"Ray Vukcevich - Rejoice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vukcevich Ray)

REJOICE
By Ray Vukcevich

****

The board members of The Modern Library recently voted Ulysses the most
important English-language novel of the Twentieth Century. This new story from
Ray Vukcevich makes me wonder what would have won a similar poll taken in 1898?
Would Wilkie Collins have won, or perhaps one of Charles DickensтАЩs works? Or
would Mary Shelley have copped top honors? Would Victor have wanted the
spoils?

THE AIR IS SO COLD AND clear and the sea so calm and there, just there, if you
shade the arctic sunlight from your eyes, you can see a flat-topped chip off an old
iceberg floating in an otherwise empty expanse of blue water, and on the ice a
moocow, a huge dog, and two naked white men engaged in Greco-Roman wrestling.
Off to one side, leaning, a red-lettered sign on a stick in the ice like maybe someone
got tired of picketing, says Cease Co.

Mister make the passengers take turns, shoo them from the starboard rails,
scatter them like chickens squacking squabbling holding onto their flowered hats and
fedoras, waving handkerchiefs, stretching up their necks to look; get them back, I tell
you, otherwise theyтАЩll tip us, and while youтАЩre at it, sound the fog horn, blow the
whistle, ring the bells, and come about for a rescue.

Before we could pull them from the ice, one of the combatants leaped onto
the cow and rode it into the icy ocean. The other, along with what turned out to be
an Irish Wolfhound with unusual front limbs, we were able to get aboard. The
rescued man, a Genevese of some education who had most recently traveled to
these northern latitudes through the Americas, was soon persuaded to tell his
ghoulish tale of reckless creation, unbounded pride, unbearable despair, frustrated
revenge, and unfinished business.

The dog he introduced as his faithful assistant and companion, Mucho
Poocho. All in good time, he said, when we wondered about the dogтАЩs long black
evening gloves.

Everything depends on the past, I told her, he said, and we said how true how
true and smiled encouragement and made sympathetic noises and put out tentative
fingers to touch him lightly on the arm, the head, the back of the ear, the knee, the
anus, the navel, the left nostril, go on and on, youтАЩre safe now, trust us, be calm,
talk.

Blessed be the reanimated, I said, he said, and she said what is this sweet
cream of consciousness; this woman, ward of my father and my bride to be, dear
Elizabeth who would have to get to know her way around the laboratory and quickly
too if we were to have any chance of happiness, especially now on the very eve of
my great achievement.

I wanted to show her everything. Witness this I said, yes, give me your hand,