|
|
||
~d(-_-)b~ Amazing grace | ||
русская версия
All ye, who cannot love, shall go to Hell.
Francis of Assisi
An invisible cleaner is slapping in the floor with her mob, somewhere far away a phone is ringing. Smarmy, cautious, as if it feared of being shushed and dismissed, it started drizzle but now it is in a hurry to rain, to flood. The rain always hastens: it's eager to make the whole world wet with tears but you can't cry if your eyes are sealed with surgical tape.
There are some other sounds as well. Now I'm hearing the rattling of a medical cart that nicely sterilized and starched madonna is rolling down the hall. "Good morning, number 14", entering the ward, she says so joyfully as though 28 minutes since she came to chance my diaper suddenly turned into centuries. I keep silence: I have a special device into my mouth for I couldn't close my teeth and a pulpit lead catheter in me. The nurse bends over the bed and I feel minty smell of her chewing gum and a little fishy scent from the bottom which together seem to turn me on. "Enjoy my tentacles, sister", think I, gently petting her buttocks. "Don't", she thinks in response. "No foolery for today, mister". Once she has caressed me before someone saw, and promised to caress again. And I trust her notwithstanding that I didn't trust anyone in my life.
If you look at the world through closed eyelids, every girl looks like a princess of dream. Red hair, blue eyes, transparent, rosy, shortly trimmed nails - this is how I imagine her. In real, she is a black: they hire medical staff too because the clean souls mustn't look at a human's poo. The princess knows I won't hurt her while I can: one day I broke a woman's arm to make her talk. My own limbs are locked up in the power brackets and my mind, soaked in drizzle, is tightly fixed and wrapped in a fogy compress of thorazine. The nurse sets the needle in the catheter and puts her compassionate hand on my forehead. "You'll be fine", she thinks and I trust her again, although I know that if they feel sorry for you, it's going to really hurt soon.
***
"Come. Here's a job for you", chubby Kate told me by phone. Kate is my agent and the secret admire. Actually, I love the slim ones but if I even tried to hit on her, she would push me out with outrage: Kate is a Klaar. She loves God and therefore sex seems obscene to her.
I already did the job for Klaars for 2 years: their elders are happy to hire foreigners for the most wet works. St. Andreas, the founder of the community, whose soapstone monument stands in front of the City Hall, claimed that he had found Christ when taking a shower. This is why they wash up 3 time a day and wear bracelets with the inscription "Good man" (you can get one at the register in a supermarket; all you have to do is donate a couple of coins to another one public bathhouse). The good men - this is how they call themselves. They really are: a true Klaar will never raise his voice, never deceive his neighbor or kick the neighbor's dog with his perfectly polished boot. He will contract a person like me for doing this.
Fra Beato Pozzi. "Beato" means blissful. A football player and a widower in his past and a wandering Franciscan monk in the present. The Klaars call him saint but he did look like a holy man: the old boy loved to booze and abused the makeup; his suite reflected the latest fashions and I shivered every time he smiled and his porcelain teeth jumped out at me from behind his thin gloss lips. It happened rarely, though. For the most part, he yelled like a trooper and swore like a maid because I didn't understand a word of his instructions. Instruction? It would be better to call them sermons he's been pestering me from morning till night. He was ranting about God and Freud, about the desires which rise like floaters to the surface from the depth of unconsciousness; he talked about the grace he was going to hand me. That's what my job was. The community submitted to the Franciscan the list of the worthiest citizens but he, for some reasons, chose me.
"The Chinese asters and the God's grace can be replanted", he said. "But not every soil is suitable for this. Love and belief, as hard as a pastor's prostate, that's what a contender needs".
The unwitting contender was shrugging in his mind. Yes, I believed in my Beretta but as for love... I always thought that love is a strong word but when the monk ordered me to concentrate on my "favorite thing", as he called it, my first thought was of her.
