"Jack Dann - Kaddish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

arm to circle his middle finger three times. But the flaming words of
God contained in the phylacteries did not seem to make the synaptic
connection into his blood and brain and sinew. Nevertheless, he
intoned the words of the prayers, stood up, bowed, said the kad-dish,
and then another kaddish, and he remembered all the things he should
have said to his wife and son before they died. He remembered his
omissions and commissions, which could not be undone. It was too
late even for tears, for he was as hollow as a winter gourd.
And Nathan realized that he was already dead.
A shade that had somehow insinuated himself into this congregation.
But then the service was over. The congregants hurriedly folded their
prayer-shawls and wound the leather straps around their phylacteries,
for it was 7:45, and they had to get to work. Nathan followed suit, but
he felt like an automaton, a simulacrum of himself, a dead thing
trying to infiltrate the routines and rituals of the living.
He left the synagogue with the other men. He had an early-morning
appointment with an old client who insisted on turning over his
substantial portfolio again; the old man had, in effect, been paying
Nathan's mortgage for years.
But as Nathan drove his Mercedes coupe down A1A, which was the
more picturesque and less direct route to his office in downtown Fort
Lauderdale, he suddenly realized that he couldn't go through with it.
He couldn't spend another day going through the motions of dictating
to his secretary, counseling clients, staring into the electron darkness
of a CRT screen, and pretending that life goes on.
He simply couldn't do it....
He made a U-turn, and drove back home to Lighthouse Point. The
ocean was now to his right, an expanse of emerald and tourmaline. It
brought to mind memories of family outings on the public Lauderdale
beaches when his son Michael was a toddler and wore braces to
straighten out a birth defect. He remembered first making love to his
wife Helen on the beach. The immensity of the clear, star-filled sky
and the dark, unfathomable ocean had frightened her, and afterward
she had cried in his arms as she looked out at the sea.
But as Nathan drove past the art-deco style pink cathedral, which was
a Lighthouse Point landmark, he realized that he couldn't go home
either. How was he going to face the myriad memories inhering in the
furniture, bric-a-brac, and framed photographs... the memories that
seemed to perspire from the very walls themselves? Helen and
Michael would only whisper to him again. He would hear all the old
arguments and secret conversations, barely audible but there
nevertheless, over the susurration of the air conditioner....
He parked his car in the circular driveway of his red-roofed, white
stucco home and crossed the street to his neighbor's yard, which had
direct frontage on the intercoastal.
He was, after all, already a shade; he had only to make a proper
passage into the next world.
And with the same calm, directed purpose that had served him so well
in business over the years, Nathan borrowed his neighbor's hundred
thousand dollar "cigarette" speedboat and steered it out to sea to find