"Gene Wolfe - A Fish Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

machine. Aunt Elspeth was dying, and if I wanted to see her one last time, I had better get over there. I
didn't want to. I had disliked her all my life, and I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. But I thought of
her alone in one of those high, narrow beds, dying and knowing that nobody cared that she was dying.
So I went."
"It was the most miserable four or five hours I've ever spent. She looked like hell, and even though
they had her in an oxygen tent, she couldn't breathe. She kept taking these great gasping breaths ...."
Rab demonstrated.
"And in between breaths she talked. She talked about my grandparents' house, which I've never
seen, and how it had been there when she and Mom were kids. Not just about them and my
grandparents, but the neighbors, the dogs and cats they'd owned, and everything. The furniture. The
linoleum on the kitchen floor. Everything. After a while I realized that she was still talking even when she
wasn't talking. Do you know what I mean? She would be taking one of those horrible breaths, and I'd
still hear her voice inside my head.
"It was getting pretty late, and I thought I'd better go. But there was something I wanted to say to
her first--I told you how much I hate ghosts and all that kind of crazy talk. Anyway, I cut her off while
she was telling about how she and my mother used to help my grandmother can tomatoes, and I said,
'Aunt Elspeth, I'd like you to promise me something. I want your word of honor on it. Will you do that?
Will you give it to me?'
"She didn't say anything, but she nodded.
"'I want you to promise me that when you're gone, if there's any possible way for you to speak to
me, or send me a message--make any kind of signal of any sort--to say that there's another life after the
life we know here, another existence on the other side of the grave, you won't do it. Will you give me
your solemn promise about that, Aunt Elspeth? Please? And mean it?'
"She didn't say anything more after that, just lay there and glared at me. I wanted to go, and I tried
to a couple of times, but I couldn't make myself do it. There she was, about the only person still left from
my childhood, and she was dying--would probably die that night, they had said. So I sat there instead,
and I wanted to take her hand but I couldn't because of the oxygen tent, and she kept on glaring at me
and making those horrible sounds trying to breathe, and neither of us said anything. It must have been for
about an hour.
"I guess I shut my eyes--I know I didn't want to look at her--and leaned back in the chair. And
then, all of a sudden, the noises stopped. I leaned forward and turned on the little light at the head of her
bed, and she wasn't trying to breathe anymore. She was still glaring as if she wanted to run me through a
grinder, but when I got up and took a step toward the door, her eyes didn't move. So I knew she was
dead, and I ought to call the nurse or something, but I didn't."
Rab fell silent at that point, and Bruce said, "What did you do?"
"I just went out. Out of room, and out of the Intensive Care Wing, and out into the corridor. It was a
pretty long corridor, and I had to walk, oh, maybe a hundred steps before I came to the waiting room. It
was late by then, and there was only one person in it, and that one person was me."
Rab gave us a chance to say something, but neither of us did.
"I don't mean I went in. I didn't. I just stood out in the corridor and looked inside. And there I was,
sitting in there. I had on a black turtleneck and a whiskey-colored suede sports jacket. I remember that,
because I've never owned those clothes. It was my face behind my glasses, though. It was even my
haircut. He--I--was reading Reader's Digest and didn't see me. But I saw myself, and I must have stood
there for five minutes just staring at him.
 "Then a nurse pushed past me and said, 'You can go in and see your aunt now, Mister Sammon.' He
put down his magazine and stood up and said, 'Call me Rab.' And she smiled and said, 'You can see
your Aunt Elspeth now, Rab.'
"I stepped out of the way and the nurse and I went past me and down the corridor toward the
Intensive Care Wing. I watched till they had gone through the big double doors and I couldn't see them
anymore. Then I went into the waiting room and picked up that copy of the Reader's Digest that I had