I had a girl at that time. Short, the round face, the eyes as blue as the Holy Virgin's cloak. Perhaps, I could find her attractive, if it wasn't for a ring in her nostril and disheveled hair. The ribs under see-though skin, a sunken belly, an AA size chest which became even smaller when its owner was lying on her back with hands clasped behind her head - all of this alone was not a big deal, but in combination it was toо... Well, it was, in a word, too much, so that I tried to break free from the unexpected charms by means of artificial rudeness. She wasn't confused. It was hard to confuse her at all. Only grey shades are relevant where people say in a low voice but she wore a leopardskin tights, dyed her hair red and behaved defiantly: smoking, talking junk, sticking to me in public places. She didn't look confused when a couple of morons from the vice squad risked approaching within a distance of a blow to the jaw. Love was for her like clean underwear she used to put on before a walk together in Lamourmouria, as she called it. I called it the country. Blue shadows, quick stroke of a roach on the surface of the water, stained with grass white pants lost in ferns by the brook - that's what she was going to present as a pass to enter the Paradise.
"One day an outlaw came to St. Francis and asked for setting him on the road of truth", Pozzi was regaling me with one of his stories while we, pleasing over the lounge chairs in front of each other, waited for our afternoon brandy. "What are you good at?", the saint asked. "Nothing", the highwayman answered. "There's no such things", Francis shook his head. "Everybody can do something special". "I can kill and loot only", having thought a little, the outlaw said. "Well", blessing him, St. Francis smiled. "Then do your best. By the way, here he is, standing right behind you back".
I turned around (nobody, only the barman behind the rack was staring at us) and when I turned back, the disgusting old man, taking advantage of the moment, bent over the tea table between us and kissed my lips. Having grumbled, I was just going to hit him hard enough, when he suddenly dropped on the floor and went into seizure, knocking over the furniture. When a quarter of an hour later the ambulance came, fra beato Pozzi was already dead within 10 minutes.
The next day, I had a visit from the notary, the chief of police, a couple of professors from the local college, the mayor and the mayor's wife. The justice of the peace was last to show up: quietly but insistently he demanded the same thing as the others did. I turned them away: you can't give up what you have not. I really felt nothing extraordinary: no levitation, no walk on water, no halo over the head. They didn't believe me. They assigned voyeurs to me and searched my apartment in secret. Finally, they kidnapped my girlfriend and suddenly I discovered that she meant to me more than she had to mean.
Everyone knows that in case of difficulties the best solution is to make a surprise visit to your agent who is sure to submit you an information of interest, in particular, if you hit her hard in the gut.
"I don't know", chubby Kate said when she could breathe again.
"I don't know!" she squealed when I promised her I would break her arm.
Loyalty. Such a rare thing to find these days. Well, let me demonstrate the seriousness of my intent to you and ask my question for the third time. Perhaps, she didn't know in real.
"Who's to know?"
"Fletcher".
"Where to find him?"
"The Virgin Birth Street, 8".
In a far Russian city where I was born, the sun doesn't often come from behind the clouds. Here it shines 360 days a year. The wind was soft but pushy. The tin signboards swung (a pig's head, two crossed fishes, big black scissors). A policeman, with hands on his cap, crossed aslant the street. A red eyes ice-cream lady pointed her chin over the house I wanted. Its windows were dark because the Klaars have nothing to hide from one another and there was only one with the curtains drawn and lamp lit.
Having stepped on the third floor, I pressed my ear against the door behind which a tv-set was unclearly droning on. I had no plan, I didn't need it, in fact. Having pulled the gun, I was going to break down the door when something irreparable happened. It was as if my cranium suddenly increased and the things outside of me have turned out to be inside my head - a square room, someone's thoughts, images, emotions which have been mixed up with each other like voices in an airport; the tentacles of my hatred, akin to writhing black smoky snakes, that were spreading to the rainbow silhouettes of 4 men. So, this was the Pozzi's grace.
I will need two months to learn how to control it but all I could do at the moment was see. It didn't take long. Within a minute the space turned back. I pushed the door with my shaking hand and it was open. The dead people and things were lying and staying in the positions I made them lye and stay a while ago and only the blood-spattered ficus in the corner kept growing like nothing's wrong. Having visited a toilet, I was going to leave, when the phone rang.
"We saw what happened", as blind as wall voice said.
"Where is the girl?" shouted I.
They chuckled.
"You're not too much of an observation".
I looked around. The headless man was laying by the window, the other two, I mean what's left of them, were all over the room. But where is the fourth one?
I have found my poor girl on the bottom of the linen cupboard where she was laying, curled up, free from dents and damage, but quite dead. The damn grace didn't leave any chance for her. Did I say she meant much to me? I was mistaken. She meant all.
Kind of a blur, I walked out and started down the stairs. A vaguely familiar man stepped aside for me to pass by, and only two steps lower I remembered his name. Fletcher! I didn't have time to turn around: I felt like a pinch in me neck and fainted.
...pain, pain, pain. I mean, Pain. Or even Mr. Pain, a masked executioner, driving to the limit the mechanism of agony... As time goes by, even pain becomes a habit so I was happy when they came up with a new one: yesterday they were tearing me apart, today they are turning me inside-out. Oh, yes, I was glad for this newness: it was pain that helped me to become myself; it was pain that made my grace really completed. A duelist strengthens his hand, walking with a poker, I trained my hatred when thinking at how they will die.
Having surfaced from the deep of pain, my mind immediately rushed to where, at a safe distance, behind bulletproof glass, the human-like mannequins were sitting, standing and going from place to place, but the mannequins who could sniffle and suffer. The black madonna told me they sniffle, watching my body squirm in agony. She said they suffer, not knowing how to inflict more suffering on me. A lobotomy? An electroshock? They suffered for fear of torturing me to death. May be, the psycho-techniques? But the hired shrinks didn't compete for a longtime in inflicting pain on me: two of them lost their heads when they approached too close to me and another one... I think, you don't need the details.
They took my love, my freedom and my name (I hate number 14: it's got some Klaars in it); now they drug me to break my will or inject me with algogen to take by means of pain my hatred away. Good people. They all look alike but everyone looks in his own way: thus the steps, leading to a torture chamber, creak differently.
As sweet as a sugared jam notary and his mute and therefore ideal, so to speak, top secret secretary; a well-fed chief of police with a rosy udder instead of his face; two wise men, portly lovebirds, Dr. Wye and Dr. Ex; a pudgy mayor with his pudgy wife, beloved by all who know her Mrs. Jadore and a quite Mr. Calm, the justice of the peace, with innocent look and blond sideburns, the most bloodthirsty of them. Alas, they are unreachable for my tentacles but I already can distinguish one from the other, I know how, pulling on one of the threads, to disentangle their thoughts, feelings and wishes which were all the same. All of them were jealous of each other to me, everyone wanted me to hand the grace to him. The shiny outside and hollow inside like fake brilliants, they were going to fill their hollowness with this grace, to prove their purity when God will step on the Earth to separate the clean from the unclean. Now I understood why Pozzi had chosen me: he just didn't find anybody warmer in this hot city of deep-frozen souls.
***
"Surprise!" the nurse says joyfully, rolling the cart in.
A pleasant surprise, indeed. She gives me a shot of painkillers and pulls down my pants.
"Let's make it quick until they come back from lunch".
Love reduces all sets to unit. The Russian girl I've shared my first cigarette with; the English woman, cutting gladioli in the garden on the seashore; the nameless snow whites, asians, mulattas; the negress, smelling of mint and fish, - all of them were here, all of them were you. You are beautiful, my dear. How brightly the ring in your nostril is shining, how happily your blue eyes are glowing! How tender your mouth, how your hands skilled are! My pleasure was ready to boil over, when I suddenly understood what I had to do.
I love, God, I love! I believe, God, I believe! I believe that all of them will die. I believe that they must believe, they cannot but believe, when you, my princess would tell them that I handed the grace to one of them. "Whom to, for gods sake?" "He didn't tell me". Yes, they will believe because God taught everyone how to do something special: me - to hate, you - to be credible and both of us - to enjoy ourselves like the cold hands enjoy the fire. I must be to die in a minute like everyone dies when the grace goes away but it doesn't matter because they will die too. The notary will drown in his own bathtub. Ex will poison Wye and Wye - Ex. How brightly the chief of police will burn in his blasted car! How loud the quite Mr. Calm will cry when people like me start shredding him into pieces! The mute secretary will die in silence, the mayor's wife - in pain. As for the mayor, I don't know how this will end for him. It's not important. What's important is... See the epigraph.
- Комментарии: 2, последний от 19/04/2024.
- © Copyright Аноним (om_shri_ganeshaya_namaha@rambler.ru)
- Размещен: 04/08/2017, изменен: 04/08/2017. 15k. Статистика.
- Рассказ: Проза
Связаться с программистом сайта.