains drawn tight, the candle on one side and Grumpkin snoring
into his paws on the other, and make lists of new words I have heard that day or write pages to myself
about all the things I do not understand. Grumpkin lies on his back with his tummy up, his front feet
folded over his chest or nose and an anticipatory smile on his face, as though he is dreaming of mice. I
wish I could sleep like cats do.


2

DAY OF ST. PATERNUS, BISHOP, CONVERTER OF DRUIDS, APRIL, YEAR OF OUR
LORD 1347
When I was quite young, about eight or nine, I purloined some boy's clothes from a line near the
woodsman's hut, leaving a silver coin in their place. I had gone out of my way to steal the coin, too